This is a weird one, for a while I have been working on selling my products. I was made redundant and invested my redundancy money into getting the certificates we need here and insurance, but I wasn't really ready to sell. I have been playing with recipes and packaging and my main moot point was, that I don't know what my target market is. I finally got the packaging right and now it seems to have fallen into place. It makes me so much more confident in marketing my products and putting them into the right light. Before that, I always stumbled when someone asked me about the things I make, as I really didn't know how to respond. If you don't know, if you are going to sell your products to a desperate housewife or a posh city woman, how do you sell it ? I would love to sell to people around here, where I live, but to be honest, they rarely appreciate it and would rather go and buy a piece of Dove, as it "doesn't dry out the skin, they said so on the telly". So I changed my packaging and now I will target the people who want to buy it, not have to be co-erced to buy it. I am targetting, funny enough, teenagers and yummy mummies. I will have to travel a bit for the right kind of markets, but I don't mind. It's much more fun and I get some real feedback now, rather than "yeah it's quite nice" (ok, not from the teenagers, they just like the packaging).
It really does help to have a target market and think about that when buying supplies. If you don't know who is going to buy your stuff, how do you know, if you need to buy patchouli or fake Dior, Fo or Eo, with palm-oil or without, vegan or not, artificial colours or all natural, plastic wrapping or kraft paper all of this depends on your target. I wasted too much on stuff I now no longer need, although I will have an all natural, palm-free, no FO line, it's not what my main selling-point is, funky, bright and unusual goes down much better. And it cheers me up to do those soaps. I got bogged down trying to do what I thought would sell, rather than what I wanted to do, I am not artistically skilled enough to make my all natural range look as good as some people on here manage to do it, so I stick to FOs, POP Micas and leave the organic crowd to the sellers who do it so much better than me.
well, it's always a good thing to target people who do have some money in their pockets... A more upscale line of products and feel of the (web)shop would draw a different crowd for sure :wink:
