Higure: from my own online shop to a career in e-commerce

That was the start of Higure.

I began with airsoft guns and accessories, then gradually focused on tactical, sports and outdoor clothing and equipment. I was interested in the products themselves: materials, fit, uses and what worked well together. I wanted to sell things I understood and help customers choose.

I had no starting capital. The shop's sales funded its ongoing operation. The product range, prices, suppliers, website, marketing, stock, support and returns were all my responsibility. My parents sometimes helped me pack a larger batch of orders or take parcels to the post office. Otherwise, I learned as I went, through my own mistakes.

Why the shop ran on Magento

While building the shop, I tried different platforms. I worked with WordPress and WooCommerce, and experimented with PrestaShop and BigCommerce. Some versions ran in parallel and occasionally appeared on the public domain. Higure's ongoing operation, though, ran on Magento.

What decided it was how Magento handled products, variants and stock. It had its technical frustrations. The database structure could really get on my nerves, and I didn't think the interface was ideal either. But it was built for commerce from the ground up and supported the structure I needed.

I didn't want to fill a category with separate listings for every colour and size of the same trousers. Customers should find one product page and choose their variant there.

For Helikon-tex UTL trousers, for example, I kept each material version on its own product page. Customers could choose the colour, size and length within it. A different material was a separate product, because it changed the garment's properties and suitability for different uses. Customers could still filter by colour and size in categories and search results.

Each individual variant had its own product code and stock record. A shared presentation on the website still allowed me to track exactly what I physically had in stock.

I knew how I wanted customers to choose and how I needed to keep track of the goods. Magento let me connect those two needs.

What I learned from Google Analytics

Once the shop was running, an overview of orders was no longer enough. I wanted to know how many people visited, where they came from, what they looked at and where they left. At that stage, Higure relied on search traffic, without paid advertising.

I discovered Google Analytics, got it working and started learning how to make sense of the data.

One important finding was that people arrived directly on product pages. That was where I started giving them more to choose from: accessories, related products and alternatives.

I built custom blocks and assigned products to them manually using tags. I chose the products based on sales, traffic, combinations in shopping baskets and my knowledge of the range. A jacket could have suitable accessories alongside it, as well as other jackets. For alternatives, I offered a cheaper option, a middle option and a more expensive one.

Over time, I noticed recurring combinations in orders. Customers often added an inexpensive belt to more expensive trousers. A hat with a jacket. They bought more within a single collection. T-shirts tended to sell without accessories, but several at a time.

Analytics became connected to my knowledge of the products and the daily running of the shop. I looked at visitor behaviour, adjusted the selection on the page and then saw what appeared in orders.

When I tried to rescue the wrong product with advertising

Traffic and revenue were still low. I added Facebook and Instagram pages for the shop and started learning how to advertise on Google and Facebook.

At first, my budget was roughly 15 to 20 euros a week. And I made a mistake: I promoted products I believed in but which sold poorly through organic traffic. I thought advertising would lift them.

Visitors came, but purchases didn't. Many people left straight from the product page. I changed the pages, the adverts and the shop's interface, trying to find what was stopping customers from buying.

After several attempts, I began questioning my own product choices too. Other products sold in the same shop. Gradually, I came to the conclusion that part of the range simply didn't match what my audience needed.

So I moved the small advertising budget to products customers were already buying. Traffic and revenue improved afterwards.

I still tried to help the slow sellers with discounts, gift bundles, banners and placements among complementary products. Those attempts didn't bring the sales I had hoped for either. I still have some of the items at home, in their original packaging. I don't even use them myself.

That experience taught me to question my own judgement about the range. When sales were weak, I started asking whether the product actually suited the customers of my shop.

I kept availability on the website up to date myself

I couldn't afford a large stockholding. So I combined buying for orders already placed with replenishing stock based on sales, the season and what made sense to keep on hand.

At the time, my suppliers had no integrations that would let me easily bring their stock information onto the website. I checked availability manually every day and updated the shop. If a supplier had an item in stock, customers could order it with a stated delivery time of up to five working days.

I collected some of the goods in person. I would arrive by train with a large backpack, walk through the warehouse with the supplier, look at new collections and materials, have a chat and carry the purchase away. That was also how good relationships developed.

I chose transport based on the orders and the cost. When shipping made sense, the supplier sent the goods. At other times, I made the trip sooner. Back then, a train journey could cost less than a courier shipment from Poland.

If it turned out that a supplier didn't have an ordered item despite listing it as available, I called the customer straight from the warehouse. We agreed whether they wanted to wait, choose a replacement or cancel the order. When necessary, I handled it outside working hours or at weekends too.

Importing goods also brought situations I would never have imagined while building the website. Once, I went in person to clear an original military rifle scope from Belarus through customs. At the customs office in Bratislava, I was asked whether I had a purchase permit from the Ministry of Economy. The question surprised and amused me. That particular case was eventually resolved with a written declaration.

After receiving the goods came a manual inspection, preparing the orders, packing, and either a trip to the post office or a courier collection. Then I updated the order status, added the tracking number and adjusted the stock record. A promise on the website meant a series of steps I had to make happen.

I knew customers by their trouser size

I had loyal customers and gradually got to know their needs. If someone I knew wore longer trousers ordered a regular length, I called before dispatch to check whether that was intentional. Their feedback told me they valued that attention.

Once, a customer ordered trousers that were too long and wanted to exchange them. The right variant had been out of stock for a long time. I had the equipment and skills to alter them, so I offered that option.

We agreed on the conditions and consequences of the alteration in advance, and I obtained his written consent. I explained how to measure a pair that fitted him well and asked for photographs too. Using what he sent, I altered the trousers and sent them back. He was delighted.

That was another part of finding solutions in a small shop. Sometimes I needed to change the website, sometimes pick up the phone, and sometimes get out the sewing machine.

Why I closed Higure

As the shop grew, so did the pressure, and it began affecting my personal life. At the point when I needed to work out how the business would grow and operate, I decided to keep going alone.

At the same time, I underestimated a change in the market. Products I had previously been the only seller of in Slovakia were taken up by a competitor with substantially more capital. They had their own stock, an online shop and physical stores. At comparable prices, customers could see and try the goods in person. With the resources my shop had, I couldn't respond effectively enough.

Loyal customers kept buying from me. That meant a lot personally: the relationships and care I had built clearly mattered to them. But new customers gradually became fewer, and existing orders were no longer enough to keep the business going.

Eventually, I closed the shop.

My own mistakes are part of that story too. I kept going alone and didn't spot the change in the competitive environment early enough. The quality of my daily work mattered, but money, capacity and market conditions also determined whether the shop could continue.

E-commerce continued

Closing Higure didn't end my work in e-commerce. It continued in other companies and roles. I also worked with Venalio, Shopsys and other solutions. To this day, I set up Shoptet or Shopify shops out of curiosity, to see how they work and what they can do.

For me, e-commerce is my whole career. My own shop was its foundation, where I experienced the financial and personal consequences of my decisions too.

Money tied up in unsold goods was missing from the next purchase. Changing availability on the website affected orders and customer support. Every promise needed someone to follow through. Most of the time, that was me.

That is also why I try to understand business owners and directors when their decisions meet resistance within a company. I am interested in the pressures and connections that may not be visible from a single role. That understanding helps me have a useful conversation even when I disagree with the proposed solution.

Today, I would build my shop differently. I would use the available APIs, automation, analytics tools and AI. Many of the things I did by hand could free up time for further development.

But I have kept the habit of first understanding what I need to solve, then choosing how to solve it. Sometimes technology helps; sometimes it takes a change in process, an agreement with a supplier or a skill we already have. Limited resources taught me to look for solutions that aren't obvious at first.

I bring that experience to my work at Vors. When I work on a website or an online shop, I care about the customer and the operation behind the screen: who will carry out a change, what it will cost, how it connects to sales and whether the business can sustain it. I know what it is like to bear the consequences of those decisions in a shop of my own.

Explore selected work at Vors