Jordy,

you would generally need to have some mock ups of you site and ideas to get funded to "sell" the concept, however most ecommerce ventures would be self funded at the start. You should be able to do it for very little, and dont buy a SINGLE item of stock until you have started to generate traffic and interest.

The beauty of on-line is you can normally use catalogue photos to test your business model and the level of interest and orders.

My approach acme approach to etail would be:

1. Basic site with rudimentary back end. No stock purchases, just make enquires and get prices and understand lead times.
2. Implement your sales strategy to get the traffic. This being the crucial aspect of online. Your site is secondary to your main idea - ie getting traffic.
3. See what happens...........if you make a few sales just fufil them either using a "drop shipper" or simply by buying from elsewhere and repackaing the items and sending out. Don't worry about the margins. You are testing the model. Only buy what you know you can sell and build slowly.
4. Or if it it takes off with huge demand, get some stock in PDQ from a wholesaler, again dont worry too much about the margin just get it quick and let your customers know there will be a couple of days or a weeks delay. THIS is the point at which an investor would be interested and the time to spend the big money on a flash site with a slick back end etc, and the point at which you would have maximum leverage over an investor.

Or 5, you fall somewhere between, you get some sales, and you grow organically. Stock what you know you can sell and build the site slowly with your own re-invested funds.

The worse thing to do here is end up with a garage full of stock you cant sell and an expensive website that no-one visits! This happens time and time again, but can be avoided by doing something along the lines of the above, only taking on risk in terms of the site, advertising or stock once you know the plan is working. Obviously in the real world things aren't all that simple, and you need to make decisions at key moments but the principles should fit most business models.

I hope that helps

Regards,
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James Smith
Chartered Accountant
www.jamesesmith.co.uk

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If you haven't done ecommerce before - can I ask if you've sold something on eBay or Amazon?

This is a good way to start i.e use third party marketplaces. Build a customer base, find what products sell and importantly, where you can make profit. Fine tune your order fulfillment and marketing skills. Once you have re-occuring revenue, you can then start your own ecommerce website.

As James said, worst scenario is stock you can't sell and a website that you've invested much time and money into doing nothing.
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Lion.co.uk