My Journey in Starting a Small Business Young

How I started by Business

I started my small business on Carousell selling longboards many years ago at the tender age of 14. During that time, longboarding was introduced by my best friend to me. However, longboards were extremely expensive (SGD300-500). That to me was relatively unaffordable especially because the demographics of the people who picked up this hobby were mainly young adults or teenagers. Hence, SGD300-500 was extremely inexpensive for this demographic of people, myself included.

Hence, I turned to online for alternatives and found out that Taobao was actually selling the same quality boards for a much affordable price. Seeing that there were no cheaper alternatives anywhere else, I decided to drop ship to Singapore. Given that this was relatively early in the longboard ‘discovery’ in Singapore, many were eager to purchase these longboards at affordable prices.

As a result, my longboard small business did relatively well, as I sold my longboards at 300-400% profit margin and could earn up to SGD$300-400 per months which was relatively good for a young student like myself.

Difficulties

Along the way, there were definitely difficulties here and there. For example, more and more local brands started selling longboards at more affordable prices too. Even though these prices were slightly more than mine, they were after all branded, meaning that there was a brand and a sense of accountability to the consumers. Hence, despite the quality and material being the exact same, people were definitely more inclined towards these brands. Hence, during the later stages of the business and when longboards were becoming more popular, there was a decline in sales due to rising competition.

That being said, I chalk up most of my success initially to timing. Because I identified an early stage of an item that piqued interest and provided it at a cheap price. Hence, it was inevitable that an end would come unless I evolved it into a brand or scale it.

Why I eventually ended it

There were a myriad of reasons why I eventually ended it. But the main ones would be, I was losing interest in this. Having started this young, I did not have a long-term plan on how to scale the business or evolve it with time. Hence, as time went on and sales declined, my interest synonymously depleted. But this taught me a very important lesson, that is that whenever starting a business, it is important to have a long-term plan for it. To make every move in the business purposeful towards an eventual goal. Hence, even though it was shortlift, this fleeting business experience did taught my a lot invaluable lessons.