When beginning any new endeavor, there is no way to foresee every challenge you will face. What would be the fun in that? My wife will be the first to tell you that my M.O. tends to be "act first, plan later". Well, we planned a lot before I marched over to Providence City Hall to register Plant22.com. We have so many great ideas we are practically bursting at the seams.
The registration process took all of 17 minutes (according to my parking meter). The Second Deputy City Clerk, who filled out the form and notarized it, said "Good luck with your new business" and I felt pretty proud of myself on the way back home. It is a good feeling to make progress and, although this is not the first company I have ever started, this part always feels like a milestone.
All told, becoming a business in the eyes of the law cost me $11.50, which made me think perhaps Rhode Island was a pretty friendly place to start a web-based venture -- despite what I had often experienced with other projects. Granted, I still need to register with the state for tax purposes but, as I am not yet earning any income, I'm putting that off for another day.
Back at the home office, I was ready to pull the trigger and start developing our online presence. There is still plenty to do with respect to web design, product development, etc. but I thought, perhaps, we might do a soft launch of the store, with a couple of nice products that Amazon.com sells. They offer so many products that we had already identified dozens that I would be happy to put in our store.
One of the cool things about Amazon.com is that they offer an associate program by which you can list their products for sale in your own website, and get a commission on every one sold. This would be an easy way to get the store rolling, we thought, and plant a few trees in the process.
Only after I had signed up for the store, plunked down my first monthly fee of $79.99, and began registering as an Amazon Associate did I realize that things were not quite as they seemed. The first indication was that Rhode Island no longer appeared on the signup page in their "state" dropdown list. I had registered as an associate seven or eight years ago with no trouble at all, so this was very peculiar. I refreshed the page several times before deciding to do a little further research. The result was a bit of a blow. It turns out that Rhode Island residents can no longer become Amazon Associates, due to a sales tax battle between the state of Rhode Island and Amazon.com. This is also true for Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, and Missouri. This was once true for California and Illinois, as well, but their names are no longer mentioned on the Amazon Associates FAQ page.
Hm...
I was knocked on my backside for a few minutes. This had been part of our business plan from the start. My head spun. Perhaps we could re-register the business in NH and partner with my mother? Or could I get an office across the border in Massachusetts? Should I abandon Amazon's web store entirely, and go with Ebay or Etsy or some other web store program. In the end, I opted for none of the above. At least not yet. We'll have to see how this Rhode Island thing shakes out, but I am pretty well committed to our location, and want to support our local economy -- which means paying sales taxes. As for website options, the automated, integrated fulfillment possibilities that Amazon offers are second to none. So those parts of the plan would remain unchanged.
The great thing about setbacks is that they make you think fast and hard. Not that we haven't been doing our share of that lately, but this setback made me think faster and harder than usual.
It was not long before I recalled those wise words of Bill Mollison, guru of the permanent agriculture (Permaculture) movement. He likes to say that "the problem is the solution." This may not always be a true statement, but when you start to think of things this way, good ideas tend to pop into your head.
So I sat and I thought, and I thought and I sat.
Sometimes things come to me when I do that.
The first thing that occurred to me was that the Amazon Associate program was, at best, a small part of the big picture. Although it might allow us to build a huge web store in record time, if the store was only earning 4% commissions on each item sold, we wouldn't be able to plant very many trees.
We believe that visitors to our store will want a lot of bang for their buck. It has always been our goal to plant a minimum of 22 trees for every product sold. That will require some substantial margins. Creating a separate class of products for which the margins were considerably smaller had never quite sat quite right with me. So it was time to ditch that idea.
As my thought process ramped up, I began to realize that I had already come up with some great ideas for products. Some of them were more difficult than others to develop but perhaps the best way to start would be with one high-margin, simple, clever idea. It is not yet time to reveal this idea but it's low impact, cost-effective, and fun. And we think you'll love it!
Not only will it be fun, but it will also help us raise lots of money for reforestation! Our most important product is, of course, donations to plant trees. The whole plan is to raise money for reforestation in places like Haiti, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Vietnam, and elsewhere. It is our belief that concerned people will be happy paying a little extra for fun, clever, American made products that support this kind of work.
So we are back to the design board. We have to turn some of these ideas into products as soon as possible. We won't be distracted by small-margin commissions. Instead, we will focus even harder on those items that can raise the most money and plant the most trees. Probably we were never meant to be in the Amazon Associate program. Creating our own products will be infinitely more rewarding, as will supporting local artisans by selling their clever ideas. Trees are our core focus, and this setback only serves to strengthen our resolve to plant millions.
Onward!
-Karl
Intergalactic Development Officer
Plant22.com
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