In the past few months, my wife and I started a new business selling jewellery. It was an excellent idea leveraging on a clear gap in the market of providing relatively affordable sterling silver jewellery for quirky individuals.
We invested a significant amount of money into product development, sourcing for suppliers, as well as designers.
Finally, we set up an online store on Shopify and released our products into the market.
However, it didn’t sell at all. I didn’t know what we were expecting but having ZERO sales was not what we envisioned our launch would be.
So what went wrong?
Marketing Fail
I think a significant part of successfully selling products is through branding and marketing. One has to develop a brand that people feel a pull to. At the same time, the brand has to elude some vibe, an attachment that people like and would love to support.
We failed to do any of that. We did not develop any brand identity. Instead, we depended mainly on the product. It was a mistake.
The product will not sell itself because customers would ask, how is our product different from the competition? Why would they get their jewellery and risk any infection/trouble by buying it from a new company?
Completely legitimate concerns and one that we would need to fix going forward.
Lack of Advertising
Advertising goes hand in hand with branding. Trying to keep costs low, we avoided the use of advertising. But over time, we realised that it is a crucial part of managing a business, a rather significant investment.
Word of mouth can only go so far, and ensuring that new customers know we exist is an essential part of managing a business.
Let me share the funnel ideology. We have a group of people that we advertise to. A few will know our products and decide to go down that funnel. Most would be unaware and move on. Those that entered the funnel have the choice of buying or not and could either be your customer or just window shopping. Regardless, they would be aware of your existence.
But one cannot even begin to be aware of the funnel if advertising was never done.
You fail to plan, you plan to fail
Lastly, I think this was the major pitfall. We had a rough idea of how we wanted our business to run. However, the idea was not airtight or, at least, dependable.
Aside from the failed marketing, brand identity development, and lack of advertising, we also failed to ensure that we carried out the business according to a plan.
It’s probably because we didn’t have any!
Whatever draft that we had is nowhere to be seen.
Thus, when we soft-launched the business, we had to make up ideas and decisions. And many would know that humans are fickle; without sticking to a plan, we don’t allow it to mature long enough to see any results.
Conclusion
Those are the three main lessons we’ve learnt from starting a business. We are backtracking the process and redefining our identity and, at the same time, collecting funds from our main hustles to invest in advertising content as well as social media marketing.
This is harder than I thought, but that’s where the fun lies.
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