Digital Commerce Excursion: Setting Up a Webshop in One Evening

This is a short story about how a group of people with no experience in online commerce set up a webshop before nightfall.

On a dark Wednesday evening 30 Aalto students from Athene and Computer Science Guild (TiK) arrived at out shop on Eerikinkatu. Roadies welcomed the future hopes of digital commerce with some bubbles and freshly delivered treats from Fafa’s. With tummies and glasses full, the students were in for trip down the memory lane (see picture below). We quickly ran through what Columbia Road does and how we see ecommerce before the students were organized in the good old shortest to tallest line and separated into three teams. The teams were given a digital commerce oriented task to accommodate the specific skill sets of both Athene and Computer Science Guild.

The task: Set up a webshop, create a collection out of items available, price them accordingly and design & implement a marketing campaign on a designated shop window.

Time: 4 hours for setup, 2 weeks to run the webshop

Reward: Fame. Oh, and all the profit from the sales the teams are able to make.

On the day before we had set up an online store on Shopify platform, but that was all the preparations. The teams took to the task with unexpected seriousness and spend a fair amount of time honing their business plans before actually beginning to work on the webshop, shop windows and product images and descriptions. Like actual businesses, the teams split into taskforces to tackle different aspects of the assignment: someone managed the ICT aka Shopify, some took product pictures in the photo studio and some got their hands dirty with making our shop windows look amazing.

Just do it!

Based on this experiment we can say it really is possible to set up a webshop in one day without any prior experience, if you choose the platform wisely. Any business thinking about questions like should we set up a webshop or how to do it, think no further, just do it! Sure, taking high quality product photos and coming up with product descriptions can feel like a hassle, and you might run into a few glitches with technology, but nothing a little googling wouldn't solve. It’s possible. And actually, we’d recommend it. The costs for a SaaS (Software as a Service) webshop are low and the pros easily override the cons. Learn by doing. Set up something, start small if you like, and see what works and what needs fixing. Find out the issues as you go, don’t fear to make mistakes. Have fun, it shows!

To support the student teams, visit the webshop they have set up at shop.columbiaroad.com and purchase some of the products (collections seen below). If you feel like taking a stroll, come by Eerikinkatu 5 to take in the window magic created by the students. All profit goes in full to the student guilds Athene and Computer Science Guild (TiK).