Months into launching a pickleball eCommerce company with $10,000, I’m already over budget. Here are all of my startup costs, including a surprise $2,095 expense

When launching an eCommerce business, a chunk of your startup money will go toward initial inventory.

I’d heard that if you’re starting a business, double what you think your startup costs will be.

That seemed conservative — until I started a business myself.

In the spring of 2023, my friend and roommate at the time decided to try our hand at eCommerce. After interviewing and writing about a handful of successful Amazon sellers, curiosity got the best of me: Can anyone, including a pair of curious, LA-based millennials working full-time jobs in journalism and film, start a profitable Amazon business?

We decided to find out.

One of the first things we discussed was budget: How much of our savings did we both feel comfortable dipping into?

We settled on $5,000 each. We were fine with losing this amount if the experiment ultimately failed and no one bought our product. Ten grand was also a seemingly appropriate amount. I had spoken to one entrepreneur who turned $2,000 into an Amazon business that brought in $40,000 a month. She sold socks and tights.

Our product, pickleball paddles, would be more expensive to produce. We knew that from the get-go but would discover just how much more expensive over the next year.

After settling on our budget, we researched a handful of business banking platforms. Keeping our business money separate from our personal funds seemed like a smart bookkeeping move — and it made us feel more legit.

We went with Mercury, a no-fee option aimed at startups. We liked that we’d be able to do free domestic and international wires, as we anticipated having to send large sums of money to our manufacturer for inventory.

By early 2024, after nearly a year of hemming and hawing over product ideas, we were ready to open an account. In April, we transferred our startup money.

About seven months later, as I write this in early November 2024, our checking account balance has dipped from $10,000 to just under $4,000 — and we haven’t even placed our first big inventory order yet.

Here’s exactly where our first $6,000 went.

USA Pickleball. USAP took our first $495, the fee at the time for creating a manufacturer account, which would allow us to submit our paddle for testing and certification. If it met its specific standards, we’d be able to slap “USA Pickleball Approved” on our paddle. This was important to us for a couple of reasons: One, equipment used in USAP-sanctioned tournaments has to be USAP-approved, and since we were creating a high-quality paddle for intermediate, advanced, and professional players, we wanted to be in the mix at tournaments. Two, it would help legitimize our brand.

After we finalized our paddle design and it came time to actually submit it for testing, we paid USAP another $2,095 (the fee at the time for a new paddle submission). We were then instructed to send seven paddles to various testing locations. Shipping cost $49.

We didn’t factor this expense into our initial budget, and although it was technically an avoidable cost, we’re betting on the approval paying off in the long run.

Prototyping. We’re working with a product sourcing company, 330 Trading, which helps eCommerce businesses connect with factories to manufacture their product. Between prototypes and a shipment of 20 of our final product paddles (seven of which went to USAP for testing), we’ve spent about $1,475.

We expect our first official order of 500 units (which we’ll place after getting approved by the USAP) to cost around $10,000.

Packaging. We’ll be shipping our paddles in bubble mailers. We spent $1,240 on 500 custom mailers from Sticker Mule.

We ordered 500 bubble mailers, half of which are stored in the author’s studio apartment.

Graphic design. We hired a graphic designer to help with our logo. It was a back-and-forth process that not only resulted in a logo we’re proud of but also helped us think through and nail down the identity of our brand. We paid $250, and it was some of the best money we spent.

We also pay $15 a month to use Canva Pro. There’s a free but more limited version of the graphic design platform (Canva Free).

Fiverr. We used Fiverr to hire freelancers for two important tasks: designing the packaging for our paddle ($64) and building out our website ($158).

Other. We paid the US Patent and Trademark Office $250 to start the process of trademarking our name and $75 to file an LLC. We also pay $39 a month for our Shopify Basic account.

A lot of money has already left our Mercury account. Follow along to see if we can recoup any of it.

More from “The eCommerce Experiment”:

• I started an e-commerce business with $5,000 up front after writing about financially independent Amazon sellers. Here’s how I doubled my budget.
• My friend and I pooled $10,000 to start an e-commerce company. After months of brainstorming products, we chose pickleball paddles.