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:
Strong in large home and garden products, such as garden furniture, beds, cabinets, and fitness equipment. With 90,000 items, it also offers many products in other categories. Fast delivery across Europe, without inventory management, shipping, and returns.
- European warehouses and fulfillment
- local return addresses per country
- extensive product data
- integrates with Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware and Wix
B2B platform connecting retailers with brands and wholesalers from North America and Europe. Focuses on unique brands and products that are often unavailable on major marketplaces. Suitable for both large and small online retailers looking to source or expand their product range.
- 100,000+ brands worldwide
- pay only for the products you order
- discover products through recommendations
- filter on: not on Amazon, women-led, or made in the EU
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.
- 7000+ true European brands
- low minimum order values
- options for exclusive partnerships
- tools for catalog, order, and pricing management
- based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Large platform that offers over 100M+ products from European and United States suppliers, including fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products. You get fast delivery, branded packaging, private label options and unique print-on-demand solutions. Suitable for both dropshipping and wholesale.
- beginner-friendly
- suppliers from Europe and the United States
- branded packaging and private label options
- automated inventory sync: keeps your store accurate
- offers a strong Shopify integration
- strong product research tools
BigBuy has more than 150.000 products and is able to dropship all over Europe. Product categories range from home and garden, beauty and health, sports, toys, fashion, and electronics. With their Marketplace package, you can easily sell their products on marketplaces.
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 your own online store. Easy to use steps make it easy to customize your site yourself. Next to stores also perfect for a small business website, portfolio or event pages.
- starter friendly: drag and drop, no coding needed
- hosting and traffic included in plans
- simple interface with help and tutorials
- more than 300.000 European users
- based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands
- hosted by Google Cloud
Create your own online store yourself with 100+ themes and a complete app store. Shopify also connects well with marketplaces, socials and dropshippers. The software is technically fully SEO-optimized. Has its own cloud infrastructure in Canada, although EU stores are hosted in EU by Google.
- international market leader (millions of transactions per day)
- supports more than 175 countries worldwide
- sell on socials and marketplaces
- advanced features and customization options
- popular app store with extensive extra functionality
- EU-stores hosted in EU by Google Cloud
Cloud based ecommerce software for small and medium retailers. You build and manage an online store with hosting, templates, payments, and basic SEO included. Focus is on simplicity, UK and EU sales, and fast setup without technical skills.
- built in templates and themes
- one subscription, everything included
- fast setup without technical skills
- supports European VAT rules
- UK and EU market focus
- founded in 2002, based in the UK
You have full control over design and checkout. The basics are solid: products, payments, inventory, and orders, but the software is limited for ecommerce. This makes it most suitable for brands that want to sell up to 500 products through their own online store.
- built-in AI: create your website with prompts
- clean code and fast loading times
- SEO-friendly structure
- limited ecommerce functionality
- higher learning curve due to design freedom
- based in the United States (San Francisco)
With over 700,000 users, Wix is one of the most popular solutions for SMEs worldwide. Easily create your own online store yourself, or choose one of more than 500 ecommerce designs from the software itself.
- flexible content first focus
- generates your website with AI
- built in seo tools
- app market with extra features
- headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel
- hosted on multi-cloud services (AWS & Google Cloud)
With the hosted software from Strikingly, you are able to build your own website for free. A drag and drop functionality makes it easy to edit all the available sections. Its ecommerce tool 'Simple Store' allows you to turn your website into an online store and connect it to PayPal or Stripe.
Ecwid allows users to create a free online store within minutes. Instead of free trials, users can keep using the software for free for as long as they like. The software offers a lot of integrations that helps users sell on multiple channels, such as social media.
Sell online with an open source ecommerce platform. It has more than 300,000 users worldwide. The software is free to download and offers templates, modules and add-ons. Most of those do cost money.
Lightspeed eCommerce is a cloud-based solution to build an online store with. The software is extra convenient for omnichannel retailers. It enables them to manage in-store and online inventory, view all customer information and analyze multi-channel sales data, all in one system.
An e-commerce platform from Germany. It offers both open-source and commercial versions. The platform supports extensive customization, headless commerce, and API-based integrations. Shopware is modular, suitable for B2B and B2C webshops, and widely used across Europe.
BigCommerce is an open SaaS platform. It is built for integrations, including a WordPress integration, and allows you to work with the apps, agencies and technologies you prefer. Users get a free trial period of one month when you picking a plan.
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 with multiple European warehouse locations? PostNord and Monta offer cross-border fulfillment and logistics, making it possible to offer next day delivery all over Europe.
