The third business model is so easy that you just need a laptop,
your network, and some brain cells,
and it actually solves such a big problem for businesses like us.
That we'd be your first customers.
[Inaudible].
Hey guys, this is George, and this is Marco.
And today we're going to present you with five sustainable business models.
[Inaudible].
Hey guys, this is George,
and this is Marco with the two co-founders of Buckle and Seam,
a social impact brand from Berlin, Germany, hence our accents.
And we got to present you with five sustainable business models,
which we have brainstormed and hope you can put into practice out of your
bedroom. When we start a Buckel and Seam Marco was 23 and I was 26.
Um, our first office was our, or my parents' guest room. And, uh,
actually within two years,
we managed to scale the business and grew it to seven digit business.
We recognized by a couple of media outlets. Uh,
one of them was Forbes 30 under 30. And since then,
now actually have a real office. Yeah, and more importantly,
we have sent more than 1000 kids to school by donating 3% of our
revenue. So that's really the biggest achievement.
And we hope that we can be the spark for you to actually start a business.
We've prepared five models, which you can easily start out of your bedroom,
your parents' garage, just need your laptop and keep them going.
You can actually start any of the businesses we laid out with Shopify.
Shopify is a e-commerce platform,
which allows you to not only sell your product easily,
but to list them on several other marketplaces as well.
And we used them since day one, couple of years ago, and still have that app,
which rings every day. Once you're done watching the video,
there's a link underneath for more information. So this is idea number one.
So the first business idea,
which we thought of is creating bracelets for a cause,
why we select the bracelets? Quite simple. Number one,
they have a huge profit margin. And number two, it can create impact.
Talking about profit margin from our own experience.
We know the jewellers usually have a profit margin of 40 to 70%.
This here is huge.
Will definitely cover your production costs and material costs as well as your
marketing expenses and leave enough money to cover overheads and your own
profits. You might be wondering how much money do I need to start this?
So we say roughly 200 to 500 US dollars.
Either you buy them at wholesale or you do the bracelets yourself,
way cheaper.
And we estimate that you can sell bracelets for 49 to
69, us dollars with a profit margin of 40 to 70%,
the huge margin for you to actually invest in social ads as well.
Yeah. And if you have no idea on how to make a bracelet, don't worry,
you're not, on your own, there are tons of YouTube tutorials,
we went through the same process. So for us, we always have, you know,
a little leather scratch, scaps, um, that we cannot use and,
that we started to repurpose for, for bracelets. So,
yeah, it's quite easy actually.
And then touch basing on the cost for us.
It's important that every business which we create,
or hopefully you create at some point has a cause and addresses a cause.
For example, if you deeply care about turtles, you could, for example,
have a motif of turtles somewhere involved in the bracelets and donate,
part of the revenues to some initiatives and connecting these two dots, for us?
Yeah. Was girls' education and,
it could be any cause for that matter and it's really key.
To our second business idea.
Our second business idea is a business idea where you don't have to travel far.
It's an idea where you take specialty products from your community and you
offer them through your community to a wider area.
Let's say, for example, my neighborhood they're three, four,
five small shop owners with amazing specialties.
One of my favorite ones is for example, one woman who has a honey shop.
So she makes high quality honey,
and it tastes amazing,
but she's only specialized on actually creating the product,
not really selling it.
And this is where you come in with your Shopify shop,
you would basically interact or act as a wholesaler where you have these
different products from these different providers,
aggregated on your own website, selling it to a community.
Usually the good thing of this kind of models is that you don't need to buy the
inventory from them because these people in these small specialty stores,
they have these products and you can just list them on their store
and sell them. And whenever you sell them,
you would charge 30 to 35% commission makes them happy,
makes you happy because you're on a margin and don't have an inventory risk.
Think about it though.
The 30% commission is not as much money as other business models would provide
here. Storytelling is key. So really go and meet those people,
visit them and interview them and document the process of how let's say the
honey is made or other, other products who is the, who is the maker?
Who is the designer, tell the story, make it compelling.
And then this product will sell.
Also these community customers or these customers were interested in products
from a community are usually customers that stick.
And it doesn't just have to be honey.
These customers tend to stick with your stores,
tend to stick with a product and return.
So here's where you make money on that second purchase at the latest stage.
Let's talk about the margins. So usually we'd work around 30% margin.
That means if you sell a thousand dollars worth of goods,
you're left with $300 off this $300 you have to spend from our
experience, a hundred dollars on marketing, such as social ads on Instagram,
Facebook Tik-Tok,
and then 5% for shipping to get it actually towards the customer.
And then 5% for admin and other costs such as hosting and
the rest is your profit. So within the first thousand dollars,
you've doubled your initial investment and a good to go. Third business idea.
The third business model is so easy that you just need a laptop a
network and some brain cells,
and it actually solves such a big problem for businesses like us.
That we'd be your first customers.
It is an idea that in fact, it's so easy that you can pull it off from home.
All I need is some Excell skills.
Some networking skills are definitely no rocket science. And yeah,
as mark mentioned,
it's something that touches us as thousands of other companies worldwide, no,
probably on Shopify alone. So here come in with your solution.
Problem is huge, but the solution is so simple.
We as business owners pollute the environment for every shipment,
which leaves, for example, for us,
from Pakistan and arrives in our warehouse in Berlin,
thousands of CO2 emissions emitted by us.
And there's no way we can compensate.
Until now. That's where you come in.
So with your wit you would basically offer us as business owners,
a possibility through your Shopify website to assess how much CO2 was
actually emitted. It can be very easy through a type form or Google form,
both options, the VVA, like we enter our information,
how much of, what have we shipped when and where? And, um,
you shoot us an email with, Hey,
this has been your CO2 emissions for this particular shipment or time period.
And then you can actually aggregate multiple providers and allow us as a
business to choose how we want to compensate there. For example, options,
where we can plant trees. And there are certain other options as well,
where we can actually work on treatment plans on water or any other
projects, which you think are relevant.
And we as a business can then choose from through your Shopify.
Because today we could literally only go to one particular expert and say, Hey,
we want to help reforestation, or want to help building solar panels.
With your help we would be able to choose from multiple ones.
And the good thing about this is that we,
as business owners would be willing to invest a lot of money and there are
thousands or millions of other Shopify store owners who actually are aware that
they're hurting the environment with their shipments,
but they want to bring change. And you, for example,
would charge a commission on the payments, say, we,
as business owners have to pay a thousand dollars to compensate,
or our last shipment from Pakistan to Berlin,
you could earn 15% margin,
which we as business owners would be completely fine with.
And you earn $150 without moving your fingertips.
On to our fourth business idea onto our fourth business idea.
And it's all about hype. Yeah. Now a lot of trends in the world,
but let's be real.
If something is trending it's hyped and what's usually hyped something that's
limited, this is something that we experience also with our own collections.
So for instance, we just launched our summer lining,
a collection that is limited only for the summer. And with which,
we generated over 25,000 US dollars of revenue within a couple of hours.
Actually the business model we thought of is creating a t-shirt brand based on
limited edition motifs. So, you know,
that there's tons of influencers or celebrities wearing fancy or newly
made trousers, caps with fancy motifs, such as a green avocado.
And this is something you could pick up as a trend,
put it on a t-shirt and sell it online.
And what's a startup cost. It's, it's very limited. You know,
all you need is basic cotton t-shirts that you can print on ideally a hundred
percent organic cotton or recycled cotton or fair trade cotton,
which range usually between eight and 12 to $13. So,
it's not too much of an upfront invest and very easy for you to test different
motifs.
And the amazing thing with it is that you barely sunk inventory
and you just need to teach yourself how to actually use Photoshop or
illustrator.
There's a lot of YouTube tutorials Maximum it would take you two days,
to actually replicate these models and put them on a t-shirt.
And then within like a couple of hours after something that's trending,
you have a limited edition t-shirt in your web shop, which is printed on demand.
And the moment you hear that little Shopify bell Kaching thing,
please insert the tone here. Yeah.
All you need to do is walk to your next, um, uh,
print shop that usually does it on demand to screen print at a particular motif,
receive that t-shirt back 24 hours or 24 hours later and ship it to your
customers.
And when it comes to pricing, we've said, it's quite easy.
You have your cost of goods sold. And then when you need to get it printed,
it's maybe five to $10. So you're at $20 costs.
And we estimate that you can sell these t-shirts if they are hyped for
59 to, $99. So minimum you earn $30 of profit.
And with this,
you can for sure buy your new laptop to actually enhance the processes and make
it faster. And now the final business idea for today,
our fifth and last business model for today is all about love.
We're not doing this. You buddy, you know,
everyone needs a present at some point,
there's billions of people who actually want to give something to the loved
ones. And that's a big opportunity for you to start a business,
all of your garage or bedroom.
Every year,
we generate more than $1 million in personalized goods that we sell
throughout the holiday season as gifts.
And one business idea,
which we brought to you is actually inspired by my parents because they gifted
me this pen when I was just finishing my university.
And I wish that this pen would actually carry my initials or an
inspiring quote, but it doesn't, this is what we brainstormed for you.
All you need.
To launch this business idea is the laser engraving machine.
A used one should cost you more than $300 that you can find online if you're
unable to do So, There are plenty of service providers in any urban area,
that would, gladly help you out. And, um, yeah.
Then obviously the item that you would like to engrave in this case, a pen,
we did some research and,
a regular pen with nice packaging cost should cost you between eight and 10
dollars.
And when you have your production costs.
And then even if you pay a little bit for the engraving from a service provider,
you have a huge margin when you actually started it as a nice price.
And why do we say a nice price? I mean, let's be honest.
My parents would not gift me a 20 bucks pen.
So usually presents are on the high end side because they're gifts for a
lifetime.
Meaning we would say that you can set a personalized pen for 69 to
$99. And when we did the math, honestly,
even if you pay a lot of money for the engraving machine,
such as the 200 quoted dollars, you need to only sell seven pens.
And I'm pretty sure, you know,
seven parents of people who are graduating at some point.
It' shouldn't be a problem, right? So the moment you scale your business,
actually a nice effect comes in at is that your production costs or your
purchase price of those pens will go down with scale.
So if you bought 10 pens at the cost of $10,
maybe a hundred pens while you're costing $9,
maybe 1,000 at $6 and so on and so forth.
So I'm definitely a business that Marco and I think, um,
is interesting to consider out of your garage or bedroom or wherever you are,
um, and to try out with Shopify.
But whenever you actually have high margins and when you earn a big profit,
please don't forget that you can create an impact somewhere and invest parts of
your revenue to do good in the world. Hey guys,
we hope you enjoyed this video. There's a lot of fun for us.
And if you'd like this way, give this video a, like, share it comment and ask,
ask questions. We're happy to revert back.
And if you want to know more about Shopify,
just subscribe to their YouTube channel and good luck with following the
business models and when you're bored or you need a break.
Yeah.
We do have a web shop, Buckleandseam.com, check out our personalizable bags.
And if you want to be a game-changer and actually enable a girl in Pakistan to
be sent to school because of one of our bags, you know,
the websites it's in the comments below.
Organic cotton, leather, personalisable for you, or significant other..