I Started My Own Business On A Small Budget

Posted on by TheDC

Welcome back to TheDylansWorld, I hope you’re keeping well. I have been busy the last 9 months building a little empire and wanted to take this time to share this important moment with you all. My name is Dylan Cunningham, 24 years old and from Aberdeen Scotland and this is how I started my own business on a small budget – during a global pandemic.

 Starting a business is literally easy, finding the product or service you want to sell is hard! It all started in 2019 for me. As a child I had always envisioned being my own boss. As I’ve grown up over the years I have always found it extremely hard to pick a lane and stick to it. So when it came to starting a business, I wasn’t sure I would manage to stick it out as I’ve always changed my mind on a monthly basis on what I wanted to be.

In 2019 i grab a pen, sit down and start writing out all these business ideas. First was to focus around my YouTube channel and blog. But being a realist, I knew my YouTube channel and blog would never yield much profits. So cross that out. I would never manage to pull the numbers you need to actually get a profit. So I keep thinking. Next on the sheet was a sex shop. I know, not the first thing on many peoples minds. But for me, I felt that the market has a great choice but most of these companies put big price tags on their items. I wanted to create an affordable business. But upon digging into that market, it didn’t seem like a great idea on a small budget due to the fact of bulk buying. My mind goes blank and I forget about it.

A year goes by, it’s now June 2020. 

I didn’t think much about focusing on creating a business, but something came over me to finally sit down and get it done. Life was marching on and I am not getting any younger. So I sit down again with my laptop. Pulls up google and I start searching, business ideas. What to stock in a shop. How to find a unique product. Click after click, I couldn’t really find anything I wanted to settle upon. Hours go by and I sit back, wondering what I love. Then it came to me!

I am someone who loves plastic free products and I love shower/bath items. So I search a few ideas and boom I come across a wholesale company that stocks a lot! Scanning their website, I came across such amazing items. Soap bars, bath bombs, shower steamers and luxury bathroom items. My eyes light up. I finally found the items that I was interested in. 

However, I did also love the idea of having a diffuser line. This wholesale company stocked those too, from the oils to the bottles – they have it all! So i notice how nice everything seemed, their reviews were raving. I add a few items to my cart and place an order to see these products in person. When they arrive I love them, but upon researching – there were too many major players for me to find a way into the market. So I pop back onto the wholesale page and get back to the drawing board. However, I would love to introduce home fragrances to my website in the future.

I get back to looking at the other items on offer. Clicking on the soap bars was probably the best idea ever. Olive oil soap pops up and I’ve never used this kind of soap before. So I start researching the benefits of this soap and why it is good to use. The list was huge, full of amazing benefits time and time again. 

So I add some to my cart. 

I then click back and bath bombs were also offered. Clicking on them, I am surprised how amazing they look and all the scents seem very interesting. So I add a pack of Tangerine & Grapefruit to my cart and place my order. Looking back at this scent option, probably wasn’t the best option for myself to try them as I am allergic to oranges and such.

The products arrived so I cut up the soap bars and play around with different packaging options. When focusing on being plastic free, I had a lot of hurdles to over come. Most soap bars come in cardboard boxes – but they were out of my budget due to the fact there was a minimum order and I would have to get a custom size made due to the long size of the soap bars. 

So I googled a few ideas and tissue paper came up. I tried that and the soap bar stuck to the tissue paper, which then lead to bleeding from the paper to the soap. Discolouration did not look good and made the artisan soap bars look odd. So I see the wholesale company states that its best to wrap soap in wax paper, which stops the bleeding. So I give that a try and wrap black tissue around the product. Left that for a few days and it worked. No bleeding and the soap seemed to stay fresh. I hand these wrapped items out to friends and family to try for free before I decided to sell them. The reviews were in – everyone loved them and supported my new adventure!

Now I had products that I knew I wanted to stock, I now needed a business name. June 2020 was when I started to play around with the ideas of coming up with a name and focusing on everything. For me I feel that I’m pretty good at playing with words and coming up with quirky things. I sat with a piece of paper and wrote away. D Scents and Boujee Scents were the names I wrote instantly and I fell in love with Boujee right away. So I took to google and thought what is scents in other languages. I popped it into google translate and BOOM. Scents translated into Parfums in French, so I dropped the s and the name Boujee Parfum had a ring to it, I loved it. It all just fell into place extremely quickly.

I started playing about with logo makers and the design above is literally the first one I made. I kinda seemed to love everything I was doing so far, it was extremely fun and all fell into place instantly. So now I had the perfect business name Boujee Parfum and now I have my logo. Next was settling on the best products to stock and to launch the company.

Settling on products & launching online

As someone with no experience on starting a business, I relied on google and blogs of business owners to help me along the way. However, I do already have 6 years of retail experience that has given me a much needed insight into business.

I spent weeks researching other companies that would obviously be selling the same items – as we use the same wholesale company. Along with the big contenders and worked out my price point structure, what I noticed that there was a gap in the market for offering 3 for X type of offers. So I ensured to add these into my site. Lush seems to be against these kind of offers for some reason!

I was worried about launching into a highly competitive market, but after using my products for a while – I knew they were amazing and I could really get behind them to sell them. I am actually extremely passionate about them. 

As I didn’t have much of a budget, I started small and bought in as much as I could. I started off with 7 olive oil soap scents and around 5 bath bomb scents. I didn’t have the budget to hire a photographer to take the product images, so I did these myself. I know most companies would show their products on a white background, but I wanted to stand out and do things my way, not the google algorithm way! 

So I had my products, pictures and now just needed a website. Again on a very small budget I couldn’t afford a website builder to create everything, so I had to rely on myself. I did have faith in myself to pull it off. 
I started off by researching which company to use, then I found that it would be easier to go with an e-commerce company, that way I can just use they website builder and pay a monthly fee. So I came across shopify and was a little worried at the monthly costs. Back to the search bar, cheaper alternatives to shopify, EKM came up. I then found blogs and YouTube videos on the company. One blog offered a free 28 day trial with them, so I went with it. 
It was extremely worth it and I found their website builder to be easy. They give you themes and you can customise them to match your style. Mentioning style I am obsessed with Art Deco and decided I wanted to incorporate this kind of style into Boujee Parfum. 
After 12 days of my trial I decided to upgrade the account and start selling under my own domain name. I was excited but nervous. I must add that a rep from EKM called me and discussed everything with me, gave me pointers and referred to their guides to keep me on track. This out my mind at ease!

Packaging, Cruelty Free & Environmentally Friendly

Personally I wanted to ensure from day 1 I was to create a business that checked all the boxes. My packaging ideas were perfect, stamped tissue paper (with a twist – which will remain a secret). With the soap bars if you don’t wrap them that well, they will start to dry out. The best thing about olive oil soap bars is that if they start to dry out, they are actually better and last longer – but still giving you the best results upon use. But I wanted to make sure they arrived fresh to the customer. So they are wrapped in waxed paper, which helps keep them fresh and stop any bleeding from the tissue paper.
The products I stock are 100% Vegan, Cruelty Free, Paraben Free, SLS Free and Plastic Free. I pride myself on this as it’s important to me to offer products that check all those boxes. I wanted to make sure that no one feels guilt while they use the products. Allowing a customer to have a seamless plastic free and cruelty free product experience is a great feeling! 
When you buy Boujee Parfum products, you know the best ingredients have been used and no-one or nothing was harmed in creating these products. As the owner, this makes me extremely proud. 

I launched Boujee Parfum’s website in August 2020 and had a bunch of orders within the first weekend. Along with the amazing amount of orders – has come a great deal of reviews. These reviews have always been very important in helping the business grow and show others that we are a great brand to purchase from. My family and friends have been the most supportive people ever. Shoutout to you all who have not only supported this adventure, but also helped me out by purchasing from me. 
It has now been 9 months since my launch online and my customer base has grown, along with staying loyal. It’s such a great feeling having a customer return, it validates that I am doing something right. In December 2020 I had a stall slot in the local Trinity Centre Aberdeen Scotland and done really well that has me thinking about the grand plan once covid-19 has gone. I know these products would thrive within a physical location, whether that is in a store or on a stall – I have a good few options on where to take Boujee Parfum.
My future plans for Boujee Parfum is to just keep the natural evolution process. To gradually add products here and there. My main focus at the moment is Christmas 2021 and I have some great ideas I would love to do. I have also been looking at store rent prices (Aberdeen business rates are extortionate) and I have been in contact with some stall owners to see what I can do over the next year.
I have such a great vision for where Boujee Parfum will be in the next 5 years and I am extremely excited to take it there.

If you have a dream or vision for how you want your life to be, go out there and do it. Life is too short to sit back and allow those dreams or visions to fade! I have managed to do everything so far from my part time job wage. You don’t need big budgets to get started because once you start everything falls into place!
If you’re from the uk and would like to check out Boujee Parfum please find all links below. 

LIMITED TIME OFFER

I would love to offer you 15% off your first order with me by using code: BLOG15
[Receive 15% off your first order via blog. This code is valid on first orders placed before May 31st 2021. Includes sale items but excludes delivery costs.]

Where To Find Boujee Parfum

Website: www.boujeeoarfum.co.uk – CODE: BLOG15 for 15% off

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Published by TheDC

Blogging a behind the scenes into the real life of yacht crew. How yacht life works and the real stories that Below Deck don't show. Also adding my own personal stories from time to time.