--- title: Ecommerce with Shopify date: 2019-10-22T05:30:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-10/ecommerce-with-shopify/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)![Mark Poppen](https://website101podcast.com/uploads/hosts/_200x200_crop_center-center_none/mark-poppen.png)Guest Mark Poppen Web designer, business owner, dad and husband (the order depends on the day) [ ](https://twitter.com/markpoppen)[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markpoppen/)[ ](https://www.facebook.com/FunkyMooseRecords/) Season 02 Episode 10 – Oct 22, 2019 59:47 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Ecommerce with Shopify  LISTEN0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-02/S02E10-Mark-Poppen-Ecommerce-master2.mp3) In this episode we talk with Mark Poppen, owner of Funky Moose Records, about running a ecommerce website with physical product using shopify. ### Show Notes - Mark provides some history and background into his decision to run a used record business - Talks about his decision **not** to use Opencart. - Wordpress and WooCommerce - not as simple as Shopify - It's better to use Shopify payments as there is no extra charge, but if you use a different payment gateway such as paypal you pay the paypal feel plus an addtional 1% fee. - Shopify Themes - Steps involved in setting up shopify for a new business. - People underestimate what's involved in ecommerce - How to manage your inventory - Overselling and shipping guarantees - Shipping costs, weight etc. - Returns - What is a payment gateway and a merchant account ### Show Links - [Funky Moose Records](https://www.funkymooserecords.ca) - [Opencart](https://www.opencart.com/) - [Shopify](https://www.shopify.ca) - [Big Commerce](https://www.bigcommerce.com) - [Merchant Account Vs. Payment Gateway: What’s The Difference?](https://home.bluesnap.com/snap-center/blog/merchant-account-vs-payment-gateway/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi, and welcome to the website 101 podcast. I'm Sean Smith, your co-host, and with me, as always, is Mike Miller. Hey, Sean. How's it going? It's going really well. Today, we're going to bring on Mark Poppin, and he's going to talk to us about e-commerce and Shopify and running a physical business, not just online. **\[00:23\]** **Mike:** Yeah. This is going to be a really good... Well, with physical product. Right. e-commerce is such an integral part of web development these days and valuable. So I'm really thrilled to learn a lot about this stuff because I don't know yet. That's much about it, to be honest with you. **\[00:39\]** **Sean:** I've done one e-commerce site myself, and that was many years ago, and it was a beast. Yeah. I'm really looking forward to hearing what Mark has to say, but can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Hey, guys. Where are you? Where can we find you? **\[00:53\]** **Mark:** Well, first of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. Oh, very happy. I enjoy doing this, so yeah, thanks for asking. Where can you find me? Okay, so let's start from the start. I'm a web designer by trade. Accidentally fell into my own e-commerce store and have been doing that for just over four years now. I've been, I've designed e-commerce stores before. It feels like I'm going all over the place now, but where can you find me? **\[01:31\]** **Sean:** Tell us about the e-commerce business that you're running right now. **\[01:37\]** **Mark:** Okay, so my store is called Funky Moose Records. It's an online record store that I started, like I said four years ago, initially only selling new vinyl records that kind of evolved into new vinyl records and accessories like storage solutions, cleaning supplies, etc. and then in really short, I met a guy that knows how to find stuff and now we're also doing used records. **\[02:10\]** **Mike:** And only online you said, hey, you don't have any physical store at all? **\[02:14\]** **Mark:** No, not yet. I say that loosely. The plan is eventually to have a location not in my house, and it will be more like a warehouse setting with a small storefront. Cool. Where people can pick up their orders. **\[02:32\]** **Sean:** So, you're selling LPs online. Where do you keep your stock if you don't have a store? Do you You keep it in your basement or how do you keep stock? **\[02:47\]** **Mark:** In my basement, exactly, yeah. **\[02:49\]** **Mike:** Oh, I nailed it. You're a bit, I have, we mentioned, where are you, where in the world are you based in? **\[02:55\]** **Mark:** Oh. So, Funkimu's headquarters, my house, is in Bellevue Saskatchewan. It's a small hamlet in central Saskatchewan, but the shipping is all happening from Prince Albert's scotch one, because that's where I have my full-time job, which I'll touch on later. **\[03:17\]** **Sean:** Okay. Okay. Oh, interesting. So how far from Saskatoon or Regina is Belvier? **\[03:24\]** **Mark:** Belvier is about an hour north of Saskatoon and about 40 minutes south of Prince Albert. **\[03:31\]** **Sean:** Oh, right in the middle. Oh, awesome. Okay. Yeah. So you're running your online store, funky moose records, which I just love the name. That's a really cool name, great. And you did mention in the past that you were working as a web designer, are you still doing web design or is the, oh, record store your full time job now? **\[04:00\]** **Mark:** OK, so let's start from the start. I'm a web designer by trade. And when I moved to Canada with my wife, I was exploring options to see what I could do here. Should I work for an agency? Or should I start my own business? The former working for an agency was not really an option because there was no agency in my area, which made me look around a little bit more and seeing that there was a serious lack of web designers in the area that I'm in, I figured might as well go ahead first and jump into my own business. Back home in Holland, I had a side business, a side web design business and I figured I could do the same here. Now because my wife is French, I could get a business advisor for free because when you're French you get stuff. So he helped me set up a business plan and, you know, projections and a marketing, marketing plan, so to speak, and he carried around business cards because as a business advisor, he talked through a lot of new businesses that need a website. So that's how that started in 2009. So I did that for about what had been seven years give or take my math is going to not get an add-up if somebody's going to do the math, but no one's going to do the math. Okay, every listen there please don't do the math. But yeah six or seven years of web design it was going okay and I was having fun doing it but it wasn't there was always something missing because I have a retail background as well and I and you guys both know that when you're in the web design business you sell a service and you can do that from anywhere in the world and you're not handing over a physical product as someone from the retail world I was kind of missing that so I've always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something with e-commerce or maybe work in a store part time or whatever. I hadn't quite figured that one out. In 2014, beginning of 2015, I figured, okay, I want to sell something. I want to do something online, but I don't know what. I know I have I have the knowledge, you know, because as a web designer, I've, by that time, I've built a few e-commerce websites. And I started thinking about, okay, what can I sell? And then one day, I bought a record of Amazon and I had a box of used records in my office next to me. And I'm like, what am I doing? Why am I not selling records? You know, it's, if Amazon can do it, can't I? Right. So, I basically Googled what was the term something like record distributors Canada or something generic like that. And the first one that popped up, I was like, well, here goes nothing. I dialed the phone number on that website and I get a guy on the phone. He's like, like, oh, so you want to start a record business? Yeah, yeah. So how do you want to do this? I was like, well, honestly, I don't know. I need to, first I need to know if I can get some records. He goes like, that's why I'm calling you. Yeah, exactly. So I kind of explained like, well, I want to, I want to start an e-commerce business. And I don't know where to start. So I started with you and he's like, oh, that's cool. So you're a web designer, he says, yeah. Okay, so you know how to build a website, yes. Okay, good. So you have a business registered, there's like, yep, okay, well, then we'll go with that and I'll send you a price list and we'll get going. Like, really, that easy. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, what's your email address? Okay, so I gave my email address and it's like, So is there no minimum purchase? Do I do a credit application or how does this work? You're like, no, no, just, I'll give you access to our site and then you can pick and choose what you want and then you place an order. The only catch is that shipping starts at $30 per shipment. So you gotta calculate that in your margins. I'm like, oh, okay, now I have some homework. So I hung up the phone and I was like, Now I have to build a website. **\[09:12\]** **Sean:** Right, okay, so that's how we got to the part where we're going to talk about websites. Yeah. So you started this business and it sounds like you didn't have a lot of a plan at the beginning, but now you can get your inventory and it's time to make a website. What did you do next in planning your website? Did you decide on a CMS or a hosted solution? Did you start thinking about things like payment gateways or other technical things, or were you as a designer just thinking about at first, I need to design it, make it look pretty. **\[10:01\]** **Mark:** A little bit of everything. Good fair enough. So when I was on the phone with that distributor, or actually when I hung up the phone with the distributor, I was like, OK, I need to build a website now, where am I going to start? So I've built a website, or I've built websites for customers, and I've had some experience with different platforms. So I built a website on WordPress and WooCommerce. I used OpenCart at one point for another customer or client. And then there is a company in the US called Rain, RainPoS. And one of my clients was a fabric company. So and actually I set up a Shopify store for someone as well. So I had something to compare. And the last website that I did was with RAIN POS, and the only reason for that is that because Shopify didn't do, like, you know, if somebody buys Fabric, they need two feet or two and a half feet or two and a quarter or whatever, and Shopify just doesn't handle that. They only do round numbers. So that's the only reason why I went with RAIN. But I had experience with all, well, with a few CMS and e-commerce solutions. And so OpenCart was okay, but the updating and the upgrading process was a nightmare. **\[11:47\]** **Sean:** In what way was OpenCart a nightmare? What do you mean updating your content or updating the way the site worked? **\[11:56\]** **Mark:** No, version updates. So whenever there was a new version, you had to download the package and you have to FTP that onto the website. And then you had to modify a few files to make it match. And it was just not user friendly at the time. And they came out with quite a few updates. You know, it felt like they had an update every two weeks or whatever. And then I was like, well, this is not gonna work. Well, I guess it works, but I'm not gonna, I don't want to be updating this website in this way every two weeks. So then. **\[12:34\]** **Sean:** Right, so at this point, you're not wanting to do web developer stuff every two weeks to maintain it. Exactly. You wanna focus on the e-commerce, the business side of your business, not the technical side. **\[12:46\]** **Mark:** Yeah, so the open cards experience was for a client. And I was updating the website for that client. So OpenCart was out of the question for my own business, because I just don't have time for that. Then WordPress and WooCommerce, great solution is something that I would still recommend in some cases. But again, from experience, you have to set up your own payment processor, your own merchant account, you know, you have to make sure that everything is secure. And in my experience with Shopify, Shopify takes care of everything. So it's really, well, not really plug and play, but you know, it's if you take all of that into consideration, Shopify is the most user friendly and all in one package. Now, I wait, we have to remember that Mark has a technical **\[13:46\]** **Sean:** background is doing web design and development. So, I mean, if he found those other solutions time-consuming or not as easy as they could be and he chose Shopify, there's a good reason and for the do-it-yourselfers listening, he probably want to listen to what Mark is saying **\[14:06\]** **Mike:** and go with Shopify. Yeah, some of those terms that you rattled off, you know, payment gateway, merchant account and so on. Some of our listeners wouldn't even know what that is, so if you had reservations about doing some things like that, then yeah, it certainly makes a lot of sense for do it yourself or to go a different way. And we will get into those terms a little later. **\[14:28\]** **Sean:** Yeah, right. So continue with your story. It's very interrupt. **\[14:31\]** **Mark:** Yeah, no, that's fine. So I actually talk to a few people and they say, well, Well, Shopify is so expensive. Well, that all depends on your perception. Because what does it cost for you to hire a developer to update your open card? **\[14:54\]** **Sean:** What is the cost on Shopify? I know it's going to be different for everybody, but they have different levels. And what would you think is the introductory level cost for somebody on a monthly basis? **\[15:10\]** **Mark:** 29 US dollars. **\[15:12\]** **Sean:** That's their 30 US month. Yeah. And that's not expensive at all. No, but if you're expensive, it's going to be your credit card fees. **\[15:23\]** **Mark:** Yeah. And if you use shop five payments, they are smaller than transaction on a PayPal, for example. **\[15:32\]** **Mike:** So do they take a cut of, like, is the 29 or whatever was that's your sort of subscription fee, **\[15:38\]** **Mark:** but they also take a cut of the sales that you make? No, well, yes and no. It depends on if you enable Shopify payments, then they will not take a cut. If you decide to turn off Shopify payments and go solely for, let's say, PayPal or to authorize or gateway like that, then Shopify will charge, I believe it's one or 1.5%. Some, I don't know the exact number, but they will charge a small percentage of your overall sales, and they will tack that onto the $29. **\[16:14\]** **Sean:** Okay. Well, one or five percent is, it's not small change when she start getting up to volume, but it's still a lot cheaper than your average credit card processor. **\[16:27\]** **Mark:** Yeah, but that's on top of what PayPal would charge for... **\[16:32\]** **Sean:** for, oh, so PayPal is like 2.9% and then you're paying an extra 1% on top of that. **\[16:40\]** **Mark:** Exactly. **\[16:41\]** **Sean:** But they really want you to use Shopify payments. **\[16:43\]** **Mark:** Yeah, exactly. And to me, it makes sense because if you go for, let's say, Stripe, actually Shopify, Shopify payments is powered by Stripe. So it all integrates into the cart and into the checkout, and you have your bank account connected to Shopify. So as soon as you get a payment through Shopify Payments, three days later it's in your account. So you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to worry about security because Shopify has a whole team of people that worries about that. This might sound like a sales pitch for Shopify, but you're happy with them. **\[17:31\]** **Mike:** Well, I was going to ask, aside from the payment issues, then, the fact that you're paying a little bit of overhead for the security and everything else, do you have any other downsides to using a service like Shopify, in your opinion, for an average person who's just selling you know, widgets of some kind, you know, they don't have all kinds of different, you know, you were saying earlier about lengths of cloth or whatever. If they're just selling things that they own, in your opinion, is Shopify the best solution overall kind of thing? **\[18:12\]** **Mark:** I think so. Either Shopify or platform like big commerce, big commerce is kind of a competitor to And as 3D card, I believe, they all do the same thing, but a little different. **\[18:27\]** **Sean:** I'm sorry, I didn't catch the other platform, something commerce. Big commerce, I think. Big commerce. I'll find a link and include that in the show now. **\[18:40\]** **Mark:** So yeah, if you just get started, getting started in e-commerce, I think a hosted platform, like Shopify, And that could be the other two whatever is the easiest way to start. Okay. Yeah, you have to pay a little bit up front. But if you if you're brave enough, you can grab a theme and modify it yourself a little bit because they have a somewhat of a drag and drop editor. So you can get started pretty, pretty easily. So can you, would you say that Shopify **\[19:13\]** **Sean:** is relatively easy for somebody without a web developer or designer background to grab a theme and make their own store or is it something that they'd probably better off with hiring somebody to help set it up initially and then they could take over once the initial setup is **\[19:33\]** **Mark:** done. The teams that Shopify provides, the three teams that come with Shopify, you can download them off the team store are basically very good. The only downside is that everybody's using them. So your site will, I'm able to recognize a Shopify site just by the team. Right. So that's the only drawback I would have if you don't know what you're doing web design wise. So I would probably start it myself and then know someone, you know, know what web designer that can be customized. Yeah, exactly because Shopify does allow full customization of their of their themes. So if there are a lot of Shopify developers out there. Yeah. And even if you're not a not a Shopify developer, because I you guys haven't worked with Shopify **\[20:35\]** **Sean:** before, right? Nope. No, but one of my guests from season one, Dan would, he does Shopify as well. **\[20:42\]** **Mark:** Okay. Okay. Well, and you know what, I'm sure you guys can figure it out because the the theme is mostly not mostly is built on liquid. So you just drop in tags into plain HTML and **\[20:56\]** **Sean:** you get to go basically. Hey, thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you're enjoying it. We're always looking for topic suggestions, so if there's a topic that you would like us to discuss, please let us know. **\[21:13\]** **Mike:** Yes, and we're also looking for guest suggestions. Is there someone you'd like to have on the show and have interviewed? Is there someone who's been on the show that you'd like to have back? Do you think you would make a good guest? Visit website 101podcast.com slash contact to get in touch. So just to take a step back for our listeners who may not be as technical as any of the three of us. So Shopify and systems like that, these sort of service-based ones. The idea is you would have your own generally, you'd have your own website where you promote your products or whatever or promote your business, but then when someone goes to buy something, they would say, you know, click the Buy Now button, they'd be sent to your website owner, account on Spotify which has a theme like a visual theme that presumably would match your website somewhat as much as you can make that happen. And then all of the purchasing happens through the Shopify site, as opposed to your site. That's basically how it works, right? There's nothing plugged into your own website. It's kind of you send people over there when it's time to buy. **\[22:23\]** **Mark:** Yeah, exactly. You do everything start to finish in Shopify. The theme is hosted by Shopify, you add products in the Shopify dashboard and then the whole. **\[22:36\]** **Mike:** You get a, there's like a URL like whatever dot, you customize the URL to. **\[22:42\]** **Sean:** Yeah, you can use your own domain. Okay. And he's on funky moose records, right? So he's got his own domain. That's right, funky. I'm looking at the website right now, funkymooserecords.ca. **\[22:55\]** **Mark:** Yeah. Yeah, the only thing they don't handle is email. Okay. So if you have your domain with email addresses, you'll have to find another solution for your email. I believe they do forward, but I just have two separate domain names for email and website. So if you have a business **\[23:17\]** **Mike:** where you're selling products and you decide to use something like Shopify. And this is sounding like a Shopify commercial at this point. Whatever we're just talking about. But like this episode brought to you by Shopify. I have a referral code if you want. We should, we should leap out. Every time we say Shopify, just have a bleep sound. I don't know what it was talking about. But I was going to say it's it's it's a presumably that some Some people, you know, if you're selling things, your only web presence is your Shopify site, right? You would necessarily have a site at all external to that, right? If they let you have your own domain, I mean, except for the email thing, I suppose, that you'd have to set that up some other way. But if you're just promoting your products, I'm sure they have a way to let you put an about page on there. It's just text and things like that, right? Yeah. **\[24:06\]** **Mark:** It's a full on CMS next to all the products. **\[24:12\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I'm looking at Mark's website, FunkyMunice Records right now, and it's not called blog, it's called Stories, but it's basically a blog. It is a blog. It's got Discus comments, you know, like a hero image, and whatever, and chronological listing and stuff. So yeah, I mean, you can get your blog, or newsletter, or your about page, and all of your product information all up there. **\[24:41\]** **Mike:** Yeah, this is this is really cool. Mm-hmm. Okay. Um, so Mike doesn't seem convinced. No, no, I'll just check it out your website myself. Okay. Cool. **\[24:56\]** **Sean:** Very cool. So, let's put ourselves in one of our listeners shoes. Maybe they're they're trying to set up a side hustle selling something that they they make in their home or whatever. What are the first steps I should take to set up a business like this? Not and I don't mean all the legal steps that get a lawyer for that. I'm talking about things that I should be thinking about when I come to Shopify or a similar service and I want I said at my store, what's the most important things to do first? **\[25:38\]** **Mark:** Good question. **\[25:39\]** **Mike:** Yeah, like, like, here's the scenario, I'll sort of add to that. Let's say I make my own mittens, you know, I knit my own mittens and I want to sell them online, use this whole internet thing. And they came to you and they said, not that you would necessarily be taking on a client like that. you did, I want to sell my mittens online, what should I do first, you know what I mean? What's the first step I should take? Do I need, first of all, let me ask you this, do I need to myself set up a way for my customers money to get into my bank account? **\[26:22\]** **Mark:** How does that work? And now we're going back to Shopify. We can talk about Shopify or anything else. **\[26:31\]** **Sean:** That's your expertise, because that's what you've been doing for the last four years. Yeah, exactly. We're not asking you to talk about other services, we're looking for your experience. So, yeah. Don't be concerned about saying Shopify over and over and over. We'll just bleep it out eventually. We're going to bring on, we're going to bring on guests who use other systems as well. So I mean, you're, you're our first e-commerce guide, go for it. **\[26:57\]** **Mark:** Okay. So yeah, in Shopify, basically, when you set up your Shopify account in the settings, they will ask you, when you set up the Shopify payments, they will ask you, you know, the, the blank check and then you have your transit number and whatever. Okay, you fill that in into the, into the settings and then they'll verify it. And then really, that's it, that's then you're off. You have Shopify payments enabled, and you can start selling stuff. **\[27:30\]** **Sean:** Wow, it's that easy, just send them a scan of a blank check and... **\[27:36\]** **Mark:** No, it's actually the numbers at the bottom of the check that you enter. **\[27:39\]** **Sean:** So you don't even need to send them to the check? **\[27:41\]** **Mark:** No, no. **\[27:42\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so I can see now why companies like Shopify have gotten so successful, because the last time I entertained the thought of doing an e-commerce site. And I don't have, I have very little experience doing that. But the last time was, I don't know, over 10 years ago. And that, I mean, I don't know when Shopify and that kind of thing started. But at that time, it was a question of me figuring out how to set up a payment gateway and getting them to have a merchant account. And I could never get my head around any of it. And that's probably why I never really went anywhere. Yeah. **\[28:17\]** **Sean:** Oh, I had to do that. back in 2010, sorry, 2011, 2012, I was working at an agency here in Toronto, and we did an e-commerce site. It was the first e-commerce site the agency did, and I was the only developer on site. What year was this? 2011, 2012. I can't remember which year, but those are the years that I worked at this agency. And yeah, it was, I had to figure everything out. All right, I'm talking to the client. All right, which payment gateway do you want to use? And then I'm going between them and the payment gateway support. And then we're trying to configure the e-commerce add-on that we're using with the CMS. And oh my god, I know the agency lost money on this site. And I've been scared to take on an e-commerce **\[29:12\]** **Mark:** my self, just due to the complexity, it is such a beast. Yeah. Yeah. And it still is in a way, like the e-commerce itself, once you're on Shopify, it's, I mean, okay, I've done this for four years, so I know the ins and outs now, but I think a lot of people underestimate e-commerce itself. like for example if you already have an existing store and you're busy with that and you and your thinking of maybe I should sell this stuff online maybe think about that twice because if you have a brick and mortar store like for example in my my current day job I have a customer or a client that runs fashion boutique and she has the idea of well maybe I should sell this online I'm like that's a great idea, but be careful what you're getting into because you might actually sell double your revenue what you're doing now. Do you have the manpower for it? And are you willing to you know, stock everything? She's like, yes. Well, I might have to, I might have to think about that because she didn't realize that, you know, once you have an e-commerce store, you can literally sell **\[30:30\]** **Sean:** all over the world. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. She probably knew it, but in her head. Yeah. In her heart, she didn't realize how much work is involved in that. **\[30:41\]** **Mike:** I mean, it's hard to turn down the opportunity to put it online. If you're already selling in the real world, the physical world, why not move to e-commerce, I guess. But I know what you mean, because the one of the few clients I do have that I did some e-commerce work for, they sell a product out of their office in Ottawa. It's a non-profit and they sell this, whatever, it doesn't matter what it is. But they ended up getting me to build, it was just a PayPal buy now button, basically. But as soon as people were able to buy the products online as well, they had to manage the inventory for both of them, right? So the suddenly there was like orders, it wasn't just a question of what's physically left in front of us and how many people walked in the door. It was now, oh, wait a minute, we have these people who have placed orders over the past week and we owe them that product. So do we have any left and all that stuff? It worked out okay, but I can see how it could be a problem. **\[31:45\]** **Sean:** Actually, Mike brings up an interesting point. Mark, how do you handle dealing with the inventory? You mentioned it at the beginning of the episode that you keep your inventory in your basement. What if you had a seven run on a very popular album and you had like five copies and now you've got 20 people who want it, what do you do? I actually order it. They all order it. Does Shopify, do you plug in how many albums, like how many copies of each album you have or do you just put it up there and hope that you don't run short? **\[32:18\]** **Mark:** No, Shopify actually keeps track of inventory and they allow overselling. You can, so for example, I have five records of Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon in stock. Six people want it. Then my inventory simply goes to minus one. And then we built a custom app behind that that'll give me an overview of, okay, this is all oversold, so this is what you have to order. And then I place the order with the supplier and I, in some cases, I buy a little extra of that specific record, and then 10 days later, or maximum 10 days later, it comes in here and then pack everything up and ship it out. **\[33:06\]** **Sean:** All right, so let's go with this dark side of the mood album. You've got five copies and you make six sales. Do you have a shipping guarantee on your site? Like, we guarantee that it will ship in three days five days or you'll get it in so much time. What do you do when you have that over sale and you can't make the deadline? This is a can't get another copy of it. **\[33:37\]** **Mark:** This was actually a big problem up until a couple of months ago. Can you can you tell us about that? Yeah for sure. So initially when I first started I sold a few records per month and it was not a big deal. And I manually could keep track of inventory and probably even in my head, you know, what I have in stock and whatnot. But it started to become a bigger issue when my when our supplier also ran out of that particular copy. So then they would would be backordered. And I didn't know that until I ordered. So you have this flow of customer places order on the website. I placed an order with supplier. Day later, I get an email from supplier. This item is not available. I have to email my customer back saying that sorry, it's going to take a while. And that was not very good. **\[34:37\]** **Sean:** As a customer, I would be immediately looking at your competitor. **\[34:43\]** **Mark:** Exactly. And that was one of the biggest issues we had. So February of this year was the best month that we've had in the past four years. And that's when it was the biggest of problems. because we had so many orders coming in, we had so many back orders that we had to disappoint so many people, and it just started to look bad. **\[35:17\]** **Sean:** So it's kind of a good problem that your business is growing, but now it's at risk. **\[35:23\]** **Mark:** It was a great problem to have, but it needed to be solved. So I got in touch with Montreal-based web developer, who is a Shopify expert, and he built an app for me unrelated to this, but still a Shopify app, but I explained the situation to him. He's also a Shopify store owner, so he could relate to my problem. So we came up with a solution that now the inventory on the website is synchronized with the inventory from our supplier. So if it's physically in stock here, it'll say it's in stock. We can ship it within the same or next business day. If it's in stock at the supplier, it'll say it's available, but it'll ship within 5 to 10 business days. Because you have to receive it first. And then if they don't have stock, the buy now button turns off and you can't order it. **\[36:31\]** **Sean:** So this is an app that runs on the Shopify platform? **\[36:35\]** **Mark:** No, it runs on the Shopify API. So we have a separate VPS set up for apps like these and it's basically a synchronization between the product feed of our supplier and the inventory that we have in Shopify and every three hours it checks for inventory and updates the theme. **\[37:03\]** **Sean:** All right, so for our non-technical listeners, this is basically a program or system that runs on a third computer and talks between them. It sounds to me that this would not be available to the average Shopify owner, is that correct? Or does this web developer sell access to other people as well? **\[37:30\]** **Mark:** No, this is solely built for this one specific supplier and our store. **\[37:36\]** **Sean:** Right, so it's a custom app that you had to pay for. **\[37:39\]** **Mark:** Yeah. Yeah, cool. I did. I did pay for it. **\[37:43\]** **Sean:** How long did it take this developer to make for you? **\[37:48\]** **Mark:** weeks, a couple of months, I was fortunate enough that he got laid off. And that's you were fortunate. **\[37:58\]** **Sean:** But he was fortunate to get a job for you. Yeah, yeah. And I know that sounds terrible, **\[38:02\]** **Mark:** but we joke about it so it's all good. But yeah, no, right at the time where we started building this app, I think we had it all planned out in the evenings and then the Monday morning he says, So I have a lot of time for you now and I'm like, well, what happened? Well, I just got laid off from my full time job. It was like, oh, that sucks, but not really. I don't know how to respond to this. So yeah, I think Walmart has a card somewhere. **\[38:35\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. **\[38:39\]** **Mike:** OK, OK, so moving on a little bit here. With regard to your business specifically, How do you manage the, I mean, we touched on a little bit there, but things that could come up with regard to the different orders that you take, like say, for example, shipping, **\[39:02\]** **Mark:** like if I order, I don't know, 20 records and someone else, Sean orders one record, they're **\[39:09\]** **Mike:** going to weigh a lot my ordered ways 20 times with his order, order ways. So how do you manage the cost of shipping, things like that, whether or not someone is an international customer, like how does that all play into your business? So when I started... **\[39:27\]** **Sean:** Do you sell internationally or do you sell only in Canada, because I know some online businesses only ship domestically wherever they're located? Right, that's true. **\[39:37\]** **Mark:** We ship all over the world, but we advertise just in Canada. So if someone in Australia, which happens, finds us by accident and decides to order a record and wants to pay $40 shipping, then they do that. **\[39:54\]** **Sean:** Well, I do have listeners in Australia, so. There you go. Some people know me. Hopefully they're into LPs. **\[40:01\]** **Mike:** Yeah. Okay, so that kind of, a lot of that kind of responsibility falls to the customer themselves. If they want to cover the cost that's up to them, is it like that? **\[40:11\]** **Mark:** Yes, and no. So, the way I started Shopify on the $29 plan that we talked about earlier, doesn't have carrier-calculated shipping, which means the higher plan for $79 does have this, and it integrates with Canada Post. and FedEx and UPS and USPS, so a whole bunch. I just use it for kind of the post. And what you do when you enter a product in Shopify, you enter the weight of it. And this is kind of a little bit of a downfall of Shopify because they don't allow you to add the dimensions of a product, because kind of the post measures your and there's a formula for this. So your measurements, there's a formula, after the formula is a certain weight. So it's height times width times depth divided by 6000. That's that's what you call it, calculated weight, volumetric weight. That's what it's called. And kind of the post then decides the one that's higher. That's what they're going to charge you for. So if, let's say I have a package that is one kilo, but the dimensions are bigger, which make, you know, after the formula, make it 1.5 kilos, then kind of the post is going to charge me for the 1.5 kilos. **\[41:53\]** **Sean:** Right, right, because they have to figure out, you know, they have different costs based on bulk and, yeah, and weight, and then they've got a formula to that, it works out in their favor, obviously. Yeah, exactly. **\[42:08\]** **Mark:** Yeah, so the $29 plan doesn't help that calculation automatically. So when I started, I basically went with, okay, well, the competition is doing this, so I'm doing this too, ran with it and then decided on the shipping cost per province at first. And then I started adding, okay, orders over certain amounts, get free shipping. That was a lot of trial and error to get to where we are now. And then I finally upgraded to the shop of I plan, the $79 one, and then you get carry a calculated shipping, which means that if Mike orders one record, he pays less than Sean ordering 10. **\[43:02\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and that's something with my client that I mentioned earlier, the PayPal one, even with PayPal, I remember having to do that where I had, we had to deal to where, you know, If you order, I think it was, I don't know, 15 of this product, shipping is free. And it became really wild because the shipping was based on percentages. So you could get to a point where, well whatever, I won't get any more detail about that. But the point is it was very confusing when you deal with, you know, I'm shipping this much product versus this much and what's the shipping is a shipping cost, a percentage of everything or is it a flat rate of everything or is it the free because of where they are, it gets really complicated. So it's nice. I see that they Shopify seems to offer that sort of perk as one of their higher plan things, right? That's what you get with your pay for with the higher plan in that sense. **\[44:00\]** **Sean:** For sure. Yeah. Well, they have a higher plan because there's more features for it, right? the the cheaper plan or the higher plan offer tracking so you can ship through UPS and get a tracking number or Canada post or is it only like just the ship it we ship it there's no tracking number that that actually is up to you **\[44:22\]** **Mark:** if you if you choose to ship with Canada post what's it called regular parcel no That would be called regular parcel, then you don't get a shipping. **\[44:35\]** **Sean:** I don't know, you're the professional. **\[44:37\]** **Mark:** Well, I don't use that parcel, so I don't know what it's called. **\[44:40\]** **Sean:** Okay. **\[44:41\]** **Mark:** Well Canada Post has an option, standard shipping, I don't know. Yeah, something like that. But if you sign up for small business accounts with Canada Post, they will give you expedited parcel for the same price as the regular parcel, but with tracking. Oh, that's, that's good. So, all right, and the, and the small business plan with Canada Post is free. So no, no reason not to sign up. **\[45:07\]** **Mike:** How about, how about returns? How do you, in your business handle returns? If I, I don't like my pink Floyd record, I realize pink Floyd sucks or maybe they misunderstood **\[45:19\]** **Mark:** the quality of the record, like do you sell used records or only brand new and, and used? **\[45:25\]** **Sean:** This is where the illegal policies are being realized that it was more used scratch up. I'm sure Mark's Mark's property with that quality. **\[45:34\]** **Mike:** Mark's products are not scratched records. They're perfectly. **\[45:37\]** **Sean:** Yeah, but you know, there's people can be a little bit picky. So yeah, I'm not happy with my pink Floyd out of mid-skips. Okay. What do I do? **\[45:47\]** **Mark:** Can I send it back? Yes, but we usually don't. Okay, so normally new records, they come sealed and you can only return them when they're still sealed. And this has everything to do with copyrights and whatever, whatever. So when it's unsealed, you can't return it. However, this actually happens. If you get a new record, you unpack it, you put it on your turntable and you go, hey, why is there a big scratch on there? I didn't even touch it yet. Well, that sucks, but instead of sending it back to me for $15, I mean, a record wholesale cost about that, well, not quite, but about that, shipping it back and forth is not worth it, and I just send a new copy. **\[46:38\]** **Sean:** Oh, okay. Right. So now they've got two copies. Yeah, but the scratch? **\[46:43\]** **Mark:** Yeah. And then if they decide to sell the scratch copy and make some profit on it, it's good for them. I'm sure that doesn't happen very often. **\[46:51\]** **Sean:** Yeah, well, I don't imagine that anybody's going to be like trying to take advantage of that. **\[46:56\]** **Mark:** But yeah, to your point, to your point of the used records, sorry, to interrupt there. We have what they call the goldmine standard of record grading, which is basically like baseball cards and stuff and comics. Right, comics, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's a it's a grading system. And we take pride in undergrading everything. So if if we say it's it's marked as very good, it's probably a very good plus. Right. **\[47:27\]** **Sean:** So we don't we don't usually get get returns from that. So we're coming up on a little bit long on time here. And I have a couple of things I want to hit on before we we end up for the day here. I told you we were gonna go over. So this is great. Yeah, this has been really good. Can we talk about what is a payment gateway and what is a merchant account, which I think you touched on **\[47:53\]** **Mark:** this a little bit? What is the difference between them? Okay, so I knew you were gonna ask this question, so I had to look it up myself. So in my head, I know what it is, but to explain it is kind of complicated. **\[48:10\]** **Mike:** Every time I've asked an e-commerce guy this question, that's pretty much verbatim what they say. So I don't fault you for that at all. That seems to be the correct answer to this question. It's the anime. But yeah. **\[48:24\]** **Mark:** So there are quite a few steps when you actually hit the pay now button. Because first of all, your card needs to be checked for fraud. That you are actually the owner of the card. Then it needs to be checked if it's expired, if there's any fraudulent stuff, if you have room or if you have credit on your card, etc. So it's not as simple as click and charge and that's it. There are actually about 10 steps and I say 10 steps because that's the graphic I have in front of me. I looked it up. Sean, are you going to drop this in the show notes? I'll **\[49:05\]** **Sean:** send you a link. Or absolutely. Okay. Any links that we talk about I'll go in the show **\[49:11\]** **Mark:** notes. Okay. So there are about 10 steps back and forth. So the card holder is the person that owns the card. The merchant would be the store that you're dealing with. Then the merchant account is the account you have with a payment processor. So for example, Shopify Payments is a processor and Shopify Payments runs on Stripe and Stripe is the gateway. Then from there it goes to the bank and then the card networks because we have to figure out if it's it's a master card or Visa or American Express, then it goes to the bank that's issued that card, and then we go make all those steps back to the card holder in response saying that, okay, you're approved. So it's a return trip. Yeah, basically. Wow. And in that whole process, **\[50:18\]** **Sean:** I'm looking at the graphic. Yeah. I'm looking at the graphic as well, and I find this really interesting, is that there are three fraud checks on the way to the card issuing bank. So it gets checked for fraud three times, which is why your cards almost never have fraud problems. You guys stay good. **\[50:37\]** **Mark:** Yeah, well checked. And it does happen, unfortunately. But Shopify has a pretty decent, I mean, it could be better, but Shopify themselves have a pretty decent fraud protection system. And if it's a false positive, They'll notify you saying that, okay, we process this payment, but you might want to call your customer and make sure that this is actually a legit order, yeah. **\[51:05\]** **Sean:** All right, that's really interesting. So I had another question for you. Actually, two more questions. So, the second last question that I would like to ask is, are there any questions that business owners should ask themselves before starting down the e-commerce road? This is all based on your experience running frunky moose records and the e-commerce sites that you've done for your clients in the past. **\[51:46\]** **Mike:** We did touch on earlier, if you have sales already running through a brick and mortar store and you want to move to online, you may want to be aware of all the inventory issues and things like that. We talked about that one. **\[52:02\]** **Mark:** That's probably what I would go with. Are you ready to run another business, basically? Sure, it's the same inventory as your brick and mortar store, but you have the potential in e-commerce to go bigger than what you're doing right now. I would probably recommend making sure that if you do, are you willing to give up the brick and mortar store if the e-commerce business is overtaking the brick and mortar? **\[52:40\]** **Sean:** Wow, give it up or maybe hire more staff or hire more staff. **\[52:45\]** **Mark:** Yeah, yeah, I guess that's more of the not give it up, but more of a consideration like what would you do? Yeah, or are you willing to change the way you do business in your brick and mortar store? That's, that's probably right. **\[53:05\]** **Sean:** Okay, so basically you're saying is that you need to make sure that you're prepared for changes, unforeseen changes. Are you ready to pivot? In your business or your role in the business, yeah. **\[53:18\]** **Mark:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. **\[53:20\]** **Sean:** And not everybody wants to grow and expand. Some people are happy to have a small little brick and mortar store or just be a solo printer. And other people, they want to take over the world and become the next Apple or Microsoft. All the power to you on whatever you want to do. Yeah. All right. So last question. What is the one thing that tripped you up when you first started Funkeen Ruiz records? Oh, man. You would like to go back and change if you had a time machine. **\[53:54\]** **Mark:** Just one? **\[53:58\]** **Sean:** If you want to talk about a couple, go ahead. But let's kind of focus on the biggest mistake that you think you made early on in setting up your online business? **\[54:10\]** **Mark:** I don't like talking about mistakes. I'd like talking about learning points. **\[54:18\]** **Sean:** Okay, well, let's change it to that then. Yeah. **\[54:24\]** **Mike:** That's a good answer, by the way. I'm gonna use that whenever someone asks me **\[54:27\]** **Sean:** about my mistakes. Me too. **\[54:31\]** **Mark:** Well, I mean, it's okay, this is something completely separate from what we're talking about here, but I was in a business back in Holland with a business partner and it turned out that I didn't do my due diligence. I thought he was my friend and we were friends before we started the business, but then about a year later we were not friends because the business tanked because I didn't know him well enough. So those are not necessarily regrets, but now I know for sure I do not want a business partner. Doesn't matter how good I know, I know the person, I just, just like, I don't do business with friends or family. Aha. **\[55:17\]** **Sean:** Interesting. Although, basically, you want to, you want to keep business, business and personal personal. **\[55:23\]** **Mark:** Yeah. But I say that I did hire my best friend, and actually my wife is working for me, so that's got that out. **\[55:33\]** **Sean:** Yeah, but you know, I think having your wife working with you on the business is different than hiring your nephew or your uncle or something like that. **\[55:44\]** **Mark:** Yeah, and actually, like I said, I hired my friend mostly because of the situation he's in right now. I thought, you know, let's do him a favor. And he's like, because he's been asking me over and over, like, what can I do for you? What can I, what can I do to help you grow your business? And, you know, and I was like, well, maybe, maybe you can do this. And he's doing **\[56:11\]** **Sean:** it. And he's rocking it. So excellent. Well, he's very eager to help out. So that's exactly, **\[56:17\]** **Mark:** Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. But yeah, what what would I go back on? I don't know Everything is learning a learning experience and No, I don't I don't think I would go back. I like the way Um, I've set up this business. That's great. Excellent. You're happy. You're happy where you are **\[56:37\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so your your path has has made you what you are now. Yeah, exactly Excellent excellent All right, so Mark this has been really great and I think we're a little bit run out of time now. Can you tell or listeners where we can find you? Online, social media, your funky mousse records, anything else that you'd like to tell us about? **\[57:01\]** **Mark:** Yeah for sure. You can find the store at funky mousse records.ca. Instagram and Facebook is funky mousse records. Twitter is funky mousse underscore CA. score CA, you can send an email, holleratfunkymoose.ca. We also have phone number, but nobody uses that, so we can skip that. **\[57:25\]** **Sean:** What about your day job, which you've mentioned a couple of times? **\[57:29\]** **Mark:** Yeah, I actually work for a photocopier business, and that kind of turned into an IT company with a web design department, which I'm heading right now. Wow, a whole department. Yeah. It turned into a whole, it wasn't even initially that? Well, OK, so it started with, they started as a one-man show as a photocopier dealer. Then the photocopier started getting smarter and needed to be integrated into networks. And then they hired IT people and that grew. And then customers were starting to ask, like, so do you do websites? You can do websites, so they hired web designers. And yeah, I actually got recruited out of my own business to start working for them. **\[58:23\]** **Sean:** Awesome, that's really cool. Mark, this has been really great. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. **\[58:30\]** **Mark:** Oh, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun. We can do another hour. **\[58:34\]** **Mike:** Yeah, we'll have you back and talk about something else. Sure. **\[58:39\]** **Sean:** Thanks, Mark. Thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this show. I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me at my company website, caffincreations.ca. On Twitter at CAFFEIN, C-R-E-E-8, I-O-N. On LinkedIn, my username is caffincreations. Or you can search for Sean Smith based in Toronto. You should be able to find me there. **\[59:07\]** **Mike:** And I'm Mike Mella. You can find me at my website blikewater.ca or on LinkedIn. My username is Mike Mella. That's M-I-K-E-M-E-L-L-A. And I'm on Twitter, Twitter.com slash Mike Mella. **\[59:21\]** **Sean:** And don't forget to subscribe to the show and share it with your friends on social media, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. You can find us on Google Play, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcast. **\[59:35\]** **Mike:** And we're always looking for a topic and guest suggestions, so if you have any, hit us up at website 101podcast.com slash contact. Excellent, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for listening. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 02 - 1 [ Season 2 Introduction](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-1/season-2-introduction/) - 2 [ Web Hosting 101](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-2/web-hosting-101/) - 3 [ How to Choose a Web Developer or Agency](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-3/how-to-choose-a-web-developer-or-agency/) - 4 [ How Much Does a Website Cost](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-4/how-much-does-a-website-cost/) - 5 [ Web Jargon Part One](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-5/web-jargon-part-one/) - 6 [ Web Jargon Part Two](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-6/web-jargon-part-two/) - 7 [ Website 101: MVP Strategy for Effective Web Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-7/minimal-viable-product/) - 8 [ Copy Editing and Copy Writing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-8/copy-editing-and-copy-writing/) - 9 [ Photography and Stock Photos](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-9/photography-and-stock-photos/) - 10 [ Ecommerce with Shopify](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-10/ecommerce-with-shopify/) - 11 [ Season 2 Recap and Season 3 Teaser](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-11/season-2-recap-and-season-3-teaser/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>