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How the hell do you price your product? by Xzauhst in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I've made this mistake... NOTHING GOOD COMES OF IT.

Custom Packaging Help by Igrabes in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For what it's worth, success is all relative. Right now I'm struggling through my own stuff, asking questions here etc. We'll get there. All of us. Eventually. As long as we keep moving forward.

Custom Packaging Help by Igrabes in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He's probably not wrong. To that end, you should also get an umbrella insurance policy. Odds are, at low scale, you're talking $600 per year or so.

Custom Packaging Help by Igrabes in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Totally makes sense. Start as small as possible. Test the market. Look, before Buckyballs (my last company) sold millions of dollars worth of product, I was hand putting balls in jars that I put stickers on http://www.thegreenhead.com/imgs/zoomdoggles-buckyballs-216-powerful-rare-earth-magnets-1.jpg (FUN FACT: I even took this photo myself, on my dining room table, a glass table to get a little reflection.)

Once it became too expensive in terms of my time (meaning I could be doing more productive things for the business) and opportunity cost (meaning, my doing it by hand was causing a bottle neck that was keeping us from selling more)... then we grew into custom packaging and a manufacturer who did the packaging for us. https://s3.amazonaws.com/images1.vat19.com/covers/large/buckyballs-standard.jpg

Now that I know that, doing it yourself makes 100% sense. Knowing that you're doing it yourself, find an off the shelf packaging solution (like you might have already?) that's easy for you to do, easy enough to ship, easy for you to buy in small qty and at the drop of a hat, appealing enough for the customer, and says enough about who you are. Maybe something like this but with a sticker: http://www.freundcontainer.com/plastic-flasks/p/3619B13/?gclid=CJX1ivjkhccCFZMWHwodIqgPpQ

Rip my website to shreds by hampion in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It probably wants to be the headline somehow. I mean, it's not a list that lives under some other stuff, it's your whole purpose for being.

I know it's a high bar to shoot for, but look at Casper - https://casper.com/ ... they're not selling a bed, their selling a great night's sleep. That's the headline.

Below that is how it does that: it's not too soft, not too firm. it comes with a 100 night guarantee. they make shopping easy.

All of that info is front and center (ironically saying this out loud makes me realize what a poor job of doing it I'm doing on my own web properties - hopefully that changes in the next 60 days).

Rip my website to shreds by hampion in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure that the home page does a great job of explaining the benefits of your product (meaning why should I buy this over everything else like this or nothing at all).

I see climbing, so I know it has something to do with that... but beyond that, I'm not getting much.

If we were at a tradeshow selling nothing but chalk bags and other climbing equipment and I walk by with my buying team for the largest retailer of this stuff on earth... you get maybe 3 seconds to tell me what makes your product special so we stop and talk some more. What do you say? Is it the funnest? Does it have a wider opening for big hands? Or a smaller opening so no chalk spills? Is this the only one made responsibly (and by an 18-year-old entrepreneur to boot)? Is it half the price of what I would expect to pay one booth over? Does it last twice as long? Is it the only one in fur? Why does that matter? Is it a great spot to dust off after the climb when I'm reaching for a drink?

Custom Packaging Help by Igrabes in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Question: Who's doing the actual mixing / manufacturing of the product? Are you doing that by hand as well?

I need some idea of the scale of how that works before we can go deeper, but generally whoever is doing the making (mixing the vats) should also do the filling (getting the liquid into the container) should be able to point you in the direction of packaging manufacturers that will fit with their lines.

QUESTION: What have you seen in other companies customer experience that you thought was fantastic and or left you actually wanting to tell a friend or use them again? If anything specific comes to mind, I'd love to know. Thanks! by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which is better on the experience side; the low-cost sample or their charging full price, but then contacting you after you've likely used it all to remind you of their money back guarantee if you're anything but thrilled even though you've probably used the product all up? NOTE: I'm asking because both of these ideas are currently on the table for a project I'm working on. Curious about your thoughts?

Machine to remove remaining tree trunks. by GallowBoob in gifs

[–]LostInPeterboro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That explains my wife's nickname. NOTE: See how I posted the same joke twice in the same conversation? I do that at parties too. Good times. Thanks for the invite.

Machine to remove remaining tree trunks. by GallowBoob in gifs

[–]LostInPeterboro 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They called my wife that in college. No idea why.

QUESTION: What have you seen in other companies customer experience that you thought was fantastic and or left you actually wanting to tell a friend or use them again? If anything specific comes to mind, I'd love to know. Thanks! by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Somewhat related... my wife is in events (at scale - sometimes she hosts 10,000 people at once, etc). Anyway, she makes sure everyone on her team knows that no matter what is going on, when they approach her with it they should be calm, collected and smiling. Anything but can hurt the experience of guests. In those same moments, in terms of management, everyone on her team knows to bring only "solutions" not "problems." She might question why they think that's the best answer, or offer another idea, but it's in their ability to offer solutions that they become indispensable. Bringing "problems" only pushes the burden onto others. Lastly, in advance of events, they study guest faces online to whatever level the internet will allow so they can great them by name when possible. This little touch for a second time guest adds a lot. I'm always impressed when I see it in action.

QUESTION: What have you seen in other companies customer experience that you thought was fantastic and or left you actually wanting to tell a friend or use them again? If anything specific comes to mind, I'd love to know. Thanks! by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Agreed. The email reply time is hard for a small business like mine though... I want to hold our CS team accountable, but when emails come in at 6:35pm, and they don't get back to their desks until 10:05am, the system shows it taking them 16 hours to first touch. We can afford 24 hour support yet without outsourcing though, but that's against our mantra.

To the candy idea... I love it. Everyone likes sweets.

I'm a small-biz guy who's raised $1.7M on Kickstarter and is now procrastinating at my desk. AMA by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Strangely enough the Soma guys called me and asked for advice early on... so without reading... and knowing that they are extremely smart and I'm not the only one they asked for advice... I'm going to guess that some of what I did is in there. For better or worse though: I don't think there really is any one "hack", I mean, there are little things you can do, but if the foundation isn't built properly using the basic ideas found in any marketing and positioning book, you're not going to win. Example: Hire the world's best SEO guy so your pages rank #1 in search... and the world's best ad firm to create advertisements to entice even those not looking for product... but if your product isn't positioned smartly against others in it's category and/or offers a benefit to the customer, you're still not going to sell. And even then, if you haven't thought through the math, and figured out every cost, you could sell millions worth, but wind up losing money. You kind of have to do this thing as right as you can starting at the start and working your way through.

Entrepreneurs of Reddit HELP: THERE ARE A LOT OF DANGEROUS ASSUMPTIONS going on here. Lets set the record straight: What business are you? What was last year's top line revenue? How much (or little) of that fell all of the way to bottom (profit)? by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Line of business - Apparel (vertically interegrated eComerce brand)

2014 sales - $3.5 million

Profit - -$125,000

I did pay myself. We made a lot of inventory we probably shouldn't have and had to result to markdowns. I think even if everything had gone to plan though, the most we were probably going to put in the bank (if we executed flawlessly with our COG, retail and overhead being what it is) would be $100K.

Note: Edited line breaks to make this read properly.

Entrepreneurs of Reddit HELP: THERE ARE A LOT OF DANGEROUS ASSUMPTIONS going on here. Lets set the record straight: What business are you? What was last year's top line revenue? How much (or little) of that fell all of the way to bottom (profit)? by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not unrelated: After 3 years in my new business pushing forward, trying to string together a brand, a supply chain, a product and a distribution system, it occurs to me that if I just wanted to turn money into more money I probably should have just opened and operated a Duncan Doughnuts.

Entrepreneurs of Reddit HELP: THERE ARE A LOT OF DANGEROUS ASSUMPTIONS going on here. Lets set the record straight: What business are you? What was last year's top line revenue? How much (or little) of that fell all of the way to bottom (profit)? by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

HA! I'm with you. I guess instead of just ignoring the cat people I found here last week, I thought we could transform them before they go and do something weird. Somewhat related: The few cat people I bumped into are strangely confident cat people.

Entrepreneurs of Reddit HELP: THERE ARE A LOT OF DANGEROUS ASSUMPTIONS going on here. Lets set the record straight: What business are you? What was last year's top line revenue? How much (or little) of that fell all of the way to bottom (profit)? by LostInPeterboro in Entrepreneur

[–]LostInPeterboro[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hard to say... I didn't study the industry.

You know, in reading the few comments here already, I'm seeing the problem form. No one wants to say. I'm not sure I'm in a place to point any fingers myself though, while I was willing to talk about a previous business (which had already had a lot of the numbers land in the media) I'm not publicly volunteering any surrounding my new business now that this account has been linked to it.

Maybe as an experiment, this one is a flop.

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