This thought is going through our mind recently as we are on our way to developing and even transforming our online store - what's going on? What will happen to the online stores in the future?
Will there be any niche market left for small online stores, or will amazon, eBay, Google Merchant, or other giants swallow up all the online stores?
It is the same question you need to ask yourself if you have a small shop dedicated, let's say for the argument's sake, to selling cakes and candies.
If a superstore like Sainsbury's, Tesco's, or even Budgens plants one of their big shops in your area, will the small shop still survive?
These big superstores have the price and the traffic to attract ALL the customers of the little shop...
Niche online store for electrical items
What we would like to have is a nice lighting showroom in Archway so that whoever is in the area - whether a neighbor of ours or a contractor, an electrician, an architect, or a specifier - would come in and take a look, get some advice, and purchase things at a discounted price.Also, online we have an e-commerce website, www.sparksdirect.co.uk, where the discounted price are posted together with all the details of the items we sell.
What about these big superstores online and offline that tend to swallow up the small ones and attract the traffic both locally and online that the small shops used to have? Is it the survival of the fittest?
Will "better services" and "better customer support" be a deciding factor in a world that the prices are very similar - even imposed on the online shops by the suppliers/manufacturer themselves?
what is the future of niche online stores?
This is our question, and the future will tell us what "the future of online stores" is. Sounds logical, right? But if you're in this business and you have an online store, doing your utmost to give the best prices and the best customer service, there's a raging battle as we speak.You don't physically fight or outwardly speak of it, putting down some practices the superstores perform, but you're silently fighting on...
On our side, we want our website to be the BEST online store for electrical items - from lights to switches, from sockets to fire alarms, from electrical plugs to wireless alarms, from wireless systems to outdoor wall lights, and from disabled alarms to fans and heaters.
We all are going through this transformation period where old practices, old habits, old prices, old ideas, etc - everything old is being little by little put aside and new ways, new practices, new prices, better quality items and services, are being pushed forward...
