A Complete Guide on Selling Furniture Online

15 min read

Selling products online can be more difficult than it appears on the surface. That’s because there are a whole lot of things to think about that go beyond “what am I selling?”. Ecommerce business owners have to think about how to go about making sales, order processing, marketing strategies, taxes, and ensuring an effective strategy that will bring in actual profit.

Global research reveals that, in 2022, retail sales from ecommerce websites are expected to result in a total of $5.4 trillion. As competition grows tougher by the day, it can be discouraging to launch into a new ecommerce or online business.

But you can take solace in the fact that it’s not impossible to get a piece of the pie. You just need to be sure to use the right strategy to build success over time. This is especially true if you’re interested in selling furniture. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the things you should know if you’d like to sell furniture online.

These days, there’s nearly nothing you can’t get online. But a key element to selling successfully is choosing the right ecommerce solution. Read on to learn more.

Selling Furniture Online

Here’s an eye-opener for you: selling products online is not as challenging as you might have once thought. You simply have to find the right products, choose the right place to sell them, and promote your offerings to as wide an audience as possible. Ecommerce has witnessed fascinating growth over the past few years. This is why it is not hard to find people interested in buying products on the internet more than ever.

Before you take your product online and open your shop online, there are certain things you should look out for. They include:

The product

This is the very first step to selling things online. You want to identify the product you want to sell, and this stage is critical because the creation of and selling your products can be more complex. Do your product research, develop, design and manufacture accordingly.

On the other hand, if you have an online store, you can sell your existing products. Think more in the line of what you are passionate about. The catch is: the interest and knowledge of what you are selling will guarantee success.

It may also be necessary to trim down your focus to a particular niche. It is far easier to focus on a single type of product, market yourself, and get rid of the competition.

Do your research, too. Ensure the product has market demand. A good recommendation is to dig deep into trending products to have a feel of what your consumers want and need.

An ecommerce platform

Once you’ve selected your product, the next thing is to figure out where to sell your product. That means selecting the best ecommerce solution or platform for your online shop. There are a vast number of online selling marketplaces to select from. Meanwhile, it is essential to find the one that suits your needs.

To find the right platform, set your budget and make sure it is easy to navigate. It’s also important to ensure adequate access to top-notch plug-ins and integrations, and other helpful tools to aid inventory and analytics.

Excellent branding potential

Here, you want to concentrate your attention and time on a brand that intrigues people and resonates with them. Keep in mind that it takes time to build an effective brand. But with some effort and trial and error, you can one day achieve a brand that encompasses your overall company’s values and aesthetic statement.

Why Sell Furniture Online?

Selling products online is profitable. And it might surprise you to learn that many successful furniture companies operate exclusively online. You might have been wondering what type of furniture-related products you can sell online. There is a long list of options you can choose to sell, and one of them is wholesale items. Specifically, if you prefer to sell stuff online from the comfort of your home, you can do it via dropshipping. Dropshipping is a business model where you can sell products you do not pay for until you get the money from the user.

This takes away the need to purchase and keep inventory. All you have to do is: find suppliers renowned for warehousing and shipping high-margin products like furniture. You can then proceed to market the products on your ecommerce website. The catch is: when you get an order on the site, you send the information to the supplying agent who ships the item to the end-user (your customer).

In addition, irrespective of the size of the furniture, you can ship it to other countries if a buyer requests them. This, however, will be dependent on the website you use, or if you want to advertise the products online and give your customers a local pick-up. Craigslist might have been a good place to start selling online, but they online cater to people who want to buy and have a particular selective taste.

For instance, Chairish accepts only high-end art, mirrors, lighting, and furniture. That is, it coordinates the shipping in case the piece has to be shipped. That way, you can keep up to 80% of the selling price, but this can be even more competitive than selling locally. Trove Market, on the other hand, is one of the best places to sell artwork and mid-century furniture online. You can share your listings on Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. If you reside in a major metropolitan in the US, you stand a high chance of selling your furniture much quicker.

To Sell Like a Pro, Use Marketing Strategies

Advertising or marketing furniture takes a slightly different route than other products. While you have to try out the different marketing strategies to determine which of them works, you can use some tips for a start.

First, make an email list and place subscription forms on your website. With that, you can send receipts, blog post updates, emails, and newsletters to make people come back to your store.

Second, it may be hard to pull some significant sales of furniture on social media, but it depends on who your target audience is. Many people are interested in interior design and home improvement. Put this at the back of your mind when making posts for Instagram and Facebook ads.

Moreover, it is also a great idea to partner with real estate professionals and interior designers to put your products in the face of your customers. And lastly, you can adopt frequent promos and coupons to achieve a reasonable customer base at the start.

How to Sell Furniture Online with Amazon

One of the best ways to start selling online is, to begin with, Amazon. This applies to other products too, other than furniture. The reason is that the platform is the most popular online store in the US. Amazon boasts of $21.33 billion net income as of 2020 which is twice more than in 2019. This huge popularity makes it the right place to start your store with an existing audience who are ready to buy.

Now that you have concluded on selling furniture online with Amazon, it is easier to get started.

To sell on Amazon, you will have to choose a plan. Amazon allows you to pay $39.99/month to sell many products online. Alternatively, you can pay $0.99 for each item.

As a starter, choose the individual plan. That is, you pay the transaction fees only whenever you make a sale. The advantage of choosing this plan is that it helps free your budget for other expenses. Also, without this leverage, you will pay a flat fee irrespective of the product you sell- and if you end up not selling 40 items, it will result in wastage.

In addition, depending on the country you reside in, it may be necessary to purchase some EANs, UPCs, or GTINs for your listings on Amazon. One of the new requirements for online sellers is that it is impossible to create a product page without any of these. More so, you can use Amazon SEO techniques for enhanced product visibility for your furniture items.

To sell furniture on other popular, widely-accepted platforms like Etsy, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and eBay, you can check their respective instructions and procedures. The bottom line is that you can explore the marketplace to figure out the best way to sell furniture and make extra income.

This option works fine if you are looking for an existing platform to take your products to, or you desire to sell exclusively on your social media pages. On the other hand, you can also choose to go the way of building an online store on your website.

Each has its pros and cons, but generally, you can determine which option works best for you by considering the following factors:

Strength of your social media presence

In actuality, making exclusive sales of your furniture products on social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook requires a great deal of budget. Not only that, your social media presence must be relatively strong, and you have to take note of the place and time to sell on social media.

Degree of dedication in terms of time and resources

Generally, Etsy or Amazon has certain in-built tools to help beginners find the right target audience who will later become customers. Think of, and ask yourself if you have the luxury of time to spend on designing a store from scratch or you’d do better by partnering with an established online marketplace.

Level of expertise

Ask yourself if your team- provided you are not the only one involved- has a significant level of expertise and skills that may be useful for the promotion of the business. If you do not have the tools and skills in-house to design a nice ecommerce website, you can take advantage of the ecommerce solutions offered by Ecwid and its widget to have your furniture store online.

Competition

It is unhealthy to sell where your competitions are already making moves. Although in some cases, it has its advantages too. But being able to ascertain where competition performs steeply, for instance on eBay, it is advisable to choose your path.

Total control vs Others

Quite interestingly, some online stores save you time and resources and generally offer a ready-made convenience, but they do so at the expense of your control. If you want your unique design, branding, and CTAs, it is better to DIY to have a store for your furniture.

Own Your Ecommerce Site

To avoid being stripped or restricted of some control, you can start your ecommerce site. That way, you are not intimidated by its building and management. And also, you can now build your page at your liberty. To do this, you can build an online store via self-hosting on an existing website or choose a hosted online ecommerce platform.

Self-hosting means having a store for your furniture business. That is, it would be built on an existing website and use an ecommerce integration like Ecwid for its runs. Some of the things you can do are management of product listings, management, and shipment of inventory, and acceptance of payments, among others.

This option is great, as it is not too expensive and not time-consuming. You will only have to do the web design and add your favorite ecommerce integration to manage product descriptions. Another upside to this option is that it affords you total flexibility and control over the feel and look of your website.

On the other hand, you can choose a hosting partner to sell furniture online. This implies that you can choose from the myriads of templates offered by a hosting partner, which simplify your site setup. There are a few reliable names in the marketplace for hosted options. Many of them give you a custom online store and remove the need for some extents and degrees of technicalities.

Final Thoughts

In a nutshell, selling online has become increasingly trendy, even for large physical goods like furniture. If you work with furniture, or dream of opening your own furniture business, we encourage you to take a look into ecommerce solutions to see if opening an online store is the right way forward.

With the advent of technology that allows for the shipping of large items and the growth of ecommerce as an industry, you can take advantage of the immense opportunity embedded on the internet. Start your online store for selling furniture today by exploring the wide range of ecommerce solutions provided by Ecwid.

Do you want to learn more about selling furniture online?

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Sep 14, 2021

About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.