Ilse Vandenberg launched her home textiles store carrying sixty-two products, on the reasoning that sixty-two looks like a shop while six looks like somebody trying something out. Photographing, describing and pricing the lot took her four months.
Then came nine weeks of visitors arriving and nobody buying a thing. Her instinct was the one everyone has, namely to add more, and thirty further items were already chosen before she paused and asked something else entirely.
Rather than ask what to add next, she asked what each of the sixty-two was actually contributing. Fifty-five contributed nothing at all, and several were quietly making the seven that mattered harder to find, which is what an ordered starting range showed her in a quarter of an hour.
A wide catalogue is not a bigger shop. It is a slower choice.
Each product added hands the buyer another thing to weigh up and another reason to go away and think it over. That part goes unmentioned whenever somebody tells you a full store looks credible. A visitor turning up with a loose intention and meeting sixty-two options is not spoilt for choice. They are worn out, and worn-out people close tabs.
Ilse had been anything but careless. She did what looked professional, and the price of it hid somewhere she was not looking: sixty-two products meant sixty-two sets of photographs, sixty-two descriptions and sixty-two prices to hold straight, so each one received a fraction of the attention it required. Working out a starting range is a fifteen-minute job that she did after four months of the other kind.
The fifteen minutes that removed fifty-five items
Nothing was deleted on instinct. She entered the whole list and received an ordering back, which is a different thing from a preference and much easier to act on when you like all of them. Ordering the list rather than picking favourites is the part she could not do alone.
What came back · in roughly fifteen minutes
seven, not for any magic in the number but because seven was what she could photograph properly and describe honestly in the hours she genuinely had.
four of hers looked near-identical from the buyer’s side, so they divided attention rather than adding to it. One was enough.
not further products. One obvious companion piece that anyone buying the main item would want in the same order.
a sequence to grow through, tied to sales rather than the calendar, so the shop widens because something worked instead of because it looked sparse.
Down to seven she went, rephotographing four of them properly with the hours that freed up, and the first order arrived eleven days afterwards. By the fifth month the shop was turning over a little above eleven hundred monthly, which is no fortune and was the first money it had ever earned.
The range ladder, rung by rung
Rung 1 · Open with what you can present properly – the real limit is not what you can source but how many products you can photograph, describe and price without hurrying any of them.
Rung 2 · Cut anything that competes with itself – two products the buyer cannot easily tell apart do not double your chances. They split one decision into two and slow it down.
Rung 3 · Companions before alternatives – the next product wants to be something an existing buyer would drop into the same order, not another version of what they have already picked.
Rung 4 · Widen only when something has sold repeatedly – a range that grows on evidence stays manageable. A range that grows on hope becomes four months of photography and no sales.
The rung that changed things for Ilse was the second one. Four of her sixty-two were variations a buyer could not meaningfully choose between, and removing three of them did not narrow the shop so much as make it legible – a distinction the ordering makes visible before you delete anything.
Why a quiet store always gets more added to it
Because adding is the only lever that feels within reach. Nothing sells, the reason stays invisible, and putting another item up is something achievable this evening. It also resembles effort, which is exactly what makes it so hard to resist when the alternative means sitting with the uncomfortable question of why the existing ones stay put.
The difficulty is that each new product arrives carrying the same problem as the last, and now two of them share the attention one needed. Here is what earned its place in Ilse’s store, and what did not, once the range had a number attached.
- Photographing fewer products properly rather than more badly
- Cutting near-identical items down to one
- Adding a companion item an existing buyer would want
- Growing the range only after something sells repeatedly
- Writing one honest description rather than sixty-two rushed ones
- Adding products because nothing is selling
- Stocking variations a buyer cannot tell apart
- Filling the shop to look established
- Treating a wide range as a substitute for a clear one
- Judging the store’s size against a shop with a warehouse behind it
Order is the discipline here: cut to what you can present properly, remove the products competing with each other, add the companion item, then widen only when something has actually sold more than once. A plan built around your own list is a planning tool rather than a guarantee.
What it costs beside the alternatives
Ilse could have reached the same conclusion alone by letting another year pass, which is roughly the price of the free route. Here is how the usual approaches compare with getting the range ordered in advance.
| Approach | Cost | What it does about the range |
|---|---|---|
| Add more until something sells | Free | Slower every month, because attention keeps splitting |
| Copy a big store’s range | Free | Their warehouse, their photographer, their traffic |
| An ecommerce course | $100–500 | Usually covers setting up, rarely how wide to open |
| Online Store Starter Plan | $30 | Your list, ordered, with a starting number and what to add next |
“Do more products not mean more chances of being found?” On a large marketplace there is something to that, and it is worth saying rather than brushing aside: more listings can mean more entry points. On your own store it works differently, because nothing is being found until somebody sends traffic, and until then a wide range is simply more work spread thinner. The version that holds either way is that a product you have photographed and described properly outperforms three you have not. This is general educational guidance rather than a promise of income, and results vary with the products, the market and the effort involved.
Two more who trimmed before adding
“I had thirty-one listings and eleven of them were the same mug in different glazes. Keeping two and putting the effort into their photographs did more than the other nine ever had.”
Cordelia M. · ceramics, Bend OR
“Every time a week went by without an order I put something new up, which meant I always had a fresh thing not selling. Stopping the additions and fixing the four I had was the first month anything moved.”
Emeka A. · leather goods, Dayton OH
Once the range is right, the next problem is that nobody has heard of the shop, and the Digital Marketing Starter Kit is built for that part. Results vary; this is general guidance and not a promise of income.
Five short answers, and an opening range lands the same day: how many products your own situation genuinely supports, which of your candidates are competing against each other, and what belongs first once something sells. Everything works from what you can present properly rather than from what a shop is supposed to look like, which tends to be the difference between opening in a fortnight and opening in four months.
*Individual results may vary.
