I am looking for someone to run an e-comm site for me

[jrtapp]

We have a sucessfull e-commerce site that is dedicated to serving our existing customers (Electrical, Plumbing and HVAC Contractors). Our company would like to set up a web site that caters to the retail trade but, we don't want to upset our traditional wholesale customers. (They make money by marking up the products we sell them.)

What we would like to do is to find someone who would be willing to set up a fully functional e-comm web site and operate it on an on-going basis. Ideally, the operator would be paid a percentage of the sales for the services rendered. We would handle all of the inventory, packaging, shipping and accounting.

This solves a couple of problems for me; I don't have enough staff to run another site and it gives us some deniablity with our existing customer base.

Does anyone know of a company with this kind of business model? or someone who would be willing to do something like this?

Thanks,

J.R. Tapper
Dir of MIS
JH Larson Electrical company
www.jhlarson.com
feedback@jhlarson.com

[Easy Web 4 U]

I would be glad to discuss this with you. Feel free to contact me.

Teresa

[Corey Bryant]

Are you looking for the hosting, shopping cart, as well - the whole kit-n-kaboodle?

[jrtapp]

Originally Posted by Corey Bryant

Are you looking for the hosting, shopping cart, as well - the whole kit-n-kaboodle?

I am looking for the whole thing. Right now all I have is a bunch of warehouses full of product and no good way to get it to the retail customers.

Thanks for the interest.

[brian.mark]

We had a similar issue and just set up a secondary company to sell outside of our normal trade zones. We don't advertise the site in store, but just go after those SERPs for business to attract people that aren't coming to our store already. Makes for a win-win situation for us, as we can do everything in-house without any problems, and we can use existing data for inventory (real-time) and lead times for non-stock items.

Having someone outside handle your site means they may not be targeting the products you really want to in order to drive profits, you have to give a level of trust to them to handle everything properly, and it leaves a lot of questions about real-time lookups and how you handle the merchant account, etc.

It may seem like a good idea on the surface, but it can really be a bad idea for both parties if everything isn't worked out well up front.

[jrtapp]

Originally Posted by brian.mark

...It may seem like a good idea on the surface, but it can really be a bad idea for both parties if everything isn't worked out well up front.

Thanks for the advice, I wish I had the ability to manage this in house. It just isn't practical at this time.

[montytx]

WHy would someone want to take on the risk and work with no pay? Basically you want someone to set up a site run it and advertise it. Do you at least have a database of customers or something to get it off the ground. Otherwise anyone could do this get a wholesaler of there own.

[jwm5411]

Please contact me. I can setup an entire retail website hosted on our servers. We currently partner with a national distributer of hair care products in exactly the manner you indicate in your post. Our partnered site has been in business since 2003.

We would be happy to provide references and discus the setup and operation with you. You can contact me through the email and phone numbers on the sites below.

John