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How to test market without the product?

Marketing, social media, advertising

VeeGirl

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I found a fashion item that I think would sell well. It's a niche product and has a lot of variety/options to build on. I don't want to order any upfront but will if I have to. I was wondering what is the best way to presell a product without having it in stock to test the market? Should I take preorders, market it on social media, etc? Would this make the store scream newbie and unprofessional?
 
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Kyle Tully

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Post it on instagram.

We have people going mental with "where can I buy it" when we hit something hot.

You can take it one step further and have a product page with either an "out of stock, get email notification" type of thing.

Or go so far as a complete fake checkout process. Product->Add to Cart->Checkout. At which point you show it's out of stock. (Don't charge their card.)

Or yeah just take pre-orders. Just gotta be very clear about when it will be delivered.
 

Rcaraway1989

Rob C
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Create a landing page (using leadpages or unbounce) and either collect emails up front, or fake the sales process (collecting email on the way). If you don't want to pay anything, I've heard of people simply using Facebook pages to gather emails.

You've probably already thought about your potential target markets. Design your landing page for them.

Now find those people. Google Adwords is a usually a safe choice (unless the market is very tech savvy and uses ad blocking).

Run experiments and measure the results. No one biting? You might have the market wrong. Keeping running experiments and measuring the results -- it won't take but a few iterations to realize if you're on to something, and since you only have a landing page, it will be really easy to pivot if needed.
 

VeeGirl

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Thank you! Your advice was very helpful. :) I contacted 5 of the companies in China if they would allow me to use their photos and if they could email me the full res without the watermark. One said no and another already sent me photos of their entire stock.
 
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