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Jenny Bitz & Pieces have been interviewed and featured in Youth.sg !!!

Thank you Siti Rozianti !

The owners guide to an effective blog shop

Written by Siti Rozianti, on Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Published in : Culture, http://www.youth.sg/content/category/11/78/28/
So you have dreams of starting your own business. What can you do? Well, why not follow the examples of many others and set up your very own blog shop?
Blog shops can work because most youths are tech-savvy and Internet banking as well as PayPal make online payment easy and relatively safe. Best of all, there is a ready supply of consumers online.
“In a way, it is a good form of retail therapy. I can shop whenever I want to,” says student Geraldine Chua.
Besides the ease of reaching out to consumers, the convenience of having an easy start-up is also one reason why blog shops are springing up like dandelions.
Alvin Tan, the PR liaison of flea.sg, an online blog shop directory, says the appeal of blog shops for new business owners is the low start-up cost. In fact, blog shop owners can just take a “blogspot” or a “livejournal” address and start their businesses right away.

In addition, blog shops work so well because the blogging interface is pretty straightforward and “as an owner, you don't have to go through the whole process of setting up an e-commerce store in the conventional way. You just need to know how to make a blog post.”

As Jenny Chan of Jenny’s Bitz and Pieces told Youth.SG, “Jewellery is something people feel comfortable feeling and touching and trying before buying. So in a way, it is easier to retail it directly.

SOMETHING YOU CAN BUY FOR VALENTINE'S DAY!

When asked if they would pick one form of their shop over the other, both Lavendar and Jenny insisted that their business model would only be effective with both. Lavender has “customers who still prefer shopping online” and they constantly check her blog for updates. Jenny on the other hand, also sees her retail spaces as a marketing tool to redirect customers to her blog.
But, before you jump onto the wagon, opening a blog shop is deceptively easy. As Alvin tells Youth.SG, “The true test [of setting up a shop] is the marketing and retailing that sets your brand apart… a large number of blog shops are created, but only a handful survive and succeed to the point where it can become a person's full-time income.” Therefore, uniqueness and exclusive designs, something that Jenny strongly believes in, is an important factor.
“I get parts from overseas, all the way from US, Hong Kong, Israel because there is not much variety here in Singapore. You can’t go very far, or reach out to more people, if your designs are identical to others.