How to sell home decor online
Sell home decor from home. Starting your own home decor store is simple, but success takes careful planning. The market is large, but competition is strong. This article guides you in choosing the right products, with tips for launching your home decor business online.
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Starting a new online store in home accessories
Ecommerce businesses selling home accessories focus on items that enhance a room’s atmosphere, furnishings, and design. These include products like pillows, lamps, mirrors, candles, flower pots, clocks, and more. Although many stores sell these items, the market is large enough to start your own online store.
Decorative home accessories can be sold year-round. Items like decorative lamps, flower pots, or pillows are common in most homes. Despite their durability, these products are often replaced quickly due to changing trends, a desire for a new look, or personal preference.
Product range: which products will you sell?
There are many atmospheric items for the interior that can be sold online, depending on the target audience and trend. Trends and styles are constantly changing. By keeping up with these, it becomes easier to discover which items are best to sell. Some possibilities are:
By keeping up with trends, it become easier to decide which products to sell
Pillows and plaids: Pillows or rugs are a perfect addition as interior decoration. By offering different colors, fabrics and sizes in your online store, you quickly have an extensive assortment in a fairly specific niche.
Lighting: Light is an important element to create a cozy atmosphere in a room. Be sure to offer different types of lighting such as pendant lamps, table lamps or floor lamps. If you sell candles and use a lot of social media for marketing, you can bet on repeat customers.
Plants and flowers: Greenery gives a fresh and natural look to a room. Offer different varieties, from small plants to large houseplants, so your customers have a wide choice. You can also sell fake flowers and plants well in an online store.
Wall decorations: Posters, prints, paintings and picture frames, are a popular way to add personality to a room. There are plenty of options online, from minimalist prints to eye-catching paintings. Mirrors and clocks are also a nice niche. Picture frames make great gift items.
Storage accessories: Neat storage is important in the home, which is why a variety of storage accessories can be found online, such as baskets, storage boxes and shelves. These accessories are not only practical, but can also add a decorative element to a room.
Most new online stores start out with a focus on one product category, trend or style
You could sell all these products by starting a large home decor warehouse, but this requires buying a wide range of items upfront and makes it harder to focus your marketing. For this reason, most new online stores begin with a single product category, trend, or style.
Home accessories in a particular style
When selling items in a specific style, it is important to consider your target audience and the overall look of your store. For example, a shop focused on gift items will attract a different audience and have a different appearance than one selling luxury goods.
You could focus on items made from specific materials like plastic, leather, wood, or stainless steel. To stand out from competitors, consider working exclusively with sustainable materials or offering unique handmade products.
If you want to specialize in a niche, it is best to offer products that are less common.
Purchasing items or producing them yourself
Are you crafty? Handmade home accessories are great items to sell online. By creating them yourself, you can create your own unique brand and offering. However, it will be more difficult to create a wide product range if you create them yourself.
In addition, it is difficult to keep everything adequately stocked. By dropshipping home decor you can easily test demand first. Once you think you qualify for discounts by buying in bulk you can start buying your assortment from a wholesaler or supplier.
Home decor wholesalers in Europe
There are several wholesalers for home accessories. Some platforms where you can discover some of the best European home decor suppliers are:
With dropshippingXL, you can sell over 90,000 vidaXL products. With European warehouses it offers very fast delivery all over Europe, without the hassle of inventory management, shipping, and returns. Offers integrations with Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware and Wix.
The b2b platform Orderchamp is full of wholesalers for retailers with low purchase thresholds and minimum orders. Signing up is free. Larger retailers often use the platform to find great additions but small boutiques and concept stores can really find a total offering here.
Spocket is a platform for European and American dropshipping suppliers. There are thousands of products listed, from clothing to beauty products and more. It has a higher price range and shipping costs than AliExpress. The platform offers integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix and WooCommerce.
Software to create an online store
When you start a home décor store, you will need to pick the right ecommerce software for your online store. Home accessories are often available in multiple sizes, materials and styles, so try to pick software that has features to show all these different options.
Pick software that has enough features to showcase products in different colors and styles
It is also a nice addition to show plenty of images and/or inspiration via blogs or articles accompanying a product. Apart from that, actually all popular platforms are suitable for a successful online store. Well-known solutions are:
With no technical knowledge required, Webador's user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder is ideal for launching a webshop. Easy to use steps make it easy to customize your site yourself. Normally a steal at just €9 per month, users can now get started for a promotional price of €1 per month.
Create your own online store yourself thanks to more than a hundred themes and the complete app store. Shopify also connects well with dropshippers. The software is technically fully SEO-optimized and offers all social media integrations.
With over 700,000 users, Wix is one of the most popular solutions for SMEs worldwide. Easily create your own webshop yourself, or choose one of more than 500 webshop designs from the software itself.
Setting prices for your products
Because home accessories are very personal, it is important that pricing matches the quality and expectation that the customer has in this regard. You want to offer fun impulse buys at affordable prices. In addition, discounts, promotions or positive reviews from other customers can quickly increase conversion.
Discounts, promotions or positive reviews can increase conversion
With luxury accessories, on the other hand, discounts and low prices for these items can sometimes come across as messy or unsafe. Are you going to start your own online store in homemade products? Even then you want to avoid an image that is too cheap. Higher prices can contribute to a sense of exclusivity and professionalism.
Marketing strategies
Personal, trendy or fashionable articles like home décor are perfect for inspirational blogs, styling tips and advice on trends, styles or room design. Both with beautiful products and good photography, you can make your home accessories store unique and persuade customers to buy your products.
With good photography, you can make your store unique
Online marketing can reinforce this strategy well. With great product photography, you can build a good reach on social media like Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook. Additionally, influencer marketing or affiliate marketing are also great for selling attractive or distinctive items for the home.
Many accessories are also seasonally sensitive and perfect as gifts. Days like Valentine’s Day, Father’s or Mother’s Day or around holidays in December can be well catered to with search engine advertising or email marketing. Emails are also ideal for staying in touch with regular customers.
Logistics
Logistics are a challenge for many online retailers. It is easier to send parcels with small accessories and decorations. But for fragile items, such as mirrors, clocks, vases or similar items, good ecommerce logistics are essential.
Many wholesalers also offer dropshipping. In that case, you don’t have to buy the items in advance. The wholesaler sends the item directly to your customer after each order. However, if a customer returns an item, it will be returned to you. Good product photos and descriptions help, but do not solve everything.
Overall, home accessories have a high return rate
Handling returns
Home accessories tend to have a high return rate because it is hard for customers to judge color, size, texture, or material online. Since these items are often bought to match existing furnishings, it can be challenging to assess compatibility without seeing them in person.
To reduce returns, show your products in photos from multiple angles. Including images of the items styled with furnishings can also help customers visualize how the product fits into their space and matches their style.
Looking to outsource your fulfillment? Salesupply and ShipBob are fulfillment partners with multiple European warehouse locations, making it possible to offer next day delivery all over Europe.
