Every day of the year an online seller is facing catastrophic weather. Fire, tornadoes, torrential rain fall, hurricanes and more impact eBay and Etsy sellers regularly!
To successfully deal with the impact of a natural disaster on your online business it’s smart to take some time now to make an emergency business plan. When bad weather comes your way a well thought out emergency business plan alleviates stress on you during a very challenging time.
Take Time Now To Plan!
Make A Business Emergency Plan Now!
1-Where is your inventory? If your inventory is in your home, in a storage unit or warehouse make sure your items are off the ground. Inventory is best stored during bad weather as high as possible off the ground on metal shelves. Metal shelving is sturdier than plastic. Pick shelves that the height of the shelves can be customized for your needs. Consider raising the bottom shelf height when a storm heads your way.
Decide if you are best to hang clothing on a rack
or fold and put items in plastic bins. Plastic bins can help protect your inventory from rain. For most items cardboard boxes are not a wise storage choice. They are easily saturated by rain and offer little to no protection for your inventory,
2- Put Your Store On Vacation.
Be Smart! Put Your Store On Vacation!
If you have an Etsy shop consider putting your shop on vacation. Your shop listings will be blocked from buyers. If you regularly face bad weather, and sell digital downloads, consider having 2 Etsy Shops, 1 for your regular inventory and 1 for your digital products. With 2 shops you can leave your digital shop open for sales and vacation your other. Click here to learn how to put your Etsy Shop on vacation.
eBay sellers without an eBay store think about ending all your listings. With bad weather and potentially no electricity you don’t want to face trying to mail products and answering customer service inquiries. Once the bad weather has passed relist all your products.
Investigate the fees involved an eBay store. It can be worth it to open a Basic Store for a short period of time, and use the store vacation setting to block your listings from shoppers.
Here’s how to put your eBay store on vacation.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/placing-store-vacation.html
There are 2 settings for putting an eBay store on vacation. You can block your listings or leave them available for sale. Facing horrible weather blocking your listings may be the best choice. Dealing with a tornado or a hurricane is stressful enough without thinking about shipping inventory. With horrific weather you may be without power for days. Should your inventory be portable and you have a trained co worker or family member not in the path of bad weather, moving your inventory and business to that person’s home may be a viable choice for you. If you are a Top Rated Seller with same or 1 business day handling, an extra precaution for you is to bulk edit your listings and change your handling time to 5 or more days.
3- Should Someone Have Your Passwords?
If you have a trusted friend, family member or employee you may want to give them the passwords to your account(s). If something needs to be done while you are unavailable a trusted family member or co worker can step in for you. Have them check customer messages while you are facing bad weather. If you are a drop shipper you can train someone to run your business for you during a disaster. Also consider using a Password Manager Cloud System like Last Pass where you can store your passwords and access them remotely. Last Pass has a free and premium version.
4- What About Banking And Personal Readiness?
With bad weather coming your way, decide how much cash you need on hand. Make sure your necessary medications are in ample enough supply to last you more than a few days. Put a full tank of gas in all your vehicles.
5- Back Up Your Data.
Back up all your data to a cloud service, so that if you need to log into your information while away from your home office, your information will be current. It can also be useful to back up date on a portable hard drive to take your data with you.
6- Charge all devices and Juice Packs.
Take the time to thoroughly charge all your phones and tablets. I have Mophie Juice Packs on all our business phones. They keep our smart phones fully charged for a long time.
In addition to Mophies I have portable juice packs. With Mophies and portable packs I have power for our phones for many, many hours with no power.
Make a plan that works for you and your online business. With your plan in hand should you face dangerous weather you can focus on you and your family’s personal safety. You can quickly and easily follow your business plan alleviating stress at a very challenging time.
Remember, your personal safety is more important than any sale. I personally faced Hurricaine Sandy here in NYC. My plan saved me hours of precious time that I need to prepare my family. Be prepared. Be safe. When the bad weather passes, you’ll reopen your store and welcome shoppers!
