This is dead AF! Would like to see more responses now that the forum is lively :).
For me, I got a salesman and my side business has entered overdrive. I've sold 5 licenses in one month...I sold less than that in one year :P.
I am also about to launch a marketing SaaS soon which I hope will net me a nice cash flow down the road.
Anyone else doing business here?
You are right this thread is dead as fuck, but hope we can jumpstart it a bit. Congrats on your recent successes, good luck to make it grow.
Good thread! There's always been a smattering of people around who want to get into business and worry about it/need help/want to share things.
This is my shop:
We started up 5 1/2 years ago, on a whim, using all our savings and then some, knowing nothing about business and taking a quite ridiculous risk. What we *did* do well was competitor research. This was a crowded market and we determined to be both better and cheaper than every single competitor. Then, we weren't even the only bead shop in town; now, we are comfortably the best for 100 miles in any direction and 75% of our competition is out of business. Being kind of ruthless helps.
Happy to help, advise, tell stories, whatever anyone wants.
Being ruthless is absolutely essential. Do whatever you can (legally) to destroy your competition.
As I said in my post just before, been following a guy for the past year who built a company from basically nothing to over a billion dollar valuation in just 9 years. His business started in China but now our company is in a handful of countries and quickly spreading around the globe. Here are some of the biggest lessons I've learned since I began working with my boss a year ago:
- Never start from 0. Copy, copy, copy, and have no shame in copying. Find a successful business in whatever market that you want to enter, study it, and then make it better or differentiate it somehow. It is nearly impossible to A) have an entirely original idea and B) to do something that's never been done before and make it successful. Just like the beads there, Phish did his research and made a better product for a cheaper price (not sure how, would be interested in those details). It's easier to go from 90 to 100 than it is to go from 0 to 100. Use what's been done before.
- Find a market or niche that does not have a brand that already occupies the first position in the consumers mind. This idea, like a lot of my bosses ideas, comes from the book called "Positioning." It's an old book (1980) but the idea of positioning I think is still relevant, especially considering the success my boss has had simply by establishing a brand position in a market niche that didn't already have a leader.
- In our case, our company established itself as the #1 brand for pre wedding photography in Asia. Prewedding photography in Asia is a lot different from engagement photography in the west, so it's hard to explain really here what we actually do, but the main thrust is that there were many local prewedding studios, but no market leader and no real brand. Our brand is across mainland China now (36 cities), and also established in Malaysia, Singapore, HK, Taiwan, and soon will be open in Indonesia, Thailand, and LA.
- Standardize everything. Have SOP for everything. If you want to make real money, don't do everything yourself. Just be a manager/boss. If you have a business (small bead shop for example) and it wouldn't make a profit unless you and your wife were in there working everyday, then it's not really a sustainable business and not built for growth. Nothing wrong with being a small business owner, but your business model should be one that can be replicated and scaled. Remember copy, copy, copy. Even copy yourself. Our pre wedding photography business is all completely standardized, from the set designs, to the lighting, to the poses, to the layout of the album. What you see is what you get, basically think Starbucks but as a photo studio.
- Marketing. A lot of naive new entrepreneurs think that just having a good product is enough. Having good marketing is actually just as important if not more important. Whether it's proper advertisements or "viral" word of mouth or something in between, you need to have a marketing plan and a budget for it.
- Your name and logo are extremely important. If your name isn't resonating, change it. Don't be attached to a name. Think "Chicken Wiggle" over there on the gaming side.
- As said above, be ruthless. By whatever legal means necessary, make sure your customers know that you are better than your competition. Destroy them, then further expand your business.
- Have a good system for managing your customers. I'm sure you can buy off the shelf software for it, but we've created our own. Anyway, keep track of who your customers are, their habits, etc. Data is extremely valuable. If you don't know who your customers are, or what they are buying and how often, or why they actually choose you vs your competitor, then you will lose.
- If possible, once you have established yourself, look for other ways that you can part your customer from their money. I'm sure
phisheep could come up with some ancillary business if he thinks hard enough. For example, for our company, our customers enter into our market generally with pre wedding photos. In most of East Asia, customers shoot their photos months in advance of their actual wedding. Since establishing the #1 brand in pre wdding photography, we have also established ancillary businesses that keep our customers in our ecosystem. We now have a wedding hall brand, in which you can have your actual wedding. We ask every photo customer if they've already booked their wedding venue, if they haven't then we introduce that product to them. We also now have retail store brands for wedding dresses, menswear, jewelry, shoes... anything that you will need for your wedding, we offer it.
- guess what, we also have a maternity brand
- and kids photography studios
- and kids party venues
- The above is why managing your customer data is so important. In China we can see most of our customers lives on their social media accounts. We know if they are pregnant. We know if they've had a baby. We can push an ad to their phone for maternity wear when they are pregnant. We can call them about having a party for their baby's 100th day or 1 year party. We can contact them every year about taking family or children photos. The list goes on and on. If they are satisfied with our first product, they will continue to choose us across our multiple brands for years to come. We can serve our customers for every big milestone in their life.
- So you better have a good product, especially at the point of entry (but ideally all the way down the line).
- Back to the name thing, our second wedding hall in Shanghai had a pretty disastrous opening thanks to long delays and problems with construction. Our first weddings were held basically on what was still a construction site. Reviews were deservedly terrible. What did we do? Changed the entire name of the wedding hall brand, a brand that was already successful and had about 4 years of mindshare in Shanghai. Now those old bad reviews are basically gone (since that old company is gone along with its name), and our new brand name is already better and more well regarded than the previous one. Our average price has gone up along with our profits. Again, be ruthless and do what you can within the law to fix any problems you encounter.
- Finally, your should generally target high end consumers, even in "cheap" industries. You should go after people with money. Always think luxury. Even if your product is simply beads. You can always come down in price, it's hard to go up. Tell your customers you have the best beads. Explain that they come from Germany or whatever, and not some factory in Bangladesh. Explain to your customers that you are the best. Your product, your service, your standards. Make sure your customers know this. Prove it to them when they shop with you. Don't race to the bottom like wal-mart, and try to separate millions of poor people from their pennies by selling sub-standard products and/or services. Sure some of your products might be cheap, but don't let your customers feel cheap. Most people state that they feel gross or some other negative thing when they shop at Wal Mart. Make people feel good. Whether it's online or in a retail store or whatever. Seriously, people will spend more money just because you make them feel like you are worth them spending money on. People aspire for more. People want to keep up with the Jones'. Most people don't want to be talked down to or treated like they are poor. Anyway rich people have more money to spend, so why not target people that actually have money? You can sell the best beads, and you can sell the cheapest beads. But for real, make people feel like they are getting the best no matter what.
Accidentally hit post too early... one more thing, especially regarding targeting different segments of the market. What we have done since establishing our premier wedding photography brand which targets the upper middle class, we've also established a higher end brand, ultimate luxury... and we've also established a few lower end brands. All of our brands deliver the highest quality service and products (the albums come from the same factories, our staff are all trained to the same standards,etc).. the only differences are the number of sceneries you can shoot at, the brands of dresses you can choose (high end stores can choose designer gowns like Vera Wang)...we do our best to make every customer get the absolute best service. Service is so important for a business, you can make every customer feel like a VIP if you have proper standards and training, even for our customers spending a lot less, shooting in a much cheaper studio. We still want those customers to have a positive impression in their mind, they still may need to buy a wedding dress, or book a wedding party, or baby photos, someday.
Anyway, hope something in there helps someone. This is how we went from one small photo studio to billions of dollars and an IPO soon. There is also a documentary premiering at the Sydney Film Festival in June, and then distributing around the world soon after that, about weddings in China. My boss and I are heavily featured in it, since he is considered the King of the Wedding Industry in China. If you are in LA look out for us coming to take over there soon too haha.
