"If you love something, then I think you can make it work, I think you really can."

April 5, 2016 - PRLog -- Ecommerce business Lente Designs has been running for over 6 years by herself with casual staff over busy periods, Lente Designs started very slowly running 3 days a week.

Hi everyone, Helen from Lente Designs shares her incredible journey on SellingOnlineToday!

Some thoughts from the interview
"The business started very slowly to begin with. I was working 3 days a week in a facilities managing role which I was hating, my husband wasn't very happy in the job he had"

"We took some money from the credit card and we invested in some fabrics and linked up with other businesses and other factories and basically worked really hard to set up the business."

"It was very long days and we did it weekends. I guess one of the things to say to people is make sure you love it before you commit to it because it you don't love it; it is really going to tire you out."

"I have always wanted to do something creative, which this gives me the chance to do."

"My husband is the technical person he does a lot of the technical side of the design but I get to design the fabrics and the colours and I spend many an hour with a piece of canvas on my desk with a lot of pantone colours trying to work out what is fun."

"When we started 6 years ago we really didn't have any competition at all. There really was a gap in the market because the iPad 1 was out but the iPad 2 was just being released and Amazon was just releasing the Kindle e reader called the kindle keyboard and they were kind of pieces of technology that women were saying actually I want to use as well."

"Some people have really got it. They have the drive, the aspiration, the passion and the reason for doing it."

"The things that we struggle with the most it is working out which ones to go with and sometimes it will be customers that will literally be calling or emailing saying come on I need this one."

"You have to wait and see what the feedback is on the tablets because you can't be an owner of all the tablets and make good use of them so as a small business try to pick (the best seller.)"

"I think one of the hardest things I find is self-promotion. It's a horrible thing to do and it is not something I do naturally but my husband was pushing and the product was receiving such lovely feedback from the customers that we wanted the business to expand, we wanted to capitalise on what we were doing."

"Sometimes you think you are knowing what you are doing but sometimes you need to test the waters around you."

"If you get a bad review you take it personally and I have had tears at the desk thinking that you haven't even talked to me."

"(FBA) is brilliant especially if you are trying to mix many roles. The beauty is we actually went away for the week with our son and I could still let the business roles. Amazon was able to fulfil those orders for me. As long as I plan and as long as I have the stock there."

"You learn over time to test the waters with your product and try to say ok we are doing 3 or 4 of these but who else is doing it and how best can I set the product up to maximise the exposer."

" At the end of the day sometimes it is not about making money. If we have made a mistake we ship out straight away. I make sure the customer is happy even before I as what is wrong with the old case."

"We have been selling on eBay from the start as well. The first thing we did was our own site and Amazon and then we moved on to eBay. Unless you have masses of time or a big team you can't do everything at once."

"You have got to manage all the software, all the ads and all the promotions and each system that does is differently. You can buy software to do it all in one place."

"It is such a massive platform, the amount of people who just use it, it becomes so much part of shopping online. You do an Amazon, like Google it has become a phrase"

"In order to make yourself stand out amongst everyone else your feedback and your reviews are absolutely critical."

"Try and do a little bit of research."

Best Advice: "Always make sure you have cash in the bank."

What do they offer?

"Our gadgets should be chic and shouted about, not covered in cheap plastic!" Lente Designs think there's plenty of   middle ground for cool, original accessories that aren't made of nasty black fake leather and don't cost a fortune. Covers and bags for phones, ebook readers and tablets that make people say "Hey, I love your cover, where did you get it from?". It's time to get creative - life's too short for fake leather.

Listen online: http://www.sellingonlinetoday.com/podcast-interview/lente-designs-2/

Listen on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/sellingonlinetodays-podcast/id980276311