The honking horns of ships coming into a part are an indelible memory for anyone who’s grown up near a port. Those magnificent machines with their powerful engines gliding into ports, blowing their horns as they manoeuvre into the tightest of places. Not that Gdynia was a small port in any way, just simply that placing a million ton machine anywhere is surprisingly difficult. It’s this early introduction to solving impossible looking solutions that breeds life into the town’s children. How else are they to operate one of these machines in a couple of decades?
Life in Gdynia revolved around the port; the looming shipyard and deep blue waters dominating the city’s horizon, as well as its culture. Aleksandra Novak lived her childhood in one of those lucky homes that overlooked the port, waking up when the cranes started screeching in the morning and sleeping when the lights on the docks finally started to twinkle and fade. Having lunch when the dockworkers did was probably a step too far, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t try to coordinate their schedules in a childlike display of adoration.
A peaceful childhood by any standards. Alex, as she likes to be called, lived and breathed the sea when she lived in her hometown, and still does. When there’s a shining, powerful crane right by your doorstep and magnificent ships floating past your window every day, it’s difficult not to idealise the shipping industry and travel as a whole. Especially through a child’s wondrous eyes.
From playing with little ship toys and building legos of ports, it wasn’t a stretch to see how Alex ended up working in a shipping company in London. That awe of massive, world moving engines never quite goes away as one grows older, even if they learn not to mention it in public as much.
Of course, her decision to move from a tiny port town in Poland to the megapolis that is London wasn’t based just on her childhood love of ships. Gdynia’s idyllic coastline and little picturesque houses hide a much darker secret.
Like most one-industry towns, when that industry falters or refocuses, the local economy experiences a massive downturn. More machinery in the ports, less people needed. Simple as that really. Alex wasn’t about to spend her prime years in her town’s sinking port, as tempting as that sounds. London’s calling was far too strong — the fact that her shipping companies’ headquarters were basically on the bank of the Thames was just an added bonus. Something to remind her of home. The capital is at heart a city based around the river — the lifeblood of London runs through the Thames. All the parks, the fancy hotels, the political power. And of course the fancy corporate jobs, like the one Alex had.
Turns out she didn’t need to be reminded of home for too long. Pandemics aren’t easy on everyone but this is especially so for people who’s whole job relies on transporting goods and people from one place to another. The very thing you’re not meant to do when a virus is raging across borders.
Alex was made redundant, as were thousands of her coworkers across Europe. When you lose your job and you’re away from your family, there’s only one place to go. Home.
The scent hits you first — the scent of the sea and oil and everything in between. Dad still worked in the dock; at least he wasn’t doing any physical work which was quite the relief to her. Mum had long given up her shipyard job when Alex came along. Comfortably middle class even if Alex personally wasn’t.
What do you get when you get a former shipping agent, a port town and a ridiculous amount of boredom? Well, we’re about to find out. Alex decided that she needed to set up her own business to insulate herself from the impact of any further unexpected events, like a pandemic.
Dropship it was. Her work in the shipping company was based around tracking and moving parcels round without losing too many of them. Over the past year she’d come across a suspicious amount of single packages that went to customers directly from what appeared to be manufactures. Interesting, but nothing she’d thought of too deeply until she was actively looking for some way to make a living. It’s a wonder what the brain can file away for future use until the ‘future use’ is the here and now.
She wasn’t sure of much just yet except the fact that she wanted to target the UK as a market, and to a less degree Europe. She’d lived away from Poland for far too long to be in touch with the market trends that pervaded the public conscience here. The UK, on the other hand, she could work with. Living in the capital for almost a decade will do that to you.
Once she’d decided on the market, Alex needed to jog her memory and look at her old files to look at dropship companies that sent parcels the fastest and with the least returns. Slightly unethical? Perhaps, but desperate times… you know the rest.
There were more dropshippers than she’d anticipated, a whole tangle of single parcels and bigger deliveries buzzing around the world in a flurry. One map really hit her — when she plotted every parcel the most popular dropshipper had sent; it created a web of blue lines that crisscrossed the oceans. Awe inspiring really, especially when the scope becomes abundantly clear on multiple, coffee fuelled viewings. That was the moment when she realised she wanted to ship worldwide — something that set her apart from most other firms on the market. Good thing she’d already found her dropshipper that would allow her to do exactly that.
She chose the one with the least returns and broken shipments, it just happened to be a furniture one.. She didn’t have a massive amount of thought about what she was going to dropship, simply finding the best dropshipper she could and working backwards. Probably not the smartest way to go about it, indeed the exact opposite, but it worked out so who’re we to talk.
Alex talked to her friends on the London shipping scene to spread the word about her new venture, relying on good old fashioned word of mouth before she’d even made a website and the ever needed social medias. Connections mean a lot in reserved, understated Britain and her London friends and coworkers were a huge help in getting that initial order flow going. Orders started ticking in slowly from the capital, then from parts of northern England and quaint villages she could barely pronounce. She’d said “Leicester” out loud once before knowing; never making that mistake again.
It’s not an international website without products for all tastes, and a targeted marketing strategy. Again, her Londoner roots helped her — the city was a melting pot and she had people in her life from across the globe. Cuban refugees, second generation immigrants from south Asia, even Americans who loved the allure of Britain (and the Sterling).
With inputs from everyone, she put together a comprehensive collection with a little something for everyone and marketed it in just the subtle way that turned out to be so successful. Focussing on the low costs for east asian clients, environmental protection for European ones and the sheer size and comfort for those across the pond, Alex finally had a coherent strategy. And the products to match.
That’s how you build a dropshipping company that sells across the world. Alex used her assets — a shipping background, a decade in one of the world’s foremost cities, and connections in Britain, to forge herself a company that was built on stable roots and even stabler products. Nothing streaky or overtly trendy, just products that were likely to sell in any climate. When you lose everything, you only take risk that you absolutely need to.
Alex did, and succeeded. Her little apartment on the Thames bank is testament to that success, as are the little honks that wake her up every morning. The sound of ships. The sound of a childhood dream that, against all odds, worked out just fine.