Woop! We're celebrating a little but important milestone today at PilatesSocks.co.uk - we just shipped our first order! Within 3 weeks we've gone from an idea to a fully-functioning online business. Of course it's still early days, but we're excited to have sent out our first parcel and looking forward to packing up the next one!

Having supported lots of small businesses as they begin to trade online, the whole experience of setting up a pilates socks business has been quite eye-opening for me personally. There's so much to consider when thinking about sourcing, storing, packing and shipping products to customers. Building the website is the easy bit - it's all the other decisions which are more difficult to make!

We all know what it's like to receive something in the mail - and how frustrating the experience can be. That's why we've sourced some excellent boxes which meet the need to protect our products whilst they're being delivered, and make it easy for the postman (or lady) to get your delivery through your letterbox. And this week we're anticipating the arrival of some compliments slips and stickers, so there'll be no mistaking our packages for anyone else's.

When you put something out on the internet you can never be quite sure how quickly it will begin to grow. Both Julian and myself are happy for this to be a long-term project. We're not anticipating overnight success - and ultimately PilatesSocks.co.uk may be nothing more than an interesting side-project. However, pilates and yoga continue to be growing markets, and provided we're sourcing socks our customers want there's no reason why it shouldn't take off.

Now we've shipped our first order (3 pairs of grey pilates socks) the next milestone will be covering the cost of my initial investment (approximately £150 to date). Somewhere in between now and then we'll probably need to order some more socks too!

I'm being purposefully open about the 'behind the scenes' details of this project, something a little unusual for a commercial enterprise. However, my career has been built on open and honest conversation with my clients, and it seems to have worked quite well so far.

Thanks for reading,

Jack

Comments or Questions?