10 Years in Business: What Running a Small E-Commerce Business Has Taught Us

March 08, 2026

Starting a small e-commerce business can be exciting, challenging and sometimes overwhelming. After 10 years running our online businesses, School Years Photo Frames and Sports Day Essentials, we’ve learned many valuable lessons about marketing, customer service, advertising and growing a product-based business.

One of the most memorable sounds of the past ten years is a small notification noise from the Shopify app.

If you run a Shopify store, you’ll know the one,  the “cha-ching” sound that plays when a new order comes through.

We still remember hearing it for the very first time.

After months of designing our first product, building our website and preparing for launch, we finally turned the site live. Not long after, that little notification sounded on the phone.

Cha-ching.

An order.

In those first few days the excitement spread through the whole house. Every time the phone made that noise the kids would come running through the house singing “cha-ching!”

It became a bit of a family joke and the excitement was contagious. That sound meant someone out there had just discovered our product and chosen to buy something we had created.

That first order gave us the confidence that maybe, just maybe, this idea could actually turn into a real business.

Ten years later we’ve heard that sound thousands of times, but it still never gets old.

Over the past decade that first order has grown into thousands more, and what began as a single idea has turned into two online businesses selling Australia-wide (plus overseas to New Zealand, America, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong). Along the way we’ve learned a lot about what works, what doesn’t, and what really matters when running a small e-commerce business.

Here are some of the biggest lessons we’ve learned after ten years in business.

Running a Business as Sisters

School Years Photo Frames is run by two sisters, Amanda and Nat, and while we are very close, running a business together for ten years has naturally come with the occasional little niggle along the way.

Like any partnership, you don’t always agree on everything, but we’ve found that having very different skill sets has been one of our greatest strengths.

Amanda comes from a strong retail and customer service background, having worked as a travel agent for more than 20 years. Natalie is very much the numbers girl, coming from a business background in accounting and office administration.

Over time our roles in the business developed quite organically based on those strengths.

Natalie manages the financial and admin side of the business, including bookkeeping, accounting, wages, accounts payable and receivable, ordering, along with customer service.

Amanda focuses more on customer relations, marketing and advertising, making sure our customers have a positive experience and helping to promote the business.

Dividing responsibilities this way has worked extremely well for us and allows each of us to focus on what we do best while still making decisions about the direction of the business together.

And after ten years we can confidently say that working with family can be incredibly rewarding, even if the occasional sisterly disagreement still pops up from time to time.

Choose Your Suppliers Carefully

One of the decisions we made early on was that we wanted to keep our products Australian made wherever possible.

Our frames are manufactured in Australia, and we also try to source as many of our packaging supplies locally as we can, including boxes, bubble wrap and other materials.

Supporting Australian businesses is important to us, but there are practical benefits too. Local suppliers often mean shorter supply chains, better communication and faster turnaround times when you need something urgently.

For a small business, having strong relationships with your suppliers makes a huge difference.

At the same time, it’s important to stay vigilant about what you are paying. In our early years we stayed loyal to one supplier for bubble wrap for quite some time. One day a roll arrived with the local manufacturer’s sticker still on it (where our supplier had purchased it from)  which led us to contact the manufacturer directly. We soon discovered we could purchase the exact same product for almost half the price.

Don’t Be Afraid to Scale — But Do It Carefully

As your business grows, opportunities to expand will naturally present themselves. Our advice is not to hesitate to scale if you can afford to do so.

When we first launched School Years Photo Frames, we started with just one frame design. Almost immediately after launching we began receiving requests from customers for different styles and variations.

We paid close attention to these requests, and after a couple of years we had expanded to more than ten designs.

Rather than producing large quantities straight away, we usually started with smaller production runs and increased numbers as demand grew. It’s not always the most profitable way to manufacture products initially, but for us it was the smartest approach. As sales increased, so did production volumes, and over time those products naturally became more profitable.

Scaling can also come with lessons.

With our second business, Sports Day Essentials, we have occasionally been caught out by purchasing larger quantities of products without physically seeing them first. Even when the financial cost isn’t huge, you can end up with a lot of stock that simply isn’t suitable to sell.

We once received a shipment of tutus that were so tiny they would barely fit a toddler. Those ended up being donated to a local kindergarten.

The lesson we learned is simple: always see a sample first, or start with small quantities until you know the product will be a good fit for your business.

Influencer Marketing Can Work If You Choose Wisely

One of the best decisions we made when launching our business was working with a carefully chosen influencer whose audience aligned perfectly with our product.

Within an hour of our website going live to the public, orders started coming in.

That early exposure, and build up to launch date, helped us gain momentum and confidence that people loved what we had created.

Over the years we have worked with a number of influencers, personalities and community groups. Some partnerships have worked incredibly well, while others have delivered very little.

Now that influencer marketing has become a huge industry, it’s important to be mindful about who you work with and make sure they genuinely connect with your audience.

Copycats Are Inevitable,  Stay Focused on Your Own Business

One of the biggest fears many people have when launching a product is that their idea will be copied.

We have experienced this ourselves.

Over the years our School Years Photo Frames concept has been copied many times, including by large retailers such as Kmart and by overseas companies selling through platforms like Shein.

At first this can be confronting. It’s tempting to want to address it publicly or spend time worrying about it.

Instead, we chose to remain focused on our own business and keep doing what we were doing.

Many of the copycat products are inferior versions of the original idea. We have continued to focus on maintaining high-quality products and letting that quality speak for itself.

Advertising also gives us an opportunity to remind customers why our products are different and why buying from the original small Australian business behind the idea still matters.

Your Website Is One of Your Most Important Assets

Our first business, School Years Photo Frames, had its website built by professional web developers using the Shopify platform.

When we launched our second business, Sports Day Essentials, we decided to take a much more hands-on approach.

Apart from a little help setting up the domain, we built the website ourselves.

Learning how your website works allows you to update products, improve pages and fix problems quickly without relying on developers.

Our School Years Photo Frames website is now ten years old. While it still works well, we know it’s due for an update. We’re still deciding whether to rebuild it ourselves or outsource the project, as a website rebuild can be quite time-consuming. However, as mentioned earlier, there are definite advantages to doing it yourself, particularly when you understand the platform and can maintain the site long term.

Social Media Advertising Is Harder Than It Looks

Advertising online, particularly on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), has been one of the most challenging aspects of running our business. There have been plenty of moments where we’ve felt like throwing the computer across the room while trying to make sense of Meta Ads. If you’ve ever tried setting up a campaign, you’ll probably know exactly what we mean.

Over the years we have outsourced our advertising several times to agencies who claimed to be experts. Unfortunately the results were disappointing, and on one occasion our sales actually dropped significantly while they were managing our campaigns.

One particularly memorable experience was meeting with a well-regarded social media marketing expert here in Adelaide. She reviewed our advertising analytics, looking closely at our ROAS, click-through rates and campaign performance.

After analysing everything she asked us a surprising question: “What exactly do you need me for?”

She told us we were already doing a brilliant job and she didn’t believe she could improve on what we were achieving.

If we’re being completely honest, our approach to social media advertising tends to fluctuate. Sometimes we become slightly obsessed with analysing and tweaking our campaigns, and other times — when a few ads are performing well — we tend to set and forget them… occasionally for longer than we probably should. It’s definitely an area we know we could improve.

Set a Marketing Budget and Stick to It

Another key lesson we’ve learned is the importance of setting a clear marketing budget. You need to spend money to make money, and you can’t set up a new business from scratch without a marketing plan and budget in place.

For our business we have found that spending a minimum of around $80–$100 per day across Meta and Google is required to generate the level of sales needed for the two of us to make a living from our business.

When sales are slow it can be very tempting to reduce advertising spend. However we have found that staying the course usually works better in the long run.

Customer Service Should Always Be a Priority

From day one we made a conscious decision that excellent customer service would be central to our business.

Nearly every order we have sent over the past ten years has included a handwritten thank-you note from us.

We also make sure customers can call us. Many online businesses choose not to list a phone number, which we find quite perplexing. As customers ourselves, we are often hesitant to buy from a business that isn’t prepared to speak with customers directly. For us, being available to answer the phone and help people when they need it is an important part of building trust in an online business.

When issues arise we do everything we can to help,  chasing up lost parcels, solving problems and making things right for the customer.

Our philosophy is simple: we fix the problem immediately.

Resending an order at a cost of $100–$200 is a small price to pay to protect the reputation of our business. We see this as part of the cost of doing business in an e-commerce environment.

Over the years there have been times when we’ve suspected that a customer may not have been entirely truthful about what happened with their order, but we still choose to resolve the issue quickly and move on. For us, maintaining our reputation and keeping customers happy is far more valuable than arguing over individual situations and risking someone trying to ruin our reputation.

Embracing New Technology

The online world changes constantly.

Our generation still tends to favour Facebook, and we also use Instagram, but we haven’t fully embraced platforms like TikTok. Do we do social media particularly well? That’s debatable. Is our Instagram page perfectly curated and beautifully aesthetic? Absolutely not. We’d love it to be, but when you’re running a small business you have to pick your battles — and for us, that just isn’t a priority right now.

We have also embraced artificial intelligence as a tool to help us run our businesses. AI has helped with writing, marketing ideas, product descriptions and learning about the many online tools available to business owners. We have also spent time learning how Google and its various platforms work, including Google Ads, Merchant Centre and Analytics. Our analytics consistently show that more customers find us through Google than through social media, so understanding these systems has become an important focus. Using AI to help us learn and navigate Google has been absolutely invaluable.

What 10 Years in Business Has Taught Us

Start small and grow as demand grows
We launched with one frame design and expanded once customers started asking for more.

Pay attention to what your customers are telling you
Many of our product ideas came directly from customer requests.

Choose suppliers carefully  and review costs regularly
Loyalty is great, but it’s also important to make sure you’re paying the right price.

Learn your website platform yourself if you can
Understanding how your website works saves money and gives you more control over your business.

Set a marketing budget and stick to it
Consistent advertising has been critical to maintaining steady sales.

Prioritise excellent customer service
Answer the phone, solve problems quickly and focus on protecting your reputation.

Stay open to learning new technology
Whether it’s Google tools, AI or new platforms, staying curious helps you keep moving forward.

Final Thoughts

Looking back over the past ten years, running a small e-commerce business has been a continuous learning journey and we’ve loved it.

What started with one simple idea and a single product has grown into two online businesses and thousands of customers across Australia.

And even after hearing that “cha-ching” notification thousands of times, it still brings a smile to our faces.

We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve built and excited to see what the next ten years might bring.

Amanda & Nat

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