Research Before You Start a Business

The best advice I can give anyone starting a business is to base it on what you already have experience with. If you have had no experience with vending machines then don't start a company that depends on vending machines for your income. Likewise if you don't like selling then don't try to become a salesperson for the items you produce, find someone else to do that for you. This brings me to the fact you should also research the type of business you plan on starting before you invest any money or effort into it.

I was asked by a good friend what was my thoughts on raising a few alpacas or llamas for wool to sell to hobbyist spinners. She has the property and it was already set up for herd animals so that was half the problems out of her way for that type of venture. She had also raised goats in the past so she has had some experience with raising small livestock. She lacked experience with shearing animals for their wool and marketing the wool. So I sat her down as we both did some online research on her prospective business. First up came the cost of the animals and depending on the type and grade of wool she wished to sell the alpacas were more expensive than llamas and they were also smaller animals. Rather than get hung up on the price of the animals I told her lets go one step further and find out how much the wool was selling for.

Our next stop was eBay where we found many wool fleeces for sale on there. The wool fleeces were listed as "raw" and "cleaned". The "cleaned" ones were washed and free of debris. The "raw" fleeces were being sold as just sheared off of the animals. We took a long look at the completed listings on eBay so we would know what had been sold and how many bids. We both found out something rather interesting. Raw llama wool was selling better than the alpaca wool and regular sheep wool was selling better than both of them. My friend now had something else she was considering, should she forget about alpacas and llamas and just get sheep.

Now she had some more research to do. The sheep wool fleeces ranged in prices according to the breed of the sheep and the length of the fleece hair. She has found out that even registered sheep are much cheaper to buy than llamas and vastly cheaper than alpacas.

My friend has now done enough research in order to make some educated decisions on whether or not she will raise sheep for wool and how much income can she expect for her investment.

Whatever business you plan on starting do research it thoroughly before you invest. Like my friend you could save yourself some money by not starting off with the wrong inventory.