If you wanted to open your own store more than a decade ago, it would have required a lot of work and a lot of money. Fortunately, we now live in an age where almost anything is possible online. Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to execute their own ideas on a more convenient and effecient platform— the Internet.
Being part of a generation of online start-ups, I’d consider myself somewhat tech-savvy (you know, more than my parents), but I’m far from a professional computer programmer. I don’t stay up odd hours of the night coding and building my own website. In fact, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that (except for the staying up at odd hours of the night part). I only know my basic HTML codes and I occasionally peruse through tech blogs, that’s about as tech as I get. I’ve never felt confident enough to create anything online other than my WordPress blog.
But when I had the idea to create my own online store and heard about Shopify.com, a light bulb went off in my head.
My idea was to sell handmade products from the Mexican Mayan community to help alleviate poverty and raise awareness about child labor. During my January visit to the village of Chichen Itza, Mexico, where the Mayan calendar is located, I was moved by the large number of children begging my mom and I to purchase a handmade handkerchief. After that trip I wanted to find a way to sell those handkerchiefs and somehow help them go to school.
Unfortunately, we later learned that these children are forced into child labor conditions and receive no rewards for their handkerchief sales. But after a lot of research, I was put in contact with the Mayan Foundation in Laakeech (which is Mayan for ‘we are one’) that supports hardworking Mayan women who make and sell their own crafts to make a living. After forming a partnership with this foundation, my nonprofit organization MYHankies.org was born!
And now with the help of Shopify.com, I have a place to sell the Mayan handmade crafts. Because, like I mentioned before, I definitely do not have the capability of actually building my own online store.
So far I’ve just been working on the design part of my website, and it’s been pretty easy for a wannabe-techie like me. Shopify.com offers a handful of free themes that can be customized with your own colors, photos, and graphics. It took me awhile to create a homepage that didn’t have crashing colors, but it was fun and easy to play with.
This is what MY Hankies first looked like about two weeks ago:
And this is what is looks like now:
I created my own logo that is on the website now, but I’m still waiting for a professional volunteer designer to help me clean it up a bit. And the homepage still has a lot more ways to go, but we’re successfully trucking along!
Also you’ll notice my domain name is MYHankies.org . At first when you create your Shopify store you will be given a domain that will end with myshopify.com. For example, when I first registered my store, my domain was http://myhankies.myshopify.com . But this is totally changeable which is nice.
I bought my domain name, myhankies.org , through GoDaddy, but you can purchase your own domain name with Shopify. Even though I didn’t use Shopify to purchase my domain name, they provided clear and direct instructions to help me transfer mine to Shopify and have it appear in the URL bar like this:
My first batch of Mayan-made handkerchiefs will be sent to me the last week of March which is when MY Hankies will officially launch. Until then, stay tuned as I continue to build my online store with Shopify.com !