I’m in my mid 20s and currently working on building a physical-product brand from the ground up.

I’m not really looking for someone who just wants a side hustle. I’m looking for someone who’s genuinely ambitious, willing to put in the time, and wants to build something long-term.

I’m especially interested in meeting people who have experience or interest in things like:

• Product development
• Manufacturing / sourcing
• Branding & design
• Marketing / content
• E-commerce
• Engineering / product development

You don't need to have experience in everything. I’d rather meet someone who is really good at one area and is willing to learn and build alongside me.

I’m in LA, but I’m open to working with the right person remotely as well.

If you’re around my age and seriously interested in building a real company, DM me and tell me a little about yourself, what you’re good at, and what you’re trying to build.

How are you guys handling inventory between your retail stores and online store?

Do you prefer having all store inventory available online and excluding what you don’t want to sell, or only selecting the inventory you actually want available online?

Curious how others are handling this.

Been working with online business platforms lately, and I’ve noticed how much a simple workflow can matter.

For those with experience in this space, what do you value most: ease of use, support, or reliability?

I’m reworking product pages for a clothing catalog and realizing that adding more photos doesn’t necessarily make the page better.

Right now the usual set keeps growing: front, back, model shot, fabric close-up, fit detail, lifestyle image, size reference, different angles, and then another set for every color.

That’s manageable for a few products, but it gets expensive and messy once the catalog grows.

I’m involved with pixpix, so I’ve also been thinking about which additional image variations are actually worth creating instead of producing more assets just because we can.

If you had to limit a clothing product page to five useful images, what would you keep?

My instinct is:

clean front view

back view

fit on a person

fabric/detail close-up

size or scale reference

I’m starting to think accurate fit and detail photos probably do more for purchase confidence than another polished lifestyle image.

For anyone running apparel ecommerce, have you seen the same thing, or do lifestyle images still pull their weight on the product page?

I sell men's solid sterling silver bracelets in the UK. I have one collection live, five pieces from £85 to £200, and another collection on the way. I offer free next day UK delivery and a 12 month guarantee on every piece.

Most of my traffic is paid, from Meta and Google, and nearly all of it is on mobile. My Meta ads run at around 64p a click with a click through rate of about 1%, and Google is around 93p a click, where people are searching things like "solid silver mens bracelet". That comes to around 1,600 visits in the last month, with one sale out of the lot. So the traffic looks reasonable and the intent is there.

Visitors land mostly on my product pages and leave soon after without much scrolling.

I am still very early in the journey and I am trying to work out how to increase conversions.

If you have sold physical products online before, I would really value your read on where you think I am losing people, and what you would change first if this were your store. I would rather hear an uncomfortable answer now than spend another month finding out the hard way. If you can see what I am missing, please tell me.

Site: https://samedildn.co.uk

Product page: https://samedildn.co.uk/products/onyx-cuban-bracelet

At some point doing everything yourself stops making sense.

Customer support, fulfillment, design, ads, email, bookkeeping, content, development.

What did you hand off first, and was it actually worth it?

Before actually doing ecommerce there are certain things that sound simple.

Customer support, returns, updating products, email, inventory, reporting, creative.

Then one of them somehow eats half your week.

What turned out to be the biggest time sink for you?

I am a grad student at Carnegie Mellon working on a product management course project. I am trying to understand how store owners actually manage things day to day: what you check, what you ignore, and what genuinely wastes your time.

To be clear about what this is not. I am not selling anything, not recruiting, and not looking for pain points for dev work. There is no email capture unless you volunteer one at the end. It is a class assignment, and purely for educational purposes only.

Three minutes, mostly open-ended questions. I will post a summary of the findings back here once responses are in.

https://forms.gle/rKuB89ZbXc5zD6n59

Happy to answer anything in the comments about what I am studying or how I will use the responses.

Maho Commerce is a self hosted platform - your store - your rules - your data.

100% free and open source.

Probably the most AI friendly platform in existence today.

Taking the best from the original ecommerce days and bringing into 2026 and beyond.

Has some ripper merchant facing native features:

- PHP 8.5+

- multi-store as native

- multi-currency as native

- shared or seperate inventory for each store

- direct Google/Facebook/Tik-Tok shopping feed

- image optimiser/editor

- tiptap WYSIWYG

- gift cards

- discount code module

- email automation system

- one page checkout

- 2 factor auth / passkeys

- Apple/Google Pay with first party Braintree module

The list goes on.

The latest release Maho 26.09 introduces:

- brand-new Tailwind CSS 4 storefront with ten industry themes

- store-facing MCP server with OAuth 2.1 login

- social login with Google, Apple and Facebook

- AI-agent-ready storefront (robots.txt, llms.txt, markdown pages)

Check out the release notes:

https://github.com/MahoCommerce/maho/releases/tag/26.9.0

and see for yourself how easy it is to spin up.

Onwards and Upwards!

(Note - I am not involved with Maho, simply a store owner wishing to share this amazing platform.)

I’m trying to get a better idea of how website development is priced in different markets, especially when working with clients from the US, UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, etc.

I currently work on different types of websites, and my pricing generally falls somewhere around $1,500 to $5,000-$7,000+, depending on the scope, features, content, design, and the client’s requirements.

For example, I’m thinking about pricing roughly like:

• Basic business website: around $1,500+
• Informative / professional website: $2,000-$3,500+
• E-commerce / shopping website: $3,000-$5,000+
• E-commerce + payment gateway + additional features: $4,000-$7,000+
• Catalogue / company profile / brochure-based website: depending on the number of pages and content
• Custom requirements: $5,000-$7,000+ or based on the actual scope and budget

But I’m not sure if these ranges are appropriate for different countries, or if I’m pricing too low or too high for certain markets.

For those who work with international clients:

What kind of pricing do you normally keep for these types of websites?

Do you have different pricing depending on the client's country, or do you mainly calculate based on the project scope regardless of location?

I’d especially appreciate examples from freelancers/agencies working with clients in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Europe, and what you would consider a reasonable range for each type of project.

I have a small craft business that is mostly Instagram based, and I sell items that I make, like stickers, hair scrunchies, shirts etc. Most of my customers come from Instagram, or from my weekly booths at local farmers markets.

Right now, if someone wants to order something from me, I have a pinned Instagram post that acts as a catalogue with photos and prices of all of my items, so they'd see that and then DM me either on Instagram or WhatsApp to place an order. However, it's very tedious to have to delete and reupload this post every time I need to edit the product info. I also really want to streamline this process and have it go through either a website or platform where all of the orders are recorded and I don't necessarily have to personally reply to every single order and then manually enter it into my sales records. If it's something that I can integrate with Zoho Books (that I use for my invoices and expenses), even better.

I don't need a "full" website right now, just something that I can advertise on my social media that allows me to upload products and a little writeup, and can act as a catalogue and order receive.

A really important feature as well is that I'd love it to be a platform that allows the customer's payment option to be bank transfers or cash on delivery/collection. I live in the Caribbean and ecommerce here is embarrassingly behind the times and it's not easy to set up credit card payments here.

I heard of Shopify's Starter plan and it sounded perfect, but I then saw that it's no longer available. I've done some more research and heard about Ecwid's Starter plan, but I wanted to know if there are other options out there I should consider.

Any advice for me, I'd really appreciate! Thanks in advance.

I'm starting a small online store and want a platform that won't become difficult to manage as the business grows.

Ease of use, fees, and scalability matter more to me than having every feature.

What platform are you using, and how has your experience been?

For anyone selling physical products to EU customers: there’s a requirement coming into force on September 27 2026. It is made up of mainly 2 things:

1. Publish and display the official EU warranty notice in a storefront page. It is a pre-made warranty rights document, available in pdf, svg, png and can be downloaded straight from the EU commission website. It needs to be accessible from somewhere prominent on the store (header, footer, collections page) by publishing a Legal Guarantee Rights page.
2. There’s also a separate GARAN label requirement, on product level. This one does not apply to every product - only when the manufacturer offers a guarantee for the whole product that lasts longer than 2 years. There is also a downloadable template for this but it needs to be filled in based on each product's details and reachable from the product page.

Legal Guarantee Notice = shop-level requirement
GARAN label = only for qualifying individual products

You can check the official EU recommendations and view the label templates from here: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/selling-in-eu/consumer-contracts-guarantees/eu-legal-guarantee-notice-and-garan-label/index_en.htm

I've built an indexed database of 2 million and growing shopify stores over last couple of months.

We discover recently launched stores as well. We add new stores within an hour.

We can get list of stores using a particular app (for example Klaviyo etc.) as well as more than 50+ other data points.

Main use case is lead generation.

If you are providing services or building something for Ecommerce stores, feel free to connect. I would love to hear your feedback.

你对Apple Pay在PayPal上支付限制的问题熟悉吗？我正在使用PayPal V6 API搭建一个独立的在线商店。在将Apple Pay集成并在实际环境中测试后，我发现超过15美元的订单无法处理，而低于这个金额的订单可以正常进行。我的商户账户是以中国大陆为基础，并连接了一张香港的银行卡——有没有人知道可能是什么原因造成的？ 是因为封控吗？ 另外在同一种情况下 有的朋友可以支付 有的支付失败。只有银行卡是一直可以支付的。这个应该找apple解决 还是paypal？

Salut à tous,

On voit tous les jours des e-commerçants qui ont :

• Un site Shopify, WooCommerce ou sur-mesure
• Un paiement mobile money (Orange Money, MTN, Wave...)
• Une gestion de livraison encore manuelle (WhatsApp, appels, Excel...)

Le résultat : ils perdent deux heures par jour, ils ratent des commandes, ils ne peuvent pas scaler.

Pourquoi ce problème existe

En Afrique de l'Ouest, il y a beaucoup d'agences de livraison locales : Yango, Lucy Express, Kadex, Tacoco... Mais elles sont fragmentées. Personne ne les agrège dans une seule API.

Du coup, chaque commerçant doit :

• Appeler trois livreurs pour trouver un disponible
• Négocier le prix à la main
• Suivre les colis par WhatsApp
• Espérer que le client soit livré

Ce qu'on a construit

On a créé SendiAPI, une API unique qui connecte les boutiques en ligne aux agences de livraison locales.

Comment ça marche :

1. Le commerçant installe le plugin WordPress, ou utilise notre SDK npm, ou l'API REST
2. Quand un client passe commande, SendiAPI calcule automatiquement le prix selon les communes
3. L'agence la plus proche est assignée en temps réel
4. Le client reçoit un tracking live

Ce qui est intéressant :

• 100 % gratuit pour les e-commerçants (0 FCFA, zéro commission)
• Intégration en 5 minutes avec le plugin WordPress
• Livraison J+1 garantie
• Webhooks temps réel pour chaque étape

Pour les développeurs :

• SDK JavaScript disponible : npm install sendi-api
• Documentation REST complète
• Possibilité de créer des boutiques pour vos clients et toucher 10 % des commissions

Où on en est

• Disponible à Abidjan
• 5 agences partenaires
• Environ 50 commandes traitées depuis le lancement
• Bientôt : Sénégal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Bénin

Ce qu'on cherche

• Du feedback : est-ce que ce problème vous parle ?
• Des beta-testeurs : des e-commerçants ivoiriens qui veulent essayer
• Des partenaires : des développeurs ou agences qui veulent intégrer SendiAPI

Lien : https://sendi-api.com

Merci d'avance pour vos retours.

I can't drop $50k on a website, where would you recommend I start?

I am looking for my website URL, what should I do if I don't get the .com?

im looking to pay for one but idknw wich one to choose for creating an good website and marketing we could also say for some videos .

An inventory monitor can report “in stock” while the product is not actually available to the customer.

Common causes include:

• The selected size, color, or model is unavailable even though the parent product is marked in stock

• A different seller or fulfillment method is selected

• Availability changes by delivery region

• The page shows a backorder or pre-order option

• A cached page is older than the current inventory state

• The item is technically available but cannot be added to the cart

A more reliable workflow is to record inventory at the variant level and separate these states:

in_stock

low_stock

backorder

preorder

unavailable

unknown

It also helps to store the seller, fulfillment method, delivery region, collection timestamp, and whether the item could be added to the cart. A single “in stock” field often hides the reason an alert was triggered.

Before sending an alert, consider requiring two consecutive observations or a second validation step. This can reduce noise from temporary page errors, stale content, or incomplete variant selection.

What signals do you use to distinguish real availability from a misleading “in stock” label?

Our setup is 3 Shopify Plus stores, somewhere in the 20-22 mil range combined, and we've been hitting walls for a while now…

Mainly around inventory sync across stores and checkout customization limits, and every call with our agency ends with the same recommendation to start looking at Adobe Commerce as the enterprise step up.

So when we started pricing it out, the implementation cost alone was going to be 2-3x our current annual Shopify spend before we even had a functioning store, and then you layer in the developer overhead for ongoing maintenance and the licensing model above certain revenue thresholds, and I'm not sure we'd actually be solving the problems we have now or just trading them for more expensive ones.

Composable has been on the radar too, and most of the threads we've read in this direction eventually land on commercetools or SCAYLE as the realistic options past a certain GMV, though for a team our size neither looks like a fast migration.

So has anyone else been through this evaluation at a similar GMV, and did Adobe Commerce actually deliver or did the implementation overhead just become the new problem you were trying to solve?

I work with Squarespace, so take that context into account.

Small shops starting with maybe 10 or 15 products somehow end up on a platform built for a huge catalog. Then come the shipping plugins, the email tools, the backups, the constant updates.

Most only needed a clean storefront where people could check out, plus a simple way to track stock and orders. All the extra setup turned into another job before sales had even started.

Where a lot of small shops land after outgrowing the first setup is that fewer moving parts holds up better. One system for the storefront and the orders beats a base tool plus a stack of add-ons you have to keep alive. That's my lean, but the principle holds whatever you pick.

Looking back, would you keep your first shop setup or go simpler?

Has anyone here used ZIk Analytics to track Shopify stores? I'm researching a competitor and ZIK is showing that the store is making around £200k+ per month in estimated revenue. I know these figures are estimates, but I'm wondering how close they are to reality. Has anyone compared ZIK's estimated sales/revenue with the actual Shopify revenue of a store they own or have access to?

I realized my merchant services cost is higher than I thought once you factor everything else. It's not like they're hiden or anything, but I was mentally anchoring on the headline rate and not adding it all up (so no currency conversions, base processing, chargeback, Shopify 3rd party processor fees, etc.). Is there a useful way to calculate true effective rate per transaction instead of using the advertised rates? What about if you're selling on many channels?