Software: Inventory, Orders, Import-Export, eComerce, cvs creation

[Rayzak]

Hello guys.
I'm starting my business - I'll be selling consumer electornics online (eBay, Store, Amazon and Pricegrabber, etc) from my warehouse.
I'm thinking about 3 users as start and more later.
Since I'll invest a pretty large amount of money in to this business, I will be pretty short on moola
So, I have a questions: what would be the best solution for me?
I checked out different software versions and Interprise Suite looks like best thing, BUT it's pricey(not as pricey as Everest, but still pretty expensive).
The first thing I'm considering now is a free software, I think I can use it if it has enought functionality as the commercial software.
Can anyone reccomend me something good? (not just names -compiere, adempiere etc) but real life examples - like "my friend running warehouse, has 10 workers and using compiere and it's website and thinks that it's awesome".


Thank you.

[noblenull]

If you're pretty computer savvy, you should check out *********. You can read plenty of reviews and real life examples here: http://www.*********.net/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=17

For $1,500 + Access Licenses, you'll be up and running fairly quickly. Unless you need the functionality of a full ERP, this is probably the way to go. $1,500 is probably much less then it will cost you to implement "Free" Software (Compiere, OpenTaps, etc).

[joshuak]

You may also want to try PostBooks - it's free for as many users as you want, and it includes ERP and order management. I am planning to use PostBooks as the accounting module for a website I'm building.

Check it out at http://www.xtuple.org

[Cheeseroller]

Having started and created three companies in the past 15 years, each which developed sales of more than $2M - my advice is to keep it simple and focus on your sales and marketing, and not your infrastructure.

You won't need an all-in-one package for some time. Start with Act and QuickBooks, plus your online Store, and focus on making some money. Once you have the profit and cashflow sorted you can invest your time and effort in making yourself more efficient.

[Element]

I really agree with Cheeseroller on this one. I am just starting my second company and my experience with the first is that we just spent way too much time worrying about infrastructure in the beginning and not marketing and sales. As a result, we had great systems in place but didn't really have the business to utilize those systems for almost a year.

This time around, I focused on marketing and sales with the bare minimum on systems. I am greatly outpacing my previous experience in sales and can start to look now for systems that will support the sales....without going into the red right out of the gate.

[mutahman]

Of course marketing, sales, product/service development are all at the crux of a new business being successful, but you cannot downplay the importance, to certain types of business's, about the infrastructure.

Of course you are not going to have a chance to "make it" if you don't have a good product/service, and a very good way to sell it....but you certainly can lose your competitive edge, drive opportunity costs way up OR drive operational costs way up if you are not keeping an eye on/planning your infrastructure.

[Rayzak]

I see many people never worked in real business. Tell me, if you carry thousands of items, how do you expect to maintain their everyday appearance on web/eBay/amazon/pay-per-per-click engines? You need powerful implementations.
How do you create inventory when you receive 100 new items? How you list them on eBay etc? Buy hand? one buy one?!!!!??? WRONG! you do it in bulk import in to your inventory database.
How you change prices? One by one or in bulk? NO, BULK!
How you create purchase orders from ebay/amazon/web etc? By hand? WRONG! In BULK!
How you add all addresses and ship the items? One by one or in bulk?

If you do all things by hand, your efficiency is close to zero. Everything must be centralised and automated, otherwise you loose money and you are very inefficient.

Infrastructure and automation is the only way to grow and be successful.

[mutahman]

so rayzak, did you decide on your platform?