Branding and Socialism

Our community's entrepreneurship committee is working on a project to help local artist's sell their wares. We have been working on a way to help them market their products by combining efforts. Here are some relevant issues:

 - Artist co-ops rarely work. Asking predominantly right-brained people
   to agree on marketing could be difficult.
 - Artists can't imagine that their products are unwanted by consumers.
   Who will tell them and hurt their feelings? The other artists?
 - How can you keep the brand consistent? Various types of art may not
   be compatible within the same brand. Example: will you sell children's
   lullaby collection books alongside pornographic works?

The Animal Farm model is difficult and usually breaks down. The way to succeed is not to sell things that artists want to sell, but to sell things that people want to buy.

The best method is for an independent team to establish a firm, create a brand, then source products from the artists, and sell them. This is the Henry and David model. Pottery Barn would never tell everyone that they can sell anything they want through their store channels. Pottery Barn has buyers, who are expert at understanding consumer wants and buying behaviors, procure what they know will sell.

We plan also to form a "farm club," a group of students and artist hopefuls who can sell their wares through a separate brand as they learn how to respond to customer tastes. That way we respond to the need to help people become self-employed artists without diluting the exclusive brand.

Dear parochial seller

Dear Entrepreneur on the Prairie successfully selling your wares on the internet. We congratulate you.

Here are some numbers that will obviously surprise you: two billion people now use the internet. The U.S. population is 300 million (including infants and the infirm). It seems a lot of people outside the U.S. can buy online. Why are you so afraid to sell to them? So afraid of being scammed by Nigerian mobsters that you lump everyone outside the U.S. together, calling them all mobsters?

Buck up, keep a stiff upper lip, and learn how to lower your scam risk. And make money.

Roll the dice on disaster

I recently perused a body of research which indicates that people who look forward to the end of the world are those who feel unsuccessful in the current world. The End will not crush them, but will turn the tables. It will put them on top. "I might be a failure now, but you won't be laughing at me then."

History does not uphold the idea that huge upheavals bring the bottom people to the top. Some mixing up does occur, some people are brought low, but rarely is anyone switched to the top spot in the new order, simply because they were at the bottom before.

The current recession will probably get worse before it gets better. And natural disasters will probably increase in frequency, continuing the trend. But hoping for despair is a gamble of the worst kind. Punishing yourself further now, in the hopes that you will be chosen as a leader in the post-Zombie Apocalypse, is a scenario of such incredible odds that you should not ever consider it. Instead, gamble that the world will get better eventually.

And don't let anyone take advantage of your despair-wish. 

Forget Surveys

I am not a proponent of market research. I believe it has three weaknesses:

- People don't know what they like. No one understands themselves, why
  they make certain choices, or what they prefer.
- People don't respond genuinely. To use an example of class evaluations,
  students in my classes don't respond in useful ways. Outliers on both
  ends give feedback about me that "he is the worst teacher in the
  department," and "he is the greatest teacher ever." I receive more positive
  feedback about my wonderful hair than about information about how to
  improve the class. People have different ways of communicating, different
  agendas, and some are are suspicious of surveys.
- People don't understand unless they have a prototype in hand and have
  opportunity to use it in real life. So they need to experience your product
  or service, then decide if they like it. They need to test that new gold club
  by swinging it. They need to eat the food at the restaurant,

Observing people choosing your product from others on the shelf and then using your product--when they think they are not being observed--gives you information you can use.

Start the business, then learn and muddle through until you figure out how to make the business successful, even if success means significantly changing the business. Market research is often a method of procrastinating. 

The Power of Free

Newsday.com became a paid-subscription based news site in 2009. In the first six months, the site attracted 35 subscribers and earned revenue of $9,100. They paid $4,000,000 to design and set up the site. (Source: Mikal Belicove)

This week I am reading Chris Anderson's "FREE: The Future of a Radical Price." The book's contention is that you can often make more money by giving away your product or service for free. The issue is approached from many angles, and covers considerably more than that simplistic synopsis.

Read the book. Consider the implications. Don't be like Newsday. 

Send in Your Questions

If the Nauvoo Commuter could resolve all of your business concerns, then they wouldn't business concerns, would they?

Running a business means solving unique problems every single say. If they were not unique, and someone else could tell you the answer, then your business would be a formula, and you would have not business. It would be a formula. Your customers don't need you to mediate a formula. If your business is too simple, you're irrelevant. 

But try us anyway. We might just have an idea you have not thought of yourself. Send us a message.