The first real online order

It’s finally started—we’ve received our first real online order.

We set up a booth at a Christmas market over the holidays to see if it would live up to our expectations. And it was so much fun. Did we sell a lot? A little, but this is just a hobby for us. So we keep our margins low; if we can recoup our booth costs, that’s good enough for us.

Last week we had the Easter Pop-up. What a cozy atmosphere. Well organized by Femke, cute little stalls, nice customers at our booth, and we went home feeling enthusiastic again.

Yes, we really enjoy doing this. So this month we went to the Chamber of Commerce, applied for a bank account, worked hard on the website, and set up a Mollie account so customers can pay with iDeal/Wero.

The very first online sale was, of course, to ourselves. Just to see what it looks like for the customer, but also for us.

And then it comes in, the notification. I’m sitting on the couch reading when my phone beeps. A sales notification for a book by Raymond E. Feist. I just stare at it for a moment—I don’t recognize this customer’s name; this isn’t someone from our own network. The first person we don’t know has found our webshop and ordered something. When it sinks in, I run out into the garden to tell the rest of the family: “We’ve made a sale to a stranger!”

Oh dear, are we ready to ship yet? We’d been messing around with integrating the shipping label app into the store, couldn’t get the API to connect, and the shipping cost settings weren’t saving.

Indeed, the buyer paid the standard shipping price of €6.95. Since this is a hobby for us, we want to keep the margin low, the price low, and the shipping costs low. So we cover part of the shipping costs ourselves. We still need to figure this out, including fixing something for this customer.

We’re quickly going to buy some packing materials. Fortunately, we already had the wrapping paper at home, as well as the beautiful Boekendraak stickers. But we were still debating what to use as a protective layer between the book and the paper. You don’t want a book to get damaged in transit, so there needs to be a protective layer in between. It also can’t get wet if the delivery person decides to just leave it on the doorstep in the rain (I’ve seriously found a package like that at home before). Bubble wrap, then? No, we don’t want to be a company that uses so much plastic waste. We’ll use honeycomb paper for sturdiness and a rail bag to protect against the rain, because a rail bag can still be reused by the recipient.

We proudly and ceremoniously take the package to the shipping point together. Knowing that the buyer will receive a notification that the package is on its way, I send an email about the shipping costs and create a gift card for free shipping next time to make up for the fact that the settings weren’t quite right yet.

The package is on its way to our first real online customer. It’s really started now. We’re thoroughly enjoying all the books around us and look forward to making many more people happy with them.