Where I created a gifting hamper and sold it. It was an amazing experience designing it, developing it, marketing and producing the Product. Here are 5 lessons.
- 4 D method
Discover – discover the market know anything and everything, know about the market price, know the gaps/pain points in the industry, competitors, quality spectrum available, vendors and the audience likes, dislikes, needs and wants also take lots of inspiration
Define after knowing the information its time to define your Target audience, purpose of the product, your niche, characteristics of the product, vibe and mood boards
Design. as you define you start to get a vague picture of the product so start designing, write or draw out the material, colors, labels and arrangement you need. Make sure you make hundreds of designs and take feedback
Develop with the finalized design start to get that model alive. Search for material, Get samples, talk to vendors and Take help from experts. First make a DIY and then make samples. Of course with lots of trails and errors. Make sure you have other logistic in mind like what safety precautions to do like materials to airtight pack them. or bubble wraps to protect them in transport. Keep an eye on the quality and pricing too.
- Plan ahead and Market way ahead
I completely messed up the timeline. I had hard time finding the material which pushed away lot of time. Even though I didn’t have the Product ready I started to share it on Whatsapp, Instagram about The process. I made a marketing plan too.
I made my pitch ready (saw a lot of shark tank pitches and write one) Choose the platform based on where you can find your target audience (social media marketing ,local newspaper or etc)
Start marketing. Make attractive tag lines, present an experience of the product, use words used by the target audience, shoot ads, do email Champaign and there are much more. ways. Its important to have good relationship and get overall picture of all the third party services (courier, raw material vendors) literally go physically and talk to them, ask all the questions.
- Plan with end in mind
It’s important to detail out the plan. How many batches of cookies, what could go wrong and having buffer material, time etc. Time wise planning is also very important, having a physical to do list helps.. One important thing is tracking all the expenses. You would need lots of help, be open to ask..
- Build relationship with costumers Keep sharing the updates to them, ask feedback and proactively share how much the order mean to you.
- Enjoyyyyy!
Mistakes are expected and accepted. Embrace, reflect, take feedback, learn from it and move on! Share it to the world like I am doing it now 🙂
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