Nikki Strickland

SMART LIVING COMPANY

 

 

 

 

Can you make money with Smart Living Company (Previously SMC)?

 

 

 

For those searching for SMC (Specialty Merchandise): In April 2012 SMC announced a change in name from SMC to Smart Living Company. This lens has been updated to reflect the new name as well as provide important information on changes being made to improve the company.

Of course there is potential out there just like any other program. So what are the chances you will go from never having sold anything like this before to one of those very wealthy top ranking Smart Living Company sales person. Not very good to be completely honest but why not be fair to the system and actually learn about it before we judge it.

I have been using Smart Living Company for over 4 years. I have used this for a side income and average about $3,000-$4,000 in sales per year the last 3 years. I would not call that a smashing success but I sure wouldn't call it a failure by any means. One year when I was able to stay at home and dedicate more time to my sales I averaged much higher sales. While I really enjoy selling online it isn't as reliable as a steady paycheck. Any successful business requires time and dedication.

On weeks where I only put in 2 to 4 hours of real effort I see about $70-$280 in sales which is at worst case $17.50 per hour and best case $140 per hour in sales for my efforts. This of course doesn't take into consideration for any costs associated with those sales. My costs are purely based on online and in person sales only. I do not have a brick and mortar location. The venue in which you advertise and sell your merchandise has a huge impact on your expenses.

Having researched SMC (as it was at the time when I started) quite a bit before I decided to do it I went ahead even though I could find thousands of individuals who claimed it was a scam.

The problem with most of the claims is that so many are ill informed in their decision making. You can tell from their discussions or claims that they did not follow the plan laid out on either the website or the descriptions in the infomercials. Commercials sound bites are just to promote a specific product or service so an individual should keep that in mind as they listen to how wonderful a system that can make you wealthy nearly overnight.

As they say, if it is too good to be true it probably is. A statistic that is rarely proven incorrect. Does that mean it isn't worth trying? Absolutely not! It just means you should develop a good business plan (think big and optimistically but plan realistically with achievable figures) before you begin. Consider it very similar to setting a difficult New Year's resolution or deciding to go back to school for a new career at a late age. Like those life challenges making money using Smart Living Company can be done successfully if you are truly prepared to do the work involved.

 

 

 

How does Smart Living Company work?

Information on how the program works.

 

 

 

Smart Living Company is a service that more or less is like any other drop shipper service except unlike places such as Doba where they simply provide you a system that connects you to the manufacturer or company who has the product and charge you a fee for it Smart Living Company actually buys and warehouses thousands of products and mass orders catalogs and supplies you can use to sell their products.

Smart Living Company buys products from many manufacturers in the home and garden decor industry however they pick up various items that are shown on television or maybe they find a way to bargain for good prices on close out products. Some examples of the brands they may carry are Home Locomotion, Cloudworks, Natural Solution, Wyland and Sesame Street just to name a very few.

It is important that before you jump into something like this that you understand what you are getting into. I will go into more details on how Smart Living Company works and how you can make money using Smart Living Company as your drop shipping provider.

I want to give you just a little background history for myself to help you understand my experience level prior to my signing up for Smart Living Company. I have actually been selling online for about 8 years starting out on eBay and expanding to my own sites for extra cash on the side. That being said I have had some experience with the get rich schemes out there and “it's so easy that it sells itself” type of programs so I didn’t go into Smart Living Company expecting to get rich.

Since I had been “scammed” before I thought I should check it out in detail before I tried it and of course I called my mother who had been a member in the past to get some well needed advice. I am glad I did before I signed up so I knew what to expect. My most successful ventures have been selling home decor items and Tupperware.

Smart Living Company is specialty merchandise (primarily home and garden decor) provider that gives you the option of buying from them and having the item “drop shipped” directly to the person you are selling to or ordering in bulk directly to you for you to resale either in a “brick and mortar” business, door to door, or kiosk and similar to Tupperware or Avon you can get catalogs and host parties or go to the distribution center and make large purchases and not have a shipping expense.

Smart Living Company has many options for purchasing as I said you can actually drive there to pick up your order, order online, mail in an order, phone in an order or fax your order. They do not charge a “drop ship” fee while I can assure you there are lots of wholesale drop shippers who charge anywhere from $1.00 per order to $8.00 per order to simply ship the item for you or broker the deal between you and the manufacturer plus you still pay for shipping.

The standard shipping rate has been pretty consistent around the $8.95 mark as of today, March 30, 2013, this is still the amount being charged by Smart Living Company for base shipping meaning most items under 1-2 pounds which covers most small dollar items. I am pointing this out because if you use UPS as your shipping method to calculate the shipping you charge to your clients a 1 - 2 pound product rate is typically about $9.00 – $10.49 now using the UPS calculator. That is a difference of $0.05 – $1.54 in potential additional profit.

The idea here is to really try to upsell because it expensive to pay someone to package that one little item and it is basically not making a profit from you selling just one $.95 cent product. You may think this doesn’t happen but it does. Often I get orders online for one very small item and they will gladly pay $9.00 – $10.49 shipping to get a $1.00 clearance item. Bizarre but very common!

When this happens you have to honor the sale or you will ruin your reputation so unfortunately unless you either set your online store up to only accept a minimum order and chance losing those little customers or find a way to shift little buyers into big buyers through special offers or strategically designed website design that places related items all around the cart for example to boost sales. Upsells are often key to success!

Now if you are selling at a party or door to door this may not be an issue if you order all items at once and deliver them personally which of course this is not likely to be a problem if you sell in a brick and mortar store.

When you sign up you will get access to the Smart Living Company website that is searchable like any other website, has a nice menu with links and the front page is full of links taking you to resourceful areas of the site and to the lowest cost products.

They have specialty kits that group together specific items that you can order in bulk for example recently they offered a Valentine’s Day kit that had over 40 items and it was priced 21% lower than what it would cost you to buy all of those same items individually from them. These kits are great for having a party, setting up at flea markets, or selling in a brick and mortar location. I sometimes buy them and focus my eBay listings or my advertising on those items for my local area ads where I could deliver and not have to charge shipping since this increases sales.

The costs involved if you purchase the membership online or if you are going to call in be sure to find out what they are offering currently. Right now you can choose from three different options.

Option 1 – “Buyer’s Club” Free membership, 20% discount on purchases, No membership kit, no live personal business consultation, customer service available by email only but it does let you buy online plus you can take advantage of same day drop shipping.

Option 2 – “Premiere” $19.95 a month for membership, 40% discount on purchases, membership kit included, 1 hour a month of live personal business consultation, customer services available via phone and email and same day drop shipping.

Option 3 – “Enterprise” $39.95 a month for membership, 66% discount on purchases, membership kit included, unlimited live personal business consultation, customer services available via phone and email and same day drop shipping.

Please don’t take me wrong on this because I know how desperate you can feel when you are down and out financially but if you can’t produce the $19.95 a month or $39.95 to get started in this program it is very likely not going to benefit you unless you are a highly motivated sales person who isn’t afraid to go up and ask someone for a sale face to face.

There are many reasons that is true but the biggest one is the massive costs involved in operating an online store and/or getting it set up if you do not have website design skills or a lot of time on your hands to learn it. I will cover more of that when I do the segment “How can I sell Smart Living Company online?”.

For individuals who signed up before the name change you will continue to have an annual fee unless you let it lapse for too long. If it lapses for even a day then it costs more to renew the first time after the lapse.

After you sign up you will receive a welcome kit and up to 8 weeks of a personal coach access via phone and internet. If you do not have a phone or internet this will be a hard business to do but not impossible because you can mail orders in but that would limit the type of sales you could perform to brick and mortar or flea market type sales I would imagine.

Catalogs are fairly reasonably priced ranging from $.58 to $4.00 each depending on which catalog and lower during clearance times/end of the season or when you order in bulk. You will receive one of each catalog available when you get your kit along with a white price list book which is your prices and a yellow price list which is a price list you would use to sale wholesale to a sub-wholesalers under you or maybe to a school or business who is making a really large purchase or businesses who want to resale the products.

It is very important unless you are already know everything there is to know about selling these products to work closely with your personal coach during that first few weeks. Do not make the mistakes many others have of letting this time lapse while you sit on your hands and waiting for the money to magically roll in because it just doesn’t work that way.

There are some very useful tools that I will add more about throughout the page to help you get an idea of what is available to help you succeed or maybe you have been trying to sell Smart Living Company but aren’t doing as well as you hoped. This page can help you make the decision to use Smart Living Company or not use Smart Living Company without pushing onto you some other product. I remember looking for just plain English advice and reading thousands of posts and comments that nearly all ended with “I found something better go to such and such site” type remarks. I do sell Smart Living Company but I am just passing along some useful information that I think is important in making that final decision.