[01]Start a shop
Good ideas for a first local shop
Updated Oct 6, 2026
Start from your place, pick things that travel, and begin small. A few ways to choose what your shop sells.
Start from your place
The strongest shops on 1VIM sell what their place is known for: tiles from Porto, ceramics from Kyoto, cloth from Cusco. Ask what visitors to your town take home, and what people who moved away miss. Either answer is a shop.
Pick things that travel
A parcel crossing a border spends days on the road and some of them on a shelf. Things that are light, flat, dry and sturdy arrive the way you sent them, and cost less to ship. Glass and ceramics travel well too, packed well. The guide What travels well goes through it piece by piece.
Begin small and finish well
Five pieces done beautifully beat fifty done in a hurry. A small shelf is easier to photograph, to describe and to restock, and buyers read a focused shop as a confident one. Add more once you know what people ask for.
You can choose rather than make
A shop can be a shelf rather than a workshop: the coffee, the snack, the soap that is ordinary in your city and impossible somewhere else. What you offer is your knowledge of which one is good, and the walk to buy it. The guide You do not have to make it explains how that works here.
Check what may cross a border
Most things can be posted anywhere, but every country keeps a short list it limits: fresh food, plants, some medicines, anything flammable. A quick look at the destination's rules before you list something saves a parcel that cannot be delivered.