Tips For Moving To Your Next Home

Moving is a stressful time for anyone. I have lived a long, fruitful life filled with a multitude of adventures and many miles traveled. I have personal experiences with moving from home to home, ever since I was a little kid. This means that as I’ve grown up and become more accustomed to moving around a lot, I have found there to be small ways in which moving can be a little bit easier. Let’s face it; nobody loves the moving process. It is complicated, expensive, stressful, exhausting, and is just all around not a very good time. I have felt that same way and so have millions of other people who are in the process of moving to a new home, apartment, condo, or whatever else you might live in. So without further ado, here are some tips you can take advantage of the next time you find yourself moving somewhere.

The first tip I have for you is to get rid of everything before the movers come or before you begin packing. Okay, calm down - I don’t mean to get rid of everything you own! More like, doing some early or late spring cleaning and getting rid of the things that you don’t want or need but have been too lazy to take to Goodwill or to the dump. While no one loves going through their stuff and throwing things out, this will be helpful for you when it comes time to pack up all your stuff and move across the country or whatever. Trust me, I have been there and it is not a fun time to unpack all of the things that I don’t actually want or need. You will save yourself a lot of time and trouble in the long run, so just get it done now so you don’t have to worry about it later. Especially take a good look at old appliances that you do not use or clothes you never wear. These things can take up a lot of space during the moving process and it will be a waste of time for you.

Another tip I have for you is to get moving and shipping boxes from your local stores. All too often do I see people spending their own money on ordering moving boxes to pack all their stuff into. This makes me so sad to see because there are so many ways in which you can find free moving or shipping boxes from your local grocery stores, liquor stores, or other department stores or distribution centers that have a surplus of boxes. You would be surprised at how ready these companies are to get rid of these boxes, and how popular it is for people to go pick them up on a regular basis. 

The final tip I have for you is to create a moving budget and stick to it. Moving can get very expensive very quickly, and I would hate to see you fall into tremendous debt because you failed to stick to your moving budget. My suggestion is to see how much you can spend on your moving company, transportation, etc. That way, you can properly allocate funds to different expenses you come across during the moving process. I hope this was helpful, good luck out there friend!

Things You Need For Your Ecommerce Business Today

If you are running a business completely online; congrats, there are a million people just like you. Yeah that’s right, you’re not very special in any way, shape, or form. Ecommerce has become a huge trend in today’s market and is quickly becoming one of the most profitable ways to sell items directly to your customers; no middle man required. The thing about eCommerce is that anyone thinks they can do it. All you need is a few shipping boxes and a product to put in them, right? Wrong. Now you’re out of business, your family is starving, and your youngest son just got made fun of at school because his parents tried and failed to start an eCommerce business without first reading this article. That’s right, I have years and years of experience in the world of eCommerce and online marketing, and am here to tell you a few things you need to start your own eCommerce business.

The first thing you need to know is that your customers are going to be the most important part of your entire business. Forget sustainability, forget ethical guidelines, forget brand recognition or identity; none of it matters if you can’t sell your products. So the first thing you have to do is find something to sell that people will want to buy. Then you have to properly align it in ways that those who are willing to buy your products can find them and purchase them in a reasonable manner. This may sound simple enough, but it is no easy task. That is why I suggest for you to invest in some sort of CRM system. CRM stands for customer relationship management, and is a blanket term for identifying, understanding, and communicating with your customers and clients through your eCommerce business. 

What a CRM allows you to do is gather and store information and data from your customers, which will help you to better understand them and tailor to their specific tastes,  preferences, and needs. This information will help you in your marketing campaigns to target your customers where they are at; social media, websites, TV, that sort of thing. You want to know where your customers' eyes are going so you can be there too, offering them a product you sell and knowing that they will love it once they see it. I suggest you highly invest in this type of marketing style in order to increase your website and social media traffic, and overall hopefully increase your sales.

Another suggestion I have for you is to invest in some quality shipping and packaging supplies when you do finally begin to make those sales. I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill shipping boxes either; I’m talking about some quality stuff for your customers to have that great unboxing experience with. Afterall, it is likely the only physical contact they will have with your business, so it’s important to leave a lasting positive impression on your customers while you can. Ensure that whatever product you are shipping arrives on time and in good shape. You would hate to go through all the work of marketing and advertising, producing and shipping, all the way to delivering you products to the customer, only to find a one-star review on your website because your product was damaged during transit way out of your control.

Growth Due to COVID 19

COVID 19 has made a lot of trouble for a lot of people all over the world. Economies have been twisted and turned upside down, people have lost businesses, and families have lost loved ones. However, COVID 19 has made me a lot of money at my business. I work as a manager at a medium sized textile company that manufactures textiles for commercial and industrial use. We ship hundreds of thousands of products daily all over the country, and our sales have almost doubled due to the pandemic and our quick reaction time. 

When COVID was first becoming a threat to us in the United States, we were originally very concerned with the way our economy was headed. It seems that multiple parts of every industry were being shut down one after another; we were sure that we would be next. Our textile products were not necessarily deemed as essential for the wellbeing of our country, so we were sure that we would have to temporarily decrease production or shut down entirely as COVID swept over our country; however, things began to take a turn around when we had plans drawn up to manufacture face masks for the general public. In fact, we were given a monetary grant from the government to cover any necessary changes in capital or machinery that would allow us to create textile fabric for facemasks and other PPE. This was a huge breakthrough for us and is exactly what we needed to stay open for the year of the pandemic.

We quickly worked with our designers to come up with a blueprint of fabric and stitching for our facemasks, and brought our engineers in to work out any problems with our current manufacturing processes. While we are set up to produce textiles, slight modifications had to be made in order to accommodate a switch to creating personal protective equipment like facemasks. As soon as our selection was live through our website, we had orders absolutely flying in from retail stores all over the world trying to get a hold of them. The biggest buyers were places like Walmart and Target, who were quickly looking to stock their shelves with facemasks. We unfortunately did not tap into the medical market, as none of our products were medical grade and were tailored more to the everyday consumer. We still had no trouble selling our masks; in fact, we had trouble making enough of them every day to be able to ship out to our buyers.

Not only that, but we also had problems when it came to shipping and packaging. We were sending out hundreds of thousands of shipping boxes each day, and still we could not keep enough on hand to keep any sort of inventory. To get more shipping boxes, we had to start outsourcing our own manufacturing of boxes and start buying them from a foreign wholesaler of boxes. This ensured that we had enough boxes to ship out our products in. We also had to increase productivity in the factories, so we hired more labor and increased our wages on a full scale level. This brought in more employees and allowed us to see some great increases in efficiency and productivity in our workers. While COVID may have been an awful time for some, it turned out to be a really good thing for my company.