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Would you quit your job to sail the world?
Elin Rose is an Icelandic e-commerce entrepreneur and sailor behind the Sailopreneur business. She sells on Amazon and Ebay and built those businesses from scratch. She wasn’t always an entrepreneur. She graduated university in 2013 and decided quickly the full-time 9 to 5 job wasn’t for her. She wanted to take weeks off at a time to sail. After a few low-cost sailing trips, Elin decided she wanted this to be her life and found a way to fund that lifestyle through a successful e-commerce business. She now brings in up to 15,000 pounds per month.
You’ll love Elin and her no-fear approach to life.
We also chat about…
- Sailing without a sailing background
- Starting an e-commerce business
- Improving upon your product
- Bringing an online product to physical retail too
- How to find a manufacturer for your product
- How IcelandAir and WowAir offer free stopovers in Iceland
She was an absolute delight to speak with! Enjoy this chat with Elin, and please subscribe to us in iTunes if you enjoyed it!
Show notes and links from today’s episode
- Sailopreneur – Elin’s site
- Sailopreneur on Facebook
- Crewbay – matches skippers with crew
- Jungle Scout – product research made easy
- Jungle Scout YouTube video series
- Alibaba
Key takeaways from our chat with Elin Rose
1 – Just do it
Elin is one of those people who can ‘wing it’ and thrive.
She quit her comfortable job to go sailing with a guy she didn’t know that she met on Crewbay, when she had little sailing experience.
Her friend who was originally coming on the trip with her backed out.
Elin decided to go for it and chase her dreams.
Now she’s an experienced sailor and has a successful e-commerce business.
She doesn’t let fear stop her from anything.
2 – Pick the right product for your e-commerce business
Elin recommends finding a product that you can see is in demand but improve upon it slightly.
For example, if you want to sell a kettle. You research what kettles are selling online.
Then you make your product better.
Perhaps you can change the color, or you can make the handle better.
Or, maybe the other products out there now have poor photography and you can take better pictures.
3 – Pick a cheaper product and low number of units at first
Elin and J recommend starting cheap when it comes to physical products.
You don’t want to lose too much of your investment up front.
Elin also recommends not buying too much up front and use data to make the decision.
If you can see that the products are in high-demand, and you’re seeing a multiple of units moving per month, than you can feel more confident.
Once you pick a product, type into google the name of your product plus private label to find manufacturers.
Elin recommends looking for local manufacturers.
4 – Don’t be scared away by scary product categories
Elin doesn’t shy away from more risky product categories such as food.
She gives an example of a jelly beans product where you can change the amount of jelly beans in a pack.
You can change the flavors and research which flavors will sell.
You can also sell the products to coffee shops and at trade shows in addition to online.
Questions? Like or dislike? Leave us a comment!
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Terri says
Such an inspirational woman! Great tips here, thank you
Dan says
I absolutely love these tips, especially don’t be scared!
Anne Thornley-Brown says
Sounds like an incredible experience. Travel is one of life’s best gifts.