Hassassin's ecommerce journey

[Hassassin]

I'm finally kicking off a serious D2C e-commerce project with me and my wife and I'm calling it "project Brandkenstein."

Without giving too much away, it's in the women's accessories/fashion (kind of) space and caters to the British-Asian demographic here in the UK. The idea surfaced from her doing occasional freelance gigs related to the product.

We realized that there aren't many competitors in the UK who offer this product as a single kit or bundle, and that's going to be the main flagship product that we test and bring to market.

Smaller competitors exist in the market, but they're very "ma & pa" and don't have a strong marketing brand and operations strategy behind them. There's also an opportunity to address more of the market by positioning the product to a non-Asian audience, but that's for later.

(FYI: I Previously worked with @biophase when he did e-commerce/Amazon FBA coaching years ago and that failed due to my product selection, so here's my second serious foray into ecom!)

What the wife and I bring to the table:

La wife:

Lead product designer and graphic specialist: Creating this product involves creative skills in design, art, and knowledge of specialist equipment. I suck at creative hands-on stuff, so her skills are very complementary to mine. She's also learning graphic design and has video editing skills, so our website and branding materials are a great place for her to exercise and build real-world skills while growing our brand.

La me:

- Initial capital: I saved around 9K cash for a project over the years and it's time to pull the trigger. 3k has already been invested in initial resources for the product and designing the flagship MVP (which involved sourcing from overseas and local suppliers).

- Marketing background: I've worked in content marketing and SEO for the last decade and increased traffic and lead gen for the companies that employed me, so I'm VERY eager to test myself and see how I'll wield my skills to grow my own thing muahaha!

Current progress:

• MVP idea fleshed out and documented.
• Shopify website is live and running.
• Basic branding and design on the site are live, but not completely ready to open to the public.
• Materials sourced for the MVP product.
• Initial product photography complete (we have a small number of products that can be purchased individually, these will be part of the MVP which combines them into a single "kit.")

The next step is to test the product by making those precious initial sales. Here's the plan:

1. Finalize the physical MVP (we're awaiting some packing items to wrap it up and order the instructions).
2. Set up backend operations stuff for Shopify and the business. (Includes payment processing, email marketing, and a landing page to test the MVP).
3. Shoot our instructional video showing how to use the product.
4. Shoot a promotional video to help with the product launch.
5. Get our/her network to promote it and drive initial traffic and sales.
6. Promote via small Instagram/Tik Tok influencers (TBC because it depends on the cost, ideally we select a handful of influencers and go live at the same time once we have an inventory of the MVP to increase chances of a "viral" like effect). May also consider PPC/FB.
7. Monitor and measure demand and adapt from there...

Looking forward to sharing more progress as the journey unfolds! Any tips on Shopify/launching from scratch are welcome

Gonna share my progress on my LinkedIn too, but not disclosing that this is my project as I don't want my employer to know lol.

 

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[Cameraman]

I'm looking forward to your future progress. You've clearly thought about this and it's good to see you taking action. I'm wishing you good luck and please keep the updates coming.

 

[BizyDad]

Yeah buddy! Get after it! Following with interest.

 

[CardinalFlame]

I'm finally kicking off a serious D2C e-commerce project with me and my wife and I'm calling it "project Brandkenstein."

Without giving too much away, it's in the women's accessories/fashion (kind of) space and caters to the British-Asian demographic here in the UK. The idea surfaced from her doing occasional freelance gigs related to the product.

We realized that there aren't many competitors in the UK who offer this product as a single kit or bundle, and that's going to be the main flagship product that we test and bring to market.

Smaller competitors exist in the market, but they're very "ma & pa" and don't have a strong marketing brand and operations strategy behind them. There's also an opportunity to address more of the market by positioning the product to a non-Asian audience, but that's for later.

(FYI: I Previously worked with @biophase when he did e-commerce/Amazon FBA coaching years ago and that failed due to my product selection, so here's my second serious foray into ecom!)

What the wife and I bring to the table:

La wife:

Lead product designer and graphic specialist: Creating this product involves creative skills in design, art, and knowledge of specialist equipment. I suck at creative hands-on stuff, so her skills are very complementary to mine. She's also learning graphic design and has video editing skills, so our website and branding materials are a great place for her to exercise and build real-world skills while growing our brand.

La me:

- Initial capital: I saved around 9K cash for a project over the years and it's time to pull the trigger. 3k has already been invested in initial resources for the product and designing the flagship MVP (which involved sourcing from overseas and local suppliers).

- Marketing background: I've worked in content marketing and SEO for the last decade and increased traffic and lead gen for the companies that employed me, so I'm VERY eager to test myself and see how I'll wield my skills to grow my own thing muahaha!

Current progress:

• MVP idea fleshed out and documented.
• Shopify website is live and running.
• Basic branding and design on the site are live, but not completely ready to open to the public.
• Materials sourced for the MVP product.
• Initial product photography complete (we have a small number of products that can be purchased individually, these will be part of the MVP which combines them into a single "kit.")

The next step is to test the product by making those precious initial sales. Here's the plan:

1. Finalize the physical MVP (we're awaiting some packing items to wrap it up and order the instructions).
2. Set up backend operations stuff for Shopify and the business. (Includes payment processing, email marketing, and a landing page to test the MVP).
3. Shoot our instructional video showing how to use the product.
4. Shoot a promotional video to help with the product launch.
5. Get our/her network to promote it and drive initial traffic and sales.
6. Promote via small Instagram/Tik Tok influencers (TBC because it depends on the cost, ideally we select a handful of influencers and go live at the same time once we have an inventory of the MVP to increase chances of a "viral" like effect). May also consider PPC/FB.
7. Monitor and measure demand and adapt from there...

Looking forward to sharing more progress as the journey unfolds! Any tips on Shopify/launching from scratch are welcome

Gonna share my progress on my LinkedIn too, but not disclosing that this is my project as I don't want my employer to know lol.

Hey Hassassin! Checking in on this, how did launch go? I launch a product this year so I can't help but wonder!

 

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[Hassassin]

Alright I got sidetracked with some freelance work towards the end of last year and lost momentum. But I'm back. With a vengeance on this biz! We're gearing up for launch this month.

We’re at a “pre-launch” boiling point right now.
But the DTC product should be ready to launch by the end of the month .

My wife and I have poured a ton of work and love into the project to even reach this point:

• Actually building the product and our unique premise (took months!).
• Building strong brand identity. We’re going for a premium, luxury style brand. And we’ve had to assess the marketplace to come up with unique colors, style, and messaging.
• Aligning our personal lives around the DTC biz. (We have a 4-year old daughter and and coordinate working times around her and my day job. So TLDR: a lot of early mornings and nearly late nights for me ).

Next big thing: We’re looking to launch by end of month. And my wife shot a snazzy product promo video & instructional video that’ll feature on the homepage of our site!

Product promo:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtPk8LFwoCM

Instructional video:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYRdXopQWPM&t=178s&pp=ygUKc2hlYmFoZW5uYQ%3D%3D


I'm not happy with the final box/packaging for the flagship product. So we're gathering samples from Ali Baba right now and have generated a 2d mockup with detailed guidance for suppliers. Messaging them now and want to get these ready for the next stage (influencer marketing).

“The numbers, Hassan”​

Not much to report here since we’re pre-launch. Surprisingly, the site has generated 49 sessions (products are not ready to buy yet so there aren’t any sales).
I’d attribute this little trickle of traffic to the YouTube shorts content we’re creating and the instructional video.

• Total visits: 49 store sessions
• Total sales: £0.00
• Total orders: 0
• Conversion rate: 0%
• Brand growth:

My wife acts as the “Chief Product Designer,” so once we’ve launched she’ll be able to execute the content strategy we’ve created. It’s largely based on YouTube and YouTube shorts.

What's brewing for this month?

It’s all about eyeballs baby! We need to generate awareness and early conversions. Here’s the plan to do that.

Influencer marketing.
I’m working on a “micro-influencer” strategy to work on the launch and announcement.
We’ll share our product announcement with like 100-300 influencers > give samples to 20-30 of the best ones.

This should generate the initial traction needed to gather feedback on the product and iterate on our marketing.

I’m estimating this will cost between £500-£1000.

Fleshing out the email list.
Even if people don’t buy, we’re looking to get them to subscribe on the list with a promotional discount or other incentive. I need to think more about this atm tbh!

Promo video.
It will go on the homepage and may be used for a light YouTube ad campaign to help with retargeting.

PPC & retargeting
I’m holding off on this right until launch day and will only spend a small amount.
My hypothesis: Retargeting the traffic we get from influencers will accelerate our brand’s “stickiness” in the minds of consumers. Think about it:

A familiar influencer will shout us out. They’ll visit our site. And then they’ll get served with ads. Multiple touch points sounds promising to me (albeit expense).

Let’s see. That’s the big “bet” for the coming months.

Your thoughts?​

I'm all ears. What else would you like to know about the brand and its performance?

Btw I'm sharing my journey on a newsletter called #Brandkenstein newsletter. Made a YouTube video to share the details.

 

[amp0193]

Your thoughts?

You mentioned your decade of experience is in SEO and content marketing.

But your near-term acquisition strategy is pretty removed from that.

I think the strategy as it is is a fine enough plan, but don't forget to leverage your strengths.

For the email list, set up some automated flows to send out to new subscribers, so they all get 3 or 4 emails. Do the same with abandoned carts.

I'm not too familiar with Henna, but as I think this might be a somewhat consumable product, using up the ink or whatever, you might consider trying an offer that is by 2 get $x off vs. a discount on the upfront purchase.


Congrats on getting into motion and taking action. These are the best kinds of progress threads.

 

[Hassassin]

You mentioned your decade of experience is in SEO and content marketing.

But your near-term acquisition strategy is pretty removed from that.

I think the strategy as it is is a fine enough plan, but don't forget to leverage your strengths.

For the email list, set up some automated flows to send out to new subscribers, so they all get 3 or 4 emails. Do the same with abandoned carts.

I'm not too familiar with Henna, but as I think this might be a somewhat consumable product, using up the ink or whatever, you might consider trying an offer that is by 2 get $x off vs. a discount on the upfront purchase.


Congrats on getting into motion and taking action. These are the best kinds of progress threads.

Sorry just saw this! So I'll be laying out some groundwork for SEO and content marketing. But we're mainly going to focus on video content marketing and I'll do some things with the blog.

Reason: traditional SEO on the website is a long-term play. We've got a new domain and I ain't looking to pay for backlinks or rely on organic traffic for sales. I need something aggressive to get feedback from customers ASAP.

And that's why it looks like I'm doing a "180" and going for influencer marketing/PPC.

Another big priority for me is email, as you mentioned. I've just finished up with our welcome email and need to set aside time for a welcome series. (Love that Shopify gives us all of this in one place.)

Currently stressing over our packaging for our flagship product. We've got samples inbound from China, and found a local supplier and are waiting for quotes based on our design.

We also purchases a small CNC/Laser routing machine so we can order our own acoustic foam and create custom foam molds to hold our product and give it a luxury feel.

 

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[Hassassin]

Influencer marketing & packaging strategy so far:

Ahem. I mean: What catapults a brand to the front of the pack and distinguishes it from competitors?

That question has been sending me down a loong rabbit hole as I put together our flagship ecommerce product.

And it’s a tough one to answer.

Partial answer: It boils down to the precious first impression with a new product + it’s ability to live up to a good reputation.

You’ve felt how powerful this can be.

Especially if you’ve ever unboxed an Apple Mac (or any well-packaged premium product).

I still remember unboxing my first Mac…

Peeling the outer plastic wrapping triggers a growing sense of anticipation.

You slowly lift the top layer of the box off--which takes like 7 full seconds--and then, gently remove each meticulously placed item from its packaging.

It’s an experience (there’s even ASMR channels dedicated to unpacking tech products).

And that experience is exactly what I’ve been working on reverse-engineering for our first flagship product.

How I’m reverse-engineering Apple’s product packaging for my nefarious gains ‍

We’re positioning our flagship product as a special type of all-in-one “kit.”

We’ve sourced our initial items for the kit…

Selected our color combinations for the product…

And decided how we want the box to open (magnetic strip with a ribbon). Last piece of le puzzle?

Figuring out the optimal way to package multiple items in way that balances three important goals:

1): Gives a premium, polished, and high-end feel

2): Is cost-effective and actually keeps the items secure

3): Encourages consumers to keep and re-use the product & packaging. In fact, we’re betting on this for our early influencer marketing strategy

This has me exploring how different types of foam inserts impact a product’s image and “feel.”

Specifically, I’ve been rabidly researching and speaking to manufacturers about: Ethylene-Vinyl Acetate (EVA) foam vs. Expanded Polyethylene (EPE) vs. Sponge foam. Ya know, the fun stuff…

TLDR: Acoustic foam is the current choice. It’s cost-effective, does a great job of “holding” the product, and gives a strong visual appeal.

While researching I stumbled on a paper sharing how product packaging drives consumer buying decisions. And it came in clutch!

It confirmed my hunches around this topic. Mainly that:

• Your product is your packaging
• When catering to a female audience (our brand does), packaging plays an even bigger role
• Many consumers plan to re-use packaging. Which is good brand awareness for us!
• When it came to forming swaying consumer buying decisions, “color” was the biggest factor, followed by visuals, photographs, and icons
• It also helped me justify all the packaging I’m hoarding to my wife, who was NOT happy with my new obsession with packaging lol.

Influencer’s R us!

Influencer marketing is HOT right now. And you don’t need the IQ of a Rick and Morty fan to know why…

In such a crowded world, why go through the pain of building an audience from scratch when you can leverage someone else's?

If you my previous ecommerce journey update, you’d know that we’re betting heavily on influencer marketing for initial GTM traction and sales.

Mainly because the brand is:

• Literally starting from scratch and has no audience
• We’re in the world of ecom/fashion, and influencers reign supreme. They drive consumer trends and taste

(Note: I just finished reading the story of how Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, built the billion dollar behemoth brand from scratch and it’s a riveting story—that involved a lot of “influencer marketing.”)

Influencer marketing: my template and favorite resources

Here are some resources that I’m finding extremely helpful as I flesh out the influencer marketing strategy:

Modash: An influencer marketing search engine and campaign management platform. The tool came in clutch for finding niche and nano influencers. I’m narrowing influencers by gender, interests, engagement rate, and more.

You’re limited to viewing the specific details of 20 influencers. But I just created multiple accounts to work around it. #thinkoutsidethebox #startup #brokeytechstack.

ChatGPT: To take all those usernames I copied and list their account URLs into a spreadsheet.

I spent HOURS trying to be create a crafty workaround with APIs in Google Sheets to scrape Instagram follower counts. I failed miserably…

And lost a few precious hours because I lack the technical prowess do that. I guess I’m not as smart as a Rick and Morty fan *cries in single-digit-IQ* .

In the end, I rolled my sleeves up got my hands dirty with some manual data entry—and the support of good o’le drill music.

Next steps:
1. Separate influencers into tiers based on follower count:

• Micro: 1k-10k
• Mid: 10k-100,000
• Large: 100k-500,000k

2. Create offers for each of these tiers. We’ll pay mid-large tiers. And offer free products to Micro influencers in exchange for promoting our products.

3. Start reaching out and picking the top 50 influencers across Instagram and TikTok.

I think it’s wise to focus on a few cities and influencers in similar networks to create a “viral effect.” But that’s all theory right now. Let's see how this goes. My target budget is between 1k-2k (including product retail value + payments to influencers).

Interested in using the same custom sheet I’ve built for tracking influencer marketing? I'm sharing the Google Sheet I've been using here which may save you time (although I'm not a "guru" or "expert" in this domain. Just a guy doing stuff lol).

Side note: While I work on this, my wife is also slowly making connections with the local community and is planning to host a local free workshop for women who just want to have fun and learn stuff related to our product. We'll see how this goes and iterate from there.

Curious: What would you guys experienced in influencer marketing/ecomm do different?

 

[MakeItHappen]

Good luck @Hassassin , it looks like you have a plan!

One thing that came to mind when reading your thread... you only have to be better at packaging etc. than your competition and it seems like you are not competing with Apple and Co.
I wouldn't put too much time into getting everything perfect at the beginning and focus more on getting some sales first to get some momentum and customer feedback.

 

[Hassassin]

Good luck @Hassassin , it looks like you have a plan!

One thing that came to mind when reading your thread... you only have to be better at packaging etc. than your competition and it seems like you are not competing with Apple and Co.
I wouldn't put too much time into getting everything perfect at the beginning and focus more on getting some sales first to get some momentum and customer feedback.

Thank you @MakeItHappen ! Yes, you're right. Luckily, I stumbled upon a local manufacturer of boxes and packaging. They suggested some redesigns of our packaging in a way that would decrease costs while maintaining the luxury aesthetic. I'm impressed. Trying to find out who the designer behind the scenes is haha.

Plan is still to launch between march-april and get those first few sales in.

 

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[Hassassin]

It's been a while! I have updates on:

• Why it’s been a painful month.
• The key initiatives I’ve dropped the ball on.
• How we’ve adapted around not being able to launch our innovative flagship product.

From left to right: our journey with developing the perfect packaging for the product. It’s taken 4+ months to nail this for the flagship “MVP,” which needs to feel like a premium product.

Store and product launch postponed

You know how I said we should launch our flagship product and store by the end of Feb?

Well, that didn’t happen!

We’re still grappling with product packaging .

On the bright side, we’re at the final stage of assessing suppliers and waiting on prototypes.

It turns out that bespoke luxury brand packaging is VERY expensive, and admittedly, a little tough to get right. What a surprise, aye?
Truth is: I underestimated how confusing nailing custom luxury packaging is. Especially when you have no connections or knowledge.

The “ignorance tax“ we’re paying here is real lol, and that means we have to postpone launching our flagship product to April-May 2024.

Anyways, it’s all part of the process…

The show must go on!

We’re relying on our flagship product’s uniqueness to generate initial brand awareness and affinity.

But if it isn’t ready on time, the store will still go “live” regardless and open up for business in April.

So are we going live with zero products for sale?

Fortunately not, hehe.

We’re able to launch without the flagship product thanks to ensuring there’s more than one SKU to sell.

We’ve:

• Expanded into new products based on trends in our market.
• Created a small pool of stock that we’ve produced in-house.

This opens up an entire new category of product on our site with very little downside in terms of set up cost and commitment.

The key benefit? We can potentially generate more sales from fewer customers, improving ROAS and purchase values.

Overall, I’m bummed about not launching on the target date. (I gotta thing with deadlines and "acting on what I say lol.")

I wanted to launch the flagship product in March-April. But there’s not much I can do about it now except learn from mistakes and keep on “keeping on.”

“The numbers, Hassan”

Again, not much to report on sales and revenue here since we’re pre-launch. In fact, there’s more spending than anything. (Which is kinda making me uncomfortable .)

Sure, we’re opening new product lines and getting closer to a bespoke packaging design we’re happy with—and rising expenses are a natural byproduct.

But I believe this is the cost of carving out a brand from the ground up. I’m betting on the investment paying off in the long term.

Current stats:
Total spend on the business/brand: £5,600
Total visits: 89 store sessions
Total sales: £0.00
Total orders: 0
Conversion rate: 0%
Brand growth: n/a at this stage

Ignorance tax: You don’t know what you don’t know

Working with some local packaging suppliers made me realize the value of having an expert to speak with.

There’s a smorgasbord of things I had to consider when designing packaging, from dimensions, material, print types etc. But I wouldn’t have known these things without engaging the experts and the market.

For example, last month we got busy working on packaging mockups and struggled to communicate the ideal design we wanted to suppliers.

A few embarrassing mockups later, we realized that we needed to use a proper tool like Adobe to create a proper dieline (the file used to show a render of a box before it’s designed) to show what we wanted.

Currently, I’m anxiously waiting for our packaging sample and new line of products to arrive.

Then, we can worry about how we’re going to package & send those new juicy SKUs .

Watch this space for more updates coming soon! .

 

[MitchC]

Packaging tip: premium packaging makes deeper sounds, cheap packaging makes high pitched crinkle sounds. If you’re going to invest money in this I’d make the opening experience visual and shareable. Otherwise good enough is good enough. Stickers are a good way to get premium packaging with low cost and low moq.

This is my personal opinion: I would not rely on influencer marketing at all. I wouldn’t put any budget behind it. Especially bigger influencers. Please do not do this. Especially please do not do this as a way to launch and test the market.

Instead: Get content from good creators and run paid ads to that content. You can also make content yourself and save even more money and possible get better results. Even just photos.

If an influencer works it’s not all that repeatable. If it doesn’t work, what do you do pull the slot machine again and pay another? I do not know a single ecom brand owner that gets results from influencers. Here and there there are a couple that perfectly align and it works but it’s never a huge part of their business and is just shear luck after testing 100s of them.

If ads don’t work you know pretty quickly with a small budget and can adjust. If they do work you can keep scaling them until everyone in the world has your product who wants it.

Start with paid ads, and stick with paid ads. If you want to stroke your ego or build a bit of credibility to leverage and it makes sense go and blow some money on influencers once your ads are printing money.

The other option which I’m not familiar with but I know is insane right now is TikTok shop. Send your product to creators on there and pay them purely commission on sales. Use the content that performs best to run ads and show it to other creators to recreate.

 

[MitchC]

Oh and nice work, this product is going to go crazy with social ads I can tell, ticks every box

 

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[MitchC]

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These style stickers look great, don’t know the company but I’m sure you can get them on alibaba cheaper

 

[Spenny]

@NIK4658 Some great tips on influencer marketing here. We should take notes.

 

[Spenny]

I have a couple of thoughts after reading through.

our journey with developing the perfect packaging for the product.

It’s taken 4+ months to nail this for the flagship “MVP,” which needs to feel like a premium product.

I'd be cautious of seeking perfection; done is better than perfect. When I released my product, it wasn't ideal, but good enough for people to buy. What you're developing now is the minimum lovable product (which I'd argue is already there), not the minimum viable product.

There are people out there selling what you're selling for far less effort—and they're getting paid. Here is an example on Etsy. I'm not sure of the search volume, but people are buying Henna Tattoos already—you may be able to get some passive traffic now.

They don't have crazy packaging, experience, or even quality - but they are selling.

Another thing - we can go off intuition, but we won't know until a customer reviews our product what they are looking for.

I agree with @MitchC; this would be amazing on ads, but I'd also ask you: What can you do to get a sale by the end of the week?

 

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[Hassassin]

I would not rely on influencer marketing at all. I wouldn’t put any budget behind it. Especially bigger influencers. Please do not do this. Especially please do not do this as a way to launch and test the market.

Thanks a million for this warning @MitchC and advise on the packaging. It makes total sense. Especially framing it as a non-repeatable slot machine--which I don't like the sound of!.
I'll now "pivot" the budget that I would've spent on influencers on to paid social ads to content/ads.

I'm thinking Facebook and TikTok to start with. (Actually excited to finally do some PPC, as I've been in SEO/organic most of my career).

My wife is already creating content and will lead that, so we can develop that pretty inexpensively. Plus, my day job is content strategy (although it's for b2b SaaS not this type of industry). So I'll do some legwork on what's trending and what aligns with our launch goals.

Instead: Get content from good creators and run paid ads to that content. You can also make content yourself and save even more money and possible get better results. Even just photos.
If ads don’t work you know pretty quickly with a small budget and can adjust. If they do work you can keep scaling them until everyone in the world has your product who wants it.

@MitchC: What ratio of content ads vs. standard product ads would you suggest?

 

[Hassassin]

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These style stickers look great, don’t know the company but I’m sure you can get them on alibaba cheaper

You're a legend. Thank you. I wouldn't have thought of this tip with the amount I've got going on.

 

[Hassassin]

I have a couple of thoughts after reading through.

I'd be cautious of seeking perfection; done is better than perfect. When I released my product, it wasn't ideal, but good enough for people to buy. What you're developing now is the minimum lovable product (which I'd argue is already there), not the minimum viable product.

There are people out there selling what you're selling for far less effort—and they're getting paid. Here is an example on Etsy. I'm not sure of the search volume, but people are buying Henna Tattoos already—you may be able to get some passive traffic now.

They don't have crazy packaging, experience, or even quality - but they are selling.

Another thing - we can go off intuition, but we won't know until a customer reviews our product what they are looking for.

I agree with @MitchC; this would be amazing on ads, but I'd also ask you: What can you do to get a sale by the end of the week?

Thanks @Spenny I agree. We definitely are taking the long route to launch and it's starting to knaw on me now. Here's the thing:

They don't have crazy packaging, experience, or even quality - but they are selling.

The whole premise of our brand is that we're the luxury selection, innovator/all-in-one kit with a unique source of henna to go with it. We want to be the "Gucci of Henna" essentially, and I think even for an MVP/MLP, there needs to be a strong impression with unboxing and usage? I guess I'm betting on branding big time here. Might be a risky one considering I've not tested.

But...our big next step is reshooting the promo video with our Boxx and then running paid ads to our landing page. We don't have enough product to sell atm, so I'll have to take pre-orders and limit them to like a few 100. What would you do here?

 

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[Spenny]

The whole premise of our brand is that we're the luxury selection, innovator/all-in-one kit with a unique source of henna to go with it. We want to be the "Gucci of Henna" essentially, and I think even for an MVP/MLP, there needs to be a strong impression with unboxing and usage? I guess I'm betting on branding big time here. Might be a risky one considering I've not tested.

But...our big next step is reshooting the promo video with our Boxx and then running paid ads to our landing page. We don't have enough product to sell atm, so I'll have to take pre-orders and limit them to like a few 100. What would you do here?

I'm not entirely sure, but my intuition says you can list now and make the improvements as you go along. As long as the final product is solid, you can begin to focus on the garland (packaging, customer service, etc. ) around it. I began selling with just my product in a cardboard mailer because I knew what the customer really wanted was the product. The experience of opening it adds, but if it doesn't solve what they bought it to solve, it doesn't matter.

I fear you've spent $5600 and have received zero sales with feedback. I released mine for only $300 (the stock + cardboard mailers). I got reviews, sales, and feedback. Since then, it's been a worthwhile venture. I've only expanded my range because people have paid me for my previous product.

Did Gucci begin with fantastic packaging? Nah. He scaled as there was more and more need for his products. The brand was formed because quality was the main item; it was the central pin in the board for everything else that was built around it. Now, you see the final form of it - the luxurious stores, the image, the feelings that come along with it. But the beginning always comes back to what you're selling. The brand was built from the product.

My point is that you've got a product. Look to get something out there. Run some ads. Get some stock. Drive some traffic. Get some sales (or not, who knows). The filming can be done later once you've proven people want to buy.

 

[amp0193]

The whole premise of our brand is that we're the luxury selection, innovator/all-in-one kit with a unique source of henna to go with it. We want to be the "Gucci of Henna" essentially, and I think even for an MVP/MLP, there needs to be a strong impression with unboxing and usage?

Make sure to feature the packaging, either photos or 3d mockups, on the product listings. Good packaging will sell more units because it improves the giftability of it (but only if people are aware of what the packaging looks like prior to purchase), and I think this can be a very giftable product.

Packaging / nice giftable set / good photos are the only reason one of my product listings stayed #1 in my category for years on Amazon. Customers frequently bought the product as a baby shower gift. The product was otherwise a commodity that was no different than any other product in the search results (except most of the others shipped in polybags).

I don't think it's a huge add to the value proposition, but it helps.

 

[MitchC]

@MitchC: What ratio of content ads vs. standard product ads would you suggest?

I don't understand the question, just test ads and see what works. I'd start with Facebook over Tiktok as it's more reliable. The product is visual and social so product demos is the logical way to go. Make it look fun to do, and make the results look good. Video and photo. I don't think just putting a picture of the box up with a price will work if that's what you're asking. If you're talking about sending traffic to content I wouldn't do that either, the funnel becomes too complicated and it's an impulse buy anyway, just send them to the product page.

 

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[MitchC]

It's funny reading this thread and the advice after having read this one

Fixing your business personality

Interesting to see how the complete opposite personalities approach this

 

[NIK4658]

Some great tips on influencer marketing here. We should take notes.

Well, It looks like @MitchC already changed @Hassassin direction about influencer marketing.

I’m a very newbie about influencers
Here are my two cents:

Paid ads are a skill that can bring you a LOT of results, especially for an e-commerce.
It needs even more skills to be optimised (content creation, data analysis, etc).
As a skill, it needs to be learned the proper way in order to be good at it.
They can get you high quality leads to look at your website that “easily” become customers.
Paid ads need constant budget, once you stop paying for ads, you stop getting traffic.
BUT if an ad starts to print money for you (profitable) you can easily set its budget as 10x or 100x with a click and get even more results.

Influencers can get you a lot of eyeballs, and get your product(s) in front of a lot of people, that can also be your target audience.
They can get a lot of traffic into your website, but I think it’s not as high quality as proper paid ads.
They can bring you visitors virtually forever, since their content will be online and can be watched forever.
Influencers can bring you some real reviews as content that you then can use with paid ads.
They could also be cheaper, since often you “only” need to send them a free product for some sponsored posts.
You can also setup an affiliate marketing program with them and PAY THEM AFTER you get a sale and not BEFORE as paid ads.

The main issue with influencers is that often you can’t see the difference between an influencer that gave you results and one who didn’t.

I quote a post that I read not long time ago in this forum about influencer marketing:
“If an influencer brings you results and sales, good, but you don’t know how that happened and can’t reiterate easily. If an influencer doesn’t brings you results, bad, and you don’t know how that happened. You will be always at the starting point”

I am not an expert in paid ads, and just started playing with influencers this weeks.

I’m still curios about this journey, will write a proper post about my opinion separately.

 

[NervesOfSteel]

Thanks @Spenny I agree. We definitely are taking the long route to launch and it's starting to knaw on me now. Here's the thing:

The whole premise of our brand is that we're the luxury selection, innovator/all-in-one kit with a unique source of henna to go with it. We want to be the "Gucci of Henna" essentially, and I think even for an MVP/MLP, there needs to be a strong impression with unboxing and usage? I guess I'm betting on branding big time here. Might be a risky one considering I've not tested.

But...our big next step is reshooting the promo video with our Boxx and then running paid ads to our landing page. We don't have enough product to sell atm, so I'll have to take pre-orders and limit them to like a few 100. What would you do here?

When I saw your videos, I thought you were a 'box' company! (just kidding!)

We want to be the "Gucci of Henna"

Either Scale it from 0% to 100%, or invest 100% and take a risk of reducing it to zero.

View attachment 55011
They don't have crazy packaging, experience, or even quality - but they are selling.

OP seems to be stuck at perfect packing as product experience but henna's experience lies in easy application, better/ darker and long lasting color.

I would rather add a sticker peeling tool to assist women without long nails and an envelope that goes in the trashcan, along with the disposed items after use!

OP must take a break and think, how many people buy iPhones *because* their unboxing feels great?


Henna is a consumable product and its users are often a repeat customers. People do tend to look for economical options for the product they require often!


Regards!

 

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