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Oleg Medvedkov

Member Since: February 2010

Tell us about yourself and your online business.

Ours is a family business. My brother and I run things, with our sister helping us when she can. She recently had a baby, so her time is rather precious. We’ve been doubling up with Internet commerce for some years now, and for me personally, working from home is preferable since I suffer migraines. I also much prefer setting my own hours.

How did you get started with Doba?

I’d already had experience with drop shipping before joining up with Doba. I wanted to expand in that particular area of Internet commerce. Finding a service that offers access to hundreds of suppliers was a logical step.  I compared several similar services at the time and I found that Doba was the one most recommended.

What were you hoping to accomplish by becoming a Doba member?

The economy has been slammed for a couple of years now. But even two or three years ago it was still possible to make a decent living by selling a few niche items online. Now it’s more difficult. It’s not only because people have less buying power – because people in the U.S. still shop online.

But there’s been much more competition recently. More people are trying their hand at online commerce and, more important, more competition is arriving from overseas. Small traders from Taiwan and Shanghai started selling directly to U,S, markets and it’s difficult to compete with their prices. For the small seller, more competition came when larger U.S. businesses expanded their presence into areas that were traditionally the domain of small sellers. These include small and inexpensive electronics and computer accessory businesses, for example.

As I see it, one solution for local small online businesses is to expand — preferably into new areas of commerce. This is where Doba shines. They have almost everything, from baby products to plumbing items to auto parts.

Where do you currently sell products (your own website, eBay, Amazon, etc.)?

We sell on eBay, Pricegrabber and Amazon. Amazon is the preferred selling platform for us since there are no listing fees and we can test different items and product categories at a smaller cost. They are also good at implementing ideas and suggestion from small sellers like us.

How much money are you able to make with Doba?

In the last 30 days we’ve placed 133 orders on Doba. We had only eight returns or cancellations, which isn’t bad, considering. I try to aim for 10 to 20 percent profit margin when I can. But if there’s heavy competition or if it’s a large-ticket item, I’ll settle for as low as 5 percent. The total profit from those orders is about $2,000.

Do you have a particular product niche, and if so, what is it and why did you pick it?

Every online seller dreams of finding a “niche.”  Well, it’s not very easy to find one and even if you do, you’ll only have limited time to enjoy it before the competition appears.

I’ve found and exploited quite a few product niches over the years. The most recent example – a few months back there was an explosion in demand for baby and toddler-related items. When we discovered that trend, we posted almost all the baby products Doba had to offer on the marketplaces we sell on. It only lasted for a short time, but we’ve made a considerable profit.

There are some niches that are more durable, of course. However, even they aren’t immune to competition and imminent decline in profits.  We’ve been selling earphone accessories from our website www.Steote.net and on marketplaces for a couple of years. Due to increased competition from smaller sellers and even large companies, we’re barely making 50 percent of the profit margin we did in the beginning.

Still, it pays to keep an eye on emerging niches, trends and opportunities. You just have to be prepared to not rely on them forever.

What have you done to make your business stand out and sell more products?

Customer support. It’s been my policy from the very start – even if I were to run my business from a kitchen, I run it as if it were the largest corporation in the world. There will be no customerwalking away dissatisfied. It paid off – even if a customer happens to dislike a product, they like our customer service. That reflects in our feedback on various marketplaces, which in turn makes us more competitive.

Since our customer support and customer relations are much better than other small online sellers usually provide, we can often outsell those who offer lower prices on competing products.

My brother actually wrote a book on customer service and customer relations in this new age of online commerce. We’ll publish it as soon as we come up with a flashy title.

Why did you choose to drop ship products rather than purchasing inventory in bulk?

Space considerations, for one thing. We do have a few products that we buy in bulk. In fact, we even went as far as to have certain items manufactured to our specifications and shipped to us directly from factories. However, having access to as many products as Doba can provide helps us sell in new product categories without a high start-up cost.

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