How to sell shoes online

Athletic shoes, kids’ shoes, dress shoes—what do you want to specialize in? What types of shoes will sell well?

First, consider how you’ll source the shoes. For instance, you might find a supplier, work with a manufacturer, or create shoes yourself. If the latter is the right route for you, check out Amazon Handmade—an online destination for handcrafted goods from artisans.

Take inspiration from Susan Petersen, a new mom who handcrafted a pair of baby moccasins that marked the beginning of her successful brand, Freshly Picked.

Here are a couple other approaches you can take to figure out what niches might be right for your brand.

To make sure there’s demand, consider customer needs. For example, customers might want sandals for a beach vacation, or snow boots for a ski trip.

Look at the demographics of your customer base, such as age, gender, location, and income level. Try out Brand Analytics within Amazon Seller Central to get insights on who’s clicking and viewing products, identify search term patterns, and more.

Zero in on the right type of shoes to sell by researching your niche. Do some digging through social media sites like Instagram and Facebook to see what types of shoes are popular among different age groups and demographics. You can also look at your competitors. Who else is selling similarproducts? Analyze their customer reviews.

Another way to find shoe product ideas is by browsing Amazon listings. Go to the Clothes, Shoes, and Apparel category in Amazon search and explore the various sub-categories. See what’s already selling well by consulting the Best Sellers list—but keep seasonality in mind. For example, swim shoes might be hot in the spring and summer months, but sales might dip in fall and winter. Another place to see seasonal trends in action is the Movers & Shakers list.

Learn more about how Product Opportunity Explorer works and tips for building your pricing strategy.

As part of your ecommerce strategy, create an online storefront complete with your branding, secure methods for processing payments, and other essentials. You might build one from scratch, hire a developer, sell through social media, or create one in the Amazon store.

If you decide to go with an Amazon storefront, Amazon’s seller tools can help. With the Amazon storefronts builder, you can customize a storefront with templates and drag-and-drop tiles. Then, enhance product listings with A+ Content, adding videos, images, shoe size charts, and more. You can even create an About Us page to help customers connect with your business.

Some sellers start out by fulfilling orders themselves, even storing inventory in an available space like an extra room or garage. As sales grow, they might decide to outsource fulfillment tasks to a third party.

To get products into the hands of customers, Fulfilled by Merchant allows you to handle storage, packing, and shipping products to and from buyers. FBM could be a great option if your business model enables you to manage this on your own.

An alternative is Fulfillment by Amazon. Enroll in FBA to store products in Amazon fulfillment centers, where specialists can process orders and returns on your behalf. Or, you can use both FBM and FBA. Try Multi-Channel Fulfillment to meet your fulfillment needs.

Whether you’re looking to outsource excess products you don’t have space to store, or want to scale up during holidays and other seasonal upticks in sales, learn more about ecommerce fulfillment to explore your options.