8/14/14 Bumps in the road, you can try your best to avoid them, but you'll eventually hit one

     As you can see in our title, this post is somewhat centered around some hiccups/bumps/obstacles or whatever you want to call them in the journey we're on called creating a business.  I was planning on only adjusting the site a bit and cleaning up the experience on the user end, but we ended up looking at some important stuff a business needs today, such as a business license, a bank account, and a P.O. box for return packages, mail, or anything else.
     We decided to dive into the more serious and important aspects of our business today because we received an email from Shopify: "Receive $150 in advertisement credit if you launch your store today!!!!" or something to that effect and excitement.  The gist of it was if we launched our store out of the 2 week trial version (which we've found to be extremely invaluable due to our incessant tweaking) we could receive $150 in Google AdWords and Facebook Ads combined.  I've used Google AdWords and I can tell you, free advertising is great since it eats at your budget.  With this offer we just entertained the idea of maybe not launching today, but maybe by the end of this week.  We found out otherwise.
     In order to continue on, I have to go backwards a bit and mention that me and Ricky (founders and wantrepreneurs) both have internships and are using all of our spare time to work on this endeavor.  Unfortunately places like the US Post Office and City Hall are unforgiving in their open and close times and so this would be one of our biggest road bumps, or potholes as I'll refer to them as now (fitting as we live in pothole central of the United States).
     Okay, back to the now.  We decided to look into a P.O. Box and went to the USPS during our lunch break, and on the way to it I decided to call Capital One 360 to see if we could get a joint business checking account. The call wait time was pretty lengthy, but once I reached someone they were pretty friendly and helpful and redirected me to their business accounts.  I talked to the new rep and he let me know that they only had business savings account, of which you needed an existing business checking account from another bank to link it to which was a dead end for me.
     Let's try a credit union!  Okay so my next call was to DCU credit union.  They answered quickly and gave me everything that i wanted or needed to know.  The rep let me know that it would take about a week to get our account processed so we decided not to go with DCU, but offhandedly mentioned something that we did not know: to get a business account, we would need to be registered in our county/city/state as a business.  (Don't be mad at us, we were planning to get registered later down the line as our business became more serious)
     The last bank I called was TD.  I currently use them, and am pretty satisfied with them despite the lack of locations around our city.  I called and was again impressed by their customer service and the rep let me know that if we went into a location and filled out the appropriate paperwork (again with the necessary business ID) we would be able to have our account created and available in about 20 minutes time.  Unlike the other banks though, TD has a $8 monthly maintenance fee with their most standard business account, but is free for the next tiered account as long as there is a minimum of $1500.  We decided with their good customer service and late closing hours, we would pay their $8 month fee to take on an account with them.
     Arriving at the post office, we found that we needed proof of residency which we did not have as we are both living under our parent's roofs, so we have to get this sorted out as well.
     We looked up the cost and steps needed to become registered at City Hall.  It would cost us $65 which was not too big of a deal, but the kicker was that City Hall closed at 4 pm and again, we had work.  Another pothole.  Then the biggest pothole stems from the fact that I would be enjoying my vacation next week so wouldn't be available to sign for a business registration, bank account, or a P.O. box.  This would delay things further.
     In the end we stumbled along many many potholes, but came out more prepared for it.  Although it may take at least a week longer than our proposed launch date, we're still going to continue editing the site and doing everything else in the mean time.

P.S. - We aim for a launch between 8/27-8/29 so if you're still reading and following us by then be prepared to be wowed!
P.P.S. - Stay tuned and we'll give a way two coupon codes that will give you 50% off your first purchase!

To Do List Summary (Step by step)
- register at city hall as an LLC (limited liability company) or partnership
- open up bank account with our newly acquired business ID
- pay for and open up a P.O. box
- keep on keepin' on


Visit us when we launch around 8/28 at siftee.me
Check us out on Twitter on https://twitter.com/sifteeco
Like our Facebook page on https://www.facebook.com/sifteeco?ref=hl

Logo is completed! Check it out! 8/11/14

We've gotten a decent amount done! So, our progress since Saturday has been limited, but there's definitely something coming out of all this.  So far, almost all of our products have been added to our site (site not yet public though).  We've been customizing our products giving consumers different options in choosing their gifts.  Regarding the product options app, there has been a small hiccup, but I'm planning to speak with one of the reps at Shopify.
Shipping is a hot button issue right now, when is not?  That's one of the big decisions that we have yet to decide.  So far we have the idea of limiting shipping to $5 for domestic purchases, and $10 for international.  But, we still have to decide whether or not to cater to international customers in the beginning or to restrict it just to domestic customers in order to not have to deal with issues that may arise and the high high cost of international shipping.  This will probably be decided upon soon though.
Incentive, incentive, incentive.  Unless your product/service is some revolutionary thing or a much easier way to perform a task, your potential customers have absolutely no reason to pick you over anyone else...that is unless, they have an incentive to choose you.  This usually comes in some kind of monetary form, and we have decided that this is exactly what we need.  We've created a discount code Siftee20 that will give you 20% off all purchases made with us by the end of August (we'll have the site up soon enough guys, don't worry).  In the future, we plan to roll out an even greater incentive, so stay tuned for that!
Some big news now! We've had many different versions of our logo created by a designer on Fiverr.com , and we've finally selected then edited a bit to get our final logo!  Check it out!

Pretty nifty huh? Or should I say...siftee??? Anyways...we thought this design would be eye catching and professional enough to give a lasting impression, so we settled on this one and are happy with that decision.  Immediately upon deciding this logo would be best, we updated every social media site we use with it.  

Note: We also finished our "About Us" section, so when you get the chance, check out our pics and small bio!  We'll be up soon enough, thanks for being patient!

8/9 Slow and Steady

”Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” - Thomas Edison

Our idea is an idea, just that.  Without hard work it means nothing and so it is a Saturday where I'm still at it trying to improve Siftee.  Marketing is one of the most important things a startup needs and in a digital age (especially as an e-commerce venture)  it could make or break you.  Your startup needs a digital presence and so we've been working hard to put our foot in the door.  By this weekend end we plan to have the majority of our product up on our site with pictures and for our Shopify plan to be decided.  

Unless you're a sole proprietor starting a business all by yourself, communication is key to having something successful.  This weekend we plan to have tasks delegated between us so that there won't be too many rifts occurring and that each person will know what to do.  It's important to establish this early or there may be arguments in the future on who should perform what duty, or who was responsible for an error or slip up.  Overall it just makes everything easier.  


Stay Tuned!

8/8 Second Day

Second day and we're trying to perfect the site.  Everyday is another chance for improvement and we're just trying to take it step by step.  We have built our site on Shopify, an E-commerce platform that essentially gives easy access to new and inexperience entrepreneurs the ability to create their own online store with a range of different tools and pre-made site templates.  I wouldn't say Shopify is difficult to use at all, but even a little experience would be recommended.  Personally, I think the pricing is pretty great and it's simple enough to use.

Shopify has many add on features called "apps" that allow you to add more and customize your site to make it exactly what you'd like.  This, I found was a little more complicated, but not too bad. It involved looking at some of the code that their templates are made up from and changing it up so that the app that you've chosen can be implemented into your site.  Shopify also has a range of free to paying apps, but we chose a pay app.

Completed:

• created our social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr
• edited site to start to be able to customize products for customers
• started to develop logo and put in our requests to the designer

First Post 8/7/2014

First day on Shopify! Today we decided to take advantage of the trial offer to launch our site.  We ended up buying the domain and fixing up our site.  It's just the beginning, but more will come.

Here's our little spiel:

"Siftee aims to help you solve the age old problem that everyone encounters when a holiday, birthday, anniversary, baby shower, or any other occasion that calls for gift giving comes up: "I have no idea what to buy as a gift!"  Do you often find yourself constantly thinking of a gift for someone, hoping that they'll like it and appreciate or just wondering what to get in general? Maybe Siftee is the perfect service for you!  We'll take your inputs and attritbutes of the giftee (person receiving the gift), the specific reason for giving, and budget you give us, and try to give that someone the perfect gift!"

Check us out on siftee.me - we'll soon be online and ready to sell!