The last 2,5 years I think I have made more attempts to quit then the 10 years (since I started) before that. I quit cold turkey when my ex broke up with me, and lasted 9 months! Ever since I never made it past one month. The last time I quit I tried nicotine patches and lasted 3 weeks. I think I decided to stop using them too soon.

Anyway, after most of these attemps somehting just switched in my mind and at one point I had just made the decicion to buy a new pack on my way home and start again...

Friday I came back home from a 5 month trip and catched a cold on the plane. I continued to smoke the first days till it got too bad. I still had one nicotine patch lying around so used that. I didn't smoke in 24 hours now, and been fine most of the time (though not being able to smoke because of throth infection does help).

I feel like this patch is starting to wear off, and sometimes get a hint of panic when I think of never smoking again. But at the same time I'm remembering I had so many great nights out when I didn't smoke those 9 months.

I guess I'm gonna buy some new patches and gum soon, and just use it longer as I feel I need it this time!

I've recently came back from a 5 month trip. The months before I left I made alot of healthy lifestyle changes (quit drinking for a couple month, quit smoking, daily walks, healthy food) and felt great. I wanted to do some health/fitness retreats on the trip but the first one I booked was overbooked. I did do one short one week one, but after that it didn't take long before I was soaked up into the backpackers lifesyle. Drinking nearly every day, smoking again, found it hard to keep eating very healthy etc.

I catched a cold in the plane back and have been extremeley tired since, wich makes me regret more not doing the longer (months) health retreats that I had planned.

I guess I did get the traveling out of my system and am aware now that I need something else to fulfill me, as even though I had great times, the whole moving around thing for months isn't for me anymore I guess.

Hi all,

I've been working with products that I'm importing myself from Asia for 7 years now. Right now I'm only importing one or 2 containers a year. I have some clients that now and then place large orders with specific requests. Untill now I'd just be sending them photo's and prices on whatsapp of whatever I'm finding and would think they might be interested in.

One of my suppliers actually hase incredibly huge stock that they show on their website. It's not really a webshop, you'll add the products that you're interested in to your cart and they'll upload the prices later.

I would like to build a webshop/portal where I can load their database on my own website. When my customer places an iquiry and they send the prices, these prices should be uploaded to my own portal so my customer can finalize the order right there.

I'm just starting to work this out now and not quite sure how to start. Is there such a possibility with shopify?

I'm not sure wich system my supplier is using yet, but I've send an inquiry about this

Btw, it might have some similarities with dropshipping, but it's not as I'd be buying, importing and shipping their orders myself, just after it's sold.

If you're selling mass produced items the time it takes to upload a product is neglectable ainde you can sell in unlimited. I'm working eith unique products and recieving about 300 of them a time.

So for a while I've been looking to simplify my uploading proces but I feel so stuck. I've looked into CSV files but creating one of those seems to be even more time consuming then just uploading products in the webshop backoffice.

I mean, you'll still have to oplaad all.images and then past the links to the correct row in the CSV. Am I missing something or is this just ridiculously cumbersome?

The way I'm recieving my buying lasts in excel makes it also hard to outsource the uploading of products since only I am able to find the correct product details on the excel list fast enough to match the product photos I'm uploading

I started my business out of passion. I'm traveling to Asia to find and collect unique furniture that I sell in a store and online. However, over the last year's I feel like I'm kind of running in circles and it's not scalable/automatable. Due to the unique nature of the products there are many challanges.

I've had some pretty good profitable years, but I realize the amount of work I had to put in to obtain that is not sustainable in the long run, and it;s way too much dependent on my own consistent input. Lot's of things are bareley automatable/outsourcable, the business is just way too much depending on me. I'm looking to build something that has the potential to largeley run itself in the future and I don't see that happening with the business at it is right now.

Let me start with the positives:

• Products are mostly unique, even though there is competition with similar products, no ones has the same item
• Markup is pretty high, x5 on avarage.

Now the challanges:

• Uploading products in the webshop is alot of work, and since every item can only be sold once the work invested in uploading the product is lost forever.
• Because the items are unique time I can invest in uploading each product is limited. Therefore its not doable to create a SEO or even normal product discribtion for each product.
• Marketing is extremeley difficult since again all product are unique and never coming back. Even the balance in stock is changing alot all the time. Sometimes I have alot of cabinets and coffeetables, some chairs, some large mirrors etc. Sometimes I have (almost) none of the above but alot of dining tables, small itesm, desks, nightstands etc.
• I can't launce product campaigns since there is no benefit investing so much time in something you only have one of, and repeat that all the time as well. I can't do marketing campaigns on category pages since sometimes there are 20 items in a category and sometimes only one. If you'd be looking for a cabinet, click a link on Google and see only a few offers big chance you'll bounce.
• Stock management between store and webshop requires contant manual upkeep. Too much work to provide unique items with bar codes, so whenever something is sold in the store have to manually update the websop in orde to have no dubble sale, wich happens sometimes.
• Constantly having to make new content for Instagram because it's very short lived, since after some time most products on that photo have been sold and I can't use it again (styled photo's in store as product images are with white background and not too appealing).

I guess more and more of these issues will be solvable with AI soon though.

Basically with every container I buy, I also by a shit ton of work.

I'm considering switching my main objective to a couple of new but rustic furniture items that keep the money flowing with a couple of one times investments in time and stick with the unique stuff more on the side.

Offcourse new items will create different problems like lower markup and possibly more competition, but I can do some own designs perhaps.

Edjt: As I'm typing this I'm realizing that most of my large competitors have actually started selling new stuff too and the uniques are probly just a side gig.

Edit 2: The fact that most of the work I'm doing is just to have a one time sale actually keeps me from putting in the work more and more. There are many things I can do to increase sales right now, but most of that would be focussed on just selling the current offer I'm having and has to repeat itself again and again. That's what I meant by running in circles.

For example, if I would have a new product that I could sell unimited, I'd be eager to put in the extra work to creates sick images, to write a great selling and SEO discribtion, to market the product on multiple platforms, to get influencers using the product, etc. Because I know that evey bit of work I do sticks and makes lasting impact.

What are you thinking? Any suggestions are welcome

Dear fellow webshop owners.

My webshop/buying process is a little different then most.

I'm importing and selling unique furniture from Asia, Since I'm importing it myself by container there is alot coming in at the same time. Every now and then I have to upload about 400 products.

These products are mostly unique and I can sell them only once. If you have a mass produced product it's no problem spending some time working on the product page as you can sell it unlimited, so its's a sane time investment. That's not the case here. It's pretty frustrating. Because of that it's also not worth it to make a detailed SEO discribtion etc.

My supplier gives me the buying list with the product price, size and a photo in Exel. Whenever I'm starting to upload these products I'm working with this list and a map of photo's from my supplier. I'm uploading the photo's of a product, then have to scrol through the list to find the correct product details. This is so incredible inefficient and dreading, and because the photo's used on the list are often bad/before restauration, other people then me would spend alot more time trying to find these items, so it's hard to outsource too.

I'm basically looking for a program that I can combine my buying list into an importale CSV file or something, but with a more approachable interface as these CSV files are not very conveniant to work with.

Who has any suggestions?

Anyone familiar with the scent(marketing) machines that hotels and some retail stores use? They are quite effective in spreading scents but I believe they often use synthetics.

Anyone know what kind of formula these machines uses? What are the fragrances diluted in? Is it just alcohol and fragrance oils?

People who went on their first trip often come back wanting to do nothing else then travel. On my first trip of about 10 weeks I loved almost every moment and when I came back I wanted to co tinge travel so bad.

Now 11 years later I'm on my longest trip yet, 5 months. And though i had great moments I don't think I will ever/soon do another trip this long.

This sub is filled with posts of people who just get tired of moving around, sick of seeing new things all.the time, deciding where to stay where to eat. It can get pretty exhausting mentally.

So for the people who've been there, what your ideal travel time to still have both some flexibility but also avoid things getting boring?

I'm entering the last 5 weeks of my 5 month trip.

It has been a real rollercoaster, I've met great people, had some romances, saw amazing things, but also been loneley, bored of traveling at times, tired of deciding what and where to eat, where to go next wich place to stay in, moving around so much etc.

I'm.currently in Hanoi and was planning to do HaLong, Tam Coc, Sapa an Ha Giang loop, then to Laos

I was planning to start this trip with a 4 week health retreat (fitness, yoga, hiking, and extremely healthy diet put together bu a nutritionist) on Koh Samui. Unfortunately they were overbooked, so I went to Cambodia first instead of south Thailand.

The months leading up to my trip I have been living a very healthy lifestyle, didn't drink for 2 months, been eating very healthy etc. To e honoust not much is left of that, have not been eating very healthy and drinking almost evey day. You know how it can go backpacking.. But I can feel it in my body, and I feel like doing this retreat would be very good for me right now

I'm kind of thorn though, even though I already had nearly 4 months of doing whatever I want evey day and just traveling, I kind of feel like I would miss out on the best part of Vietnam if I fly to Slurh Thailand now. I'm also worried that I might get bored staying in one place for so long now.

But again I think after already 4 months of traveling this retreat would benefit me more then just more traveling, and it would be more of an investment in myself. Would also be nice to come home a little bit more fit offcourse.

Yeah, I could start to live more healthy while traveling too, but it's nice to have a kind of enforced routine.

I'm not expecting anyone to make the decision for me, just wanna hear your thoughts