If you are a seller of cloth pads or other related items (either hand made by you, or you purchase to resell), you are welcome to join us and create your own store here on clothpadshop.com
There are no contracts (you can leave at any time), no listing fees and no commissions! Just a flat monthly fee, so you can sell as much as you like without having extra fees. As a seller on Cloth Pad Shop you have the advantage of joining a specialised store that makes your products available to the people who are specifically looking for them!
Prices based on US sites in USD
What can I sell on Cloth Pad Shop?
While it is called "Cloth Pad Shop", you are not limited to selling just cloth pads. We welcome Menstrual Cups, Wetbags, Herbal Teas, Diaries, Art and many other products.
Please see the Suggested Product List for a list of products and ideas that would be appropriate for Cloth Pad Shop
Benefits of selling on Cloth Pad Shop:
Flat Rate Monthly Fee - Just US$8 a month. So you always know exactly what needs to be paid and there are no scary surprises. In most cases after you sell 1 pad, you've made your monthly fee and the rest is money in your pocket!
No Commissions or Listing Fees! - You will never be charged commissions (% of sales or final value fees) or listing fees, and you can list as many items as you like for the flat monthly fee. We encourage you to add as much stock as you like to your store, because not only does more stock make Cloth Pad Shop a larger and more interesting store, and gives customers more variety to choose from, but you stand a better chance of selling when you have products to sell. So more stock is best for Cloth pad Shop, the customers and your business. So we don't want to restrict you by being greedy and taking out commissions or listing fees.
Mini Webpage - You can have your own mini webpage area, where you can display some descriptive information about you and your business with pictures and links, with a place to put in your policies and other details to give customers all the info they need. You even have Galleries and a blog if you wish to use them. You may have up to 3 pages for care instructions or information (like this example here).
Let your "competitors" benefit you! - You might think that having other pad makers in the same store as you can be harmful to your business, but think of it another way. We are "fellow pad makers" rather than competition. Cloth pad usage is becoming increasingly popular, and there are more than enough customers to go around. What one person wants/needs/likes in a pad is different from another, one pad maker cannot make products that suit everyone. But by forming a large store together, each store can have something to offer the customer, and each helps to bring more customers in. So if another pad maker has a special and customers come to Cloth Pad Shop for that, the customer might decide to also buy from you while they are here. That is something you don't get when you have a stand alone store on your own, or even a store on most other "mall" stores.
We bring customers to you - You can benefit from competitions, prize draws and other events that are designed to bring customers to the store and entice them to buy. Paying for advertising and building up a customer base is hard when you are in a store on your own. But joining a store like Cloth Pad Shop gives you the advantage of an already established customer base through word of mouth and store advertising. You also benefit from the increased traffic that comes to the site from any of the sellers being advertised or talked about.
Free Sub Domain and E-mail address - You can have your own yourbrand@clothpadshop.com e-mail address and http://yourbrand.clothpadshop.com URL that links directly to your area of the store (either your products directly or your mini website - whichever you choose. So you can quickly and easily create a professional look for your business. Instead of your customers e-mailing you5468@hotmail.com, they can e-mail you@clothpadshop.com - much more professional looking and your mail is delivered to your normal e-mail account, so you don't even have to worry about checking another account. Easy!
Help and Support - You have access to help and support from the other sellers as well as Cloth Pad Shop admin whenever you need it. We have a discussion group for all the sellers to use to keep up to date with what is going on and ask for help or bounce ideas off eachother, as well as an indepth help guide that walks you though setting up your store on Cloth Pad Shop. Don't know how to do something? Want some help with your product listings? Just ask!
Have a break when you want to - You have the ability to turn your store on and off whenever you like... So you don't have to be tied to paying store fees month after month when you don't have the stock to sell. When you turn your store back on, everything will still be the same as it was (If you have products in your store when you have our break, they will come back online once you are open again.) We even offer a "Vacaton" mode which displays a piece of customisable text letting your customers know you are having a break - so you still remain visible on the site, keeping your name out there.
Easily create custom orderable products - You are not just limited to selling "instock" products. You can list custom orderable items as well. The system has checkboxes and pull down menus that you can use to add options to your listed product (eg $1 extra for PUL, different prices for different lengths of pad or for different fabrics). With this you can list items you will custom make for the customer based on the choices they have selected. You could even set up a gallery with your fabric choices.
Specials, Discounts and Vouchers - You can have a stocktake sale with a % off storewide. Do a $10% off Xmas stock sale. Offer your blog readers a $5 discount on orders over $50. Give returning customers a 13% discount when they enter in the code "youaregreat" - There are many different ways to use the discounts feature.
Previewing - Create interest and anticipation with the "previewing" feature. This allows you to set up a product listing that isn't ready to be sold yet. Customers can see it and view the description, but can't buy it until it's "live". Some stores use this to gather interest for special items, so that there will be people waiting and ready to snap it up when it becomes available to buy. Or you can use it to make all your products go "live" at the same time when restocking. You can use this feature with the "Automatics" feature, which allows you to set the date and time in which the products will become live, allowing you to upload your products in advance, before letting the public loose on them! Some stores use this Previewing feature to make special notices for customers ("look at all these yummy fabrics I'll have pads made from shortly!")
Auctions - Cloth Pad Shop also has an auctions feature where you can put items up for auction instead of regular sale, with 2 modes of bidding. List a once off special item, or auction off a set of items. You could even do charity auctions if you wanted to.
Categories to make shopping easier - We have several different categories of products to make it easier for customers to find what they want. Products can be listed in more than one category too. If you need additional categories, they can be added.
Being part of a community - Cloth Pad Shop is a community of sellers who are working together to bring more cloth pads and related items into the world. A smaller and more personal site than other large multiple seller sites, run by someone whose interest is to get more of these products out into the world and to support the stores who sell them. From time to time the sellers on CPS have the opportunity to participate in swaps (such as swapping pads or fabric) to help keep a feeling of unity and friendship.
Why Was Cloth Pad Shop Created?
Cloth Pad Shop was started by Obsidian (www.clothpads.org and www.obsidianstar.com.au) in 2007.
Basically the idea for the store was 2 fold.... I kept seeing women post on forums going "do you know where I can find pads that are in stock now", and people replying with a bunch of links, so they had to search all the links to find pads... so I thought it would be easier for them if there was one store with many sellers....like an online mall.... so they could go to one place to find lots of pads, and not have to search all over the Internet...
The other part was for the benefit of the cloth pad sellers. A lot of sellers are selling through ebay and other such places, which have a lot of exposure, but can have high store fees with commissions and listing fees.. and they can be difficult for customers to find cloth pads on as they are listed along with many other items. Some sellers even have stores in several places to try and attract the customers they need. So the idea was to have something as a cheaper option for sellers where even a small time pad seller can have a webpage up to give them a professional look. With the advantage that each store added brings more variety to the store, and that in turn brings in more customers.
When any store advertises themselves, or someone mentions Cloth Pad Shop or one of our stores, the visitors that brings to the store can easily purchase from more than just the store they came to see. So each store can benefit from this added exposure. As more people hear of Cloth Pad Shop, and more stores join, the number of customers increases, which helps all stores.
It is very easy for a customer to shop with us, as they can add products to their shopping cart from any store and pay for it in one easy transaction! The cart software accepts the payment on behalf of the whole store and then transfers the payments to the individual sellers at the end of the day. So its a convenient way for the customer to shop, as well as being beneficial for the sellers.
