Now before you conger up images of packing my bags and heading off to a foreign land I should tell you that congo is short for conglomerate; a group of entities working together. My first exposure to a congo was as a shopper on Hyena Cart. If you're familiar with Etsy, Hyena Cart is along a similar vein. It's a hosting site for various small businesses; on Hyena Cart it's mostly children's items, handmade, natural, and eco-friendly.
I recently decided to help put together a congo to have another venue for my shop. I did the research and am sharing a bit of the process.
Why is a congo beneficial?
It's yet another link to your items and shop. It's another venue to be found by shoppers who may not find you anyway. You can link back to your existing shop thus increasing your web presence and the ways Google finds you in a search. it's very important to have links for yourself out on the web.
If you don't have a free standing website or shop hosted elsewhere a congo is a way to dabble in a sells venue without the effort of a full shop and stocking lots of items to fill a store on your own.
What's gonna work? Teamwork! You have the advantage of the advertising and client base of other shop owners. Shoppers may come because they found the link one of the other shop's facebook pages, but then they see the items you have as well. Your circle of shoppers has grown to include everyone's circle. More exposure is always a good thing.
Why do shoppers like congos?
Congos tend to get more traffic because it's a way to shop for a variety of items in one place. Congos usually stock on a theme and have several vendors contribute to a collaboration of coordinating. It's a great way to scoop up a matching outfit from your favorite vendors all at once.
It's been an exciting adventure figuring out the ins and outs of a congo, establishing vendors, coordinating items, scheduling a stocking and building a following, but I'm excited to be a part of one and I look forward to seeing where it takes my business.
No comments:
Post a Comment