I Spent 6 Months Building This E-Commerce Business transcript

This is me building an e-commerce business from scratch for six months with zero experience. [Music] >> Because today you're going to see me set up a e-commerce business from building a small fulfillment unit, buying machinery, ordering stock from China, marketing, and fulfilling orders. All to find out what it feels like to build an e-commerce business from scratch with zero experience. Now before I tell you what e-commerce business we're making, we are going to need some sort of space.

Now I'm going to go find space and we are going to turn this space into a small fulfillment setup. We will be storing the products here, making the products here and fulfilling all the orders and I'm going to set up and after that I'll tell you what e-commerce business we really making. Right. So this is the unit that I have settled for. Now there's quite a lot of things in here that I need to clean out. So, what we're going to do is I'm going to give it a good clean and then I'll come back to you with where is, how much is, and what work do we need to do and all the nice things.

But now, [Music] ladies and gentlemen, this is what our small format unit looks like. Now, this is in Manchester City Center and the rent is £600 a month. Now, that is the first business expense for this challenge, but this unit is not yet fit for purpose. There's quite a few things that we need to change. Like, >> I'm going to fix the lighting, the carpet, and the wall. >> Yep. I started with the lighting, and I put up four new panel lights.

And this is what it was looking like. This cost £9461. Now, after the lights, we had to put slabboards. As you can see, the place never had no walls. So, we put slabboards, and this is what it was looking like. Now, after that, only thing that was left to do was sanding. Now, this is the first and last time I'll ever sand because I have just finished sanding this place and I think I've done a great job. Now, the next thing that we have to do is flooring.

Yes, the old daddy carpet had to go. I managed to find somebody on Facebook Marketplace that was selling this used laminate floor for £120. Now, if I had bought this brand new, it would have cost us £600. in the dark. [Music] And this is what the place look like after we fit the flooring. Only thing left to do after this was painting. [Music] Now painting. This was the first time that I've ever painted and I painted.

I painted I painted and painted an Aquart letter. This is what the place looked like. [Music] Now the place was coming along nice. The only thing left to do is put the shelves. I'm going to put the shelves and I'll sit down and tell you what business we are going to put here. And then after that, I'll show you what the place looks like. [Music] >> Right. I know a lot of you are wondering, but what business are we making now?

Just hear me up. These phone cases make thousands of dollars in passive income every month. over a million dollars a month selling iPhone cases. >> Sold over 15 million phone cases. >> $10,000 a month selling phone cases. >> Most cases range from $50 to $90. >> We are making phone cases. Just hear me out. We're not making the simple basic phone cases. And I know you're going to say, "But there's a lot of people making phone cases on the internet." But these people are not making brands out of these phone cases.

You are going to see me build a phone case brand from scratch and then take it all the way where we get a finished product and put it on the shelf. Now, why phone cases? Well, as of April 2025, there's 4.7 billion smartphone users and 68% of them use phone cases. This means the phone case industry is valued at 24.5 billion and it's 80% females that buy phone cases, which is good because for anyone that's doing e-commerce brands, they will always tell you focus on female products.

I'm not saying this is entirely a female product, but it's more females that buy phone cases, which is good, right? So, this is the fulfillment center or the storage unit, whatever you want to call it. You've seen me build it, and I'm going to run you through how much money we've spent. Now, we've done the slabboards. Now that we done the slabboards and then we painted it and that cost I think £250. Don't quote me, but at the end of the video I'll give you a proper breakdown of what we done.

Now the flooring I managed to get it from Facebook marketplace. This was only £120 and then we done a shelves. Now for the shelves at the minute it's on the house that shelves but obviously I got to give them something. So at the end of the video I'll tell you how much money we spent on the shelves. Now, this table we spend only £50 because we actually custom made this step ourselves. We have this bad boy cuz you know these days any business needs e-commerce.

This one is where I'm going to be. This is where I'm going to be shooting the content from. You've seen me build a whole thing from scratch, but you've not heard the business plan or the brand name. So the next segment is going to feel like Shark Tank and I'm going to pitch a business plan to a bunch of people. So the branding now this is not something that I've just thought about yesterday. There's three names that have come to mind.

See the first name that came to mind was Kesley. I didn't really like these because he just felt so close to Castify. And then the second name was Case Planet and it just felt like a brand that would sell kids phone cases. Now, this brings me to the one that I am going to go with and it is project cases. The reason why I feel like this is so fitting of the brand that we're trying to build is because it gives this impression of every case that comes from the brand is a project.

And the slogan can be something so simple like your phone, our project always. Onto the business plan of things. Now, this I'm going to speedrun through it. Our target market. The target market is very simple. We are targeting people that are like youthful, creatives, people that are not scared to express themselves. Now our competitors testify, testify, testify, testify, testify, testify, testify. Gap in the market.

The gap in the market that I found is look at the testify prices £70 for a phone case. And the quality is not too bad. It's just there. Imagine we can provide the same quality at a slightly affordable price. Now, the budget, the budget for this is 10,000 marketing. See, this is where I need you lot's help. A lot of times when I make this sort of videos, you lot see something and you leave your suggestions in the comments.

And this is not going to be different. If you think you have a way that I can market this business better, just let me know in the comment section. If it was up to me, I would use organic marketing and paid ads. Now, I know a lot you are wondering, but what type of phone cases are we going to make? Now, these are the type of funk cases that we're going to make. The first thing that I did is I went to Facebook and picked up some bin lins.

And this is where we're going to store the precious phone cases. And the second thing that we need is now UV printers. This is the most, and I repeat, this is the most important thing that we need. Remember, we are not making hit phone cases or DIY phone cases. No, we are making the big boy phone cases. and all your big brands and your favorite funkus brands use UV printers. Now, I am not a stranger to UV printers. That is a UV printer.

And I bought the printer in 2023 and I paid $3,360. But we cannot use this printer for this business. Why? Because it only prints on one type of funkus. As you've seen, we are going to be making a wide range of funkuses. So, this we cannot really use. The second reason why we can't use this printer is its print time for one phone case is 8 minutes, but it does print very high quality phone cases. So, I've done some research.

We just need a UV printer that can print six phone cases at once, and the print time should be about 4 minutes or 5 minutes. Now, I spent the next couple weeks looking for a UV printer, and as you will see later on in the video, I managed to find one, but it nearly cost us the whole challenge, as you will see. But for now, let's move on to the second most important thing, which is now ordering blank phone cases is very important.

This is where we get to choose the phone case designs that we are going to make. There's plenty of them on Alibaba and all the big brands that you know about get their designs from here. Yep. So, I went to Alibaba. I spent £60 on a couple of samples and 3 weeks later, right? So, the day has come. Now in these two boxes is the phone samples that we ordered from Alibaba. Now there's two things that's going to happen. We might go through these and we find the samples that we like or we might go through them and not find the samples that we like and then the world just continues.

Yeah. So I unbox all the samples and these first four I did not like for whatever reason. And now on to the ones that I like. This was the first sample that I like. They call it the bumper case. It looks good. Now it feels really high quality. And this is what it would look like with the phone inside a phone case. The second phone case that I liked was this transparent phone case. Now this phone case feels good and it does look good and this is what it would look with a phone on.

And the last phone case that I liked was this one. Now this is the most common phone case at the minute everywhere. Now this I went a little bit different with the branding. We put the brand name in the side as opposed to putting it on the camera roll like every other phone case. Now, these three phone cases are going to mark the start of project cases. So, I went ahead and placed a bulk order and I spent $2,300 or $3,95.

[Music] Right. So, this is the day that we've been waiting for for the last couple of weeks. In here is phone cases. And as you can see, this is way taller than me. And I'm 69. I really am 69. I'm joking. Now, here I was just looking through to make sure that every phone case that we ordered is exactly what they sent us. And after confirming our order, I moved on to the next big thing, which is packaging. Now for the branding, I went back to Alibaba and I specifically landed on this as my main three options.

Now the first option was actually my favorite. I felt like I could have told a story with the brand with this packaging. Now the second one, I felt like the customer wouldn't have a very good unboxing experience. And this I feel like if I ordered a phone case from Timu, it would come in a box like this. So I took the first option. I designed a draft of the boxes and I sent them over to Alibaba. And 10 days later, >> now this is the sample that we have received.

And I think the color looks okay. I like the color. Now there's quite a few things. We have put the brand name just right there. Project CES. And then there's the website. And then in the sides, we've put the slogan for the brand, your phone, our project always. And that was to make to make the customer feel like we care about their phone cases. And then here is your project, your star. Let's take a selfie. Again, this is meant to get customers to show off their phone cases on social media.

Now, here's the problem. You see, they're meant to use a hashtag that says my project, but for some reason, they put my project is. So, I need to tell them to fix that. And I am not a fan of this. I just think it looks way too chunky. Right. So, the day has come. In here is the boxes that we are going to put the phone cases in. I'm excited. The only problem is before they started printing these boxes, there was some revisions that they had to do, but they didn't really get back to me.

So, I don't know if they did the revisions or not. And we are going to find out in a bit. These cost $420 and there's 200 boxes. Right, moment of truth. Now they look all right. >> Also a fault until I compared it to the sample they sent us. The colors were completely off. >> I mean, they they finally sorted that cuz I basically asked them to make it a little bit smaller, which they've done, but it's a totally different color from what I ordered.

Right. So, I'm not going to lie to you. These colors are a little bit off, and I feel defeated. Like obviously there's nothing that we could do. We got to use him. But this looks nothing like what we sent them in a sample. But hey, again we are learning. So this is a learning curve to me cuz now I know I don't even know what I would have done different because this is the sample that we agreed on. Yep. With that little bump out the way, I went and order some mailbags and these really look nice.

This is what the customer will look at when they get the package for the door. Just a little update. We got everything that we need for this business. We got the packaging. We got the phone cases. We got the mailbags. We got everything. Bin liners, shelves, everything we've set up. The only thing that we're missing, and this is the main thing, is a UV printer. >> Finish today. >> Good, man. >> Have a good [Music] printer. >> Yeah. >> How are you? >> I'm good.

How are you? >> Now, this is the printer that we've been looking for for months. And this is what the seller had to say about it. >> What happened to it? >> Nothing's happened to it. It's all working fine. Everything like that. Literally, bro, it's not even been used. >> So, it's literally a brand new machine. >> And just to be sure, I asked if the printer actually works. >> Checked it before I even put it on sale. >> I charged everything.

Even spoke to the company I bought it from. I said, "What could go wrong?" She said, "Look, long as it's doing this, this, this." She goes, "There's nothing wrong with it." Now, this turned out to be a lie because the printer had everything wrong with it as you're going to see later on in this video. But he showed me a few bits and bobs, accessories, ink, you name it, that the printer comes with, and we powered it on, and I transferred him £2,300.

He helped me load the printer in the car. [Music] Right. So, this is the printer that we've been looking for for the last couple months. Now, this printer, brand new, as you've seen, I was speaking to some of the manufacturers of this printer, and I think a total cost if I was to buy it brand new that the lady get gave me was £6,000. We've bought this used. We've paid £2,800. Now, I'm really excited about this printer.

Unlike the old UV printer that I had, this one we're going to be able to print eight phone cases at once. Now, we are not yet in the clear cuz anybody watching this that knows about UV printers, you know, if the UV printer has not been in daily use or been seen for a long time, the print head gets clogged. So, we are not yet in the clear. I'm going to try and say up and hopefully we can get it working. Now, I spent the next couple of days just troubleshooting the printer and I did anything that I could think of.

YouTube, you name it. And I spoke to the manufacturers as well. They told me things to do. I tried everything. I tried everything. Clean print head, you name it, I did it. But every time we came to print, there was no print. And this challenge is starting to fall apart and it's not looking good. This printer behind me for the last couple of days, two or three days, I have been in talk with the actual manufacturers and the technicians from over there trying to get it to print.

It powers on but it does not print. We have tried everything. So, there's two things. Either we got scammed and we've lost the money that we've spent on this printer or the technician said with one thing that we're going to try, which is changing the print head. Now, I have ordered a print head cuz I didn't have an option. So, the print head that I've ordered cost me $435. Right. So, this is it. The print head that we've been waiting for is in this box.

Now, that whole challenge rides on his print head. If we put the print head on the printer and it still doesn't print, that means we got scammed. We lost the money. If we put the print head in the works, we're good. We're clear. The challenge will continue. I'm nervous. I have never changed the print head in my life. All I've done is watch a couple YouTube videos, but I know the people over there are going to send me more videos and that should be enough.

So, the next time you see me, I'm either going to have good news or bad news, right? So, a little update. As you can see, my hands are all ink everywhere. I have been working on this printer since 2:00 in the morning and time right now is 10 11. Now, I got some good news and I got some bad news. I don't know why you want to hear fast. I'll start with the good news. The good news is there's a sign of life in this printer of ours.

The bad news is we don't have white ink. I got all these other types of ink that seller gave me as spare, but for whatever reason, there's no white ink. And that's the only problem that we need for the printer to start working. So, I need to now go back to China and order print order ink. Wait for it to come. And that's going to be another week or so. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go order the ink, but I need to carry on a challenge with the small UV printer because trust me, it can handle the work.

It just takes a little bit of time. Yep. So, I set up the printer and we are going to print a few sample cases. And these sample cases that we printed are not going to be sent to customers. It's just for Instagram pictures. And as you can see, this is the quality that was coming out of that small UV printer. And I designed more phone cases. I took pictures of phone cases to put and make more cups with. And I made more phone cases.

As you can see, the quality is not too bad, but we're not going to be sending this to customers. [Music] And I made more phone cases, designed more phone cases, made more cuts to make the brand look as nice as possible. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how these phone cases are going to be looking. But even better on the big printer starts working. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] Hey, [Music] we got three types of phone cases on the brand.

So, there's this, this, and this. Now, we'll start with the box. As you can see, this is the branding. We got the name right there, Project Cases. And at the bottom, we got the website. In the side, we got the slogan, which is your phone, our project always. And then at the back, we got your project, your style, let's take a selfie. This is basically to encourage people to take selfies and tag the brand. And then at the bottom, we have the hashtag that they could use if they want to tag us on their p in their pictures.

And then there is the handles to all the social medias. Now when a person orders and they unbox it, it looks like that. That is basically what they get. As you can see, I think this looks perfect. And this is on a printer that's not even the main printer yet. And as you can see, the quality was not compromised. Very good on the edges. And that is basically what it looks like. the other type of phone cases that is on the brand as well.

Right. So, this is the fun part that we've all been waiting for. How much money have we really spent on this challenge or this business, whatever you want to call it. Now, you are going to be surprised. Even I'm surprised at how much money we've spent. The first thing that we did was rent. Rent is £600 every month. And then we have the walls. So, we put the slabboards that was £100. And then we did the painting, sanding, sanding and all of that.

That was another £100. So that bought the wall to £25. Now lighting, we put four new panels and that was £94. And then the flooring, I bought this on Facebook for £120. And then the labor for when they put the slabboards and the flooring, as you seen, I didn't do that myself. That cost us £200. And then the binlings, we paid £40. Now, packaging. We ordered 500 boxes. That cost us £633. The blank phone cases, we ordered quite a lot.

Now, that came down to £2,300 just for phone case blanks. Now, mailbags, we spent £115. And then the table we build a customer, that was £50. And then the label printer, I picked it on Facebook for 40 pound. And then now the designers that have made the mockups, the 3D and all those nice things obviously to make the brand look clean cuz a lot of times, yeah, we can say we can design these things ourselves, but there's a reason why these brands pay people who have experience to make it look professional.

I couldn't cut corners with that. So I spent about £300. And then shelves, those were free. They won the house. And then UV printer. Now, the UV printer, we paid £2,300. And then when I got it, because I wasn't the first owner, when I tried to reach out to Rainbow to help me sort the printer, they said, "No, we can't do that unless you pay £100 for a lifetime support." And then I paid £100 to them. And then they then told me, "Oh, the print heads are not good." So, I spent £325 on print heads.

And then we got a print heads. We put them in and they say, "Oh, now you need ink." Now, we've spent £165 on ink. Now, the total for the printer and all of that comes down to £2,890. Now, that's all for the expenses. Now, the total for everything during the whole challenge is £7,547 in dollars. That is $10,067. Now, what is the future plan for this business moving forward? It's very simple. All the money that we make, I'm going to try and put it back because I want to grow the business as much as possible.

Yep. And I know a lot of you are going to be like, "But you've not said nothing about the website the whole video." Well, that was intended. I have made the website and I've left the link in the description. You can check it out. And if you like the website, let me know what you think about and let me know what you think about the website. And if you get on the website and you're in the market for a phone case, just get yourself one.

It supports me and it supports the business and it supports the channel. And if you're not in the market for a phone case, that's fine. Just follow the Instagram. It helps me a lot. The Instagram is @ we are project curses. I've left everything in the description. Thanks for watching and if you enjoy the video, don't forget to like and comment. If you're new here, don't forget to subscribe. See you in the next one.