Home Help Aids
All of the developed countries of the world are experiencing an aging population. The post war baby boomers are starting to retire and any industry that caters to them is sure to see fantastic growth in the near future.
Home help aids are those items that make life a little easier as we become less mobile. Examples of these kinds of accessories are long handled taps that can be operated more easily with arthritic hands, or bottle top grips to make opening bottles or jars a little easier, or remote grips that can save you bending to pick things up.
A little research should give you plenty of ideas for products to sell. The key as per all of the ideas is how you will market and distribute your products. Some ideas are: -
Creating a catalogue
Selling through Retirement homes and sheltered housing
EBAY
Setting up a website
Direct response through targeted advertising
Having a catalogue to showcase your goods is great, it doesn't cost that much to put together and you may be surprised by how many people will get to see just one copy. Typically a catalogue full of good products will be passed from one person to another within a group of friends. With a phone number or a smooth mail order system you should get a good number of orders from each one you distribute. Knowing where to distribute is the key. Talking to the warden at local retirement homes should help you to get your first customers; you can also try contacting people who run groups popular with retirees such as tea dances, or even Church groups.
Retirement homes are great for many products lines as they are often looking for activities for their residents. Giving a talk about your products and demonstrating a few of them can prove a useful distraction for the less mobile. If you have a catalogue of some leaflets to leave behind then you may well get repeat orders and can build a loyal base of customers.
Talk to your grandparents or parents if they are of retirement age and run your product lines past them. They will see benefits that may not have occurred to you and may also know of places that you should be marketing your range that are not obvious to someone from your generation.
EBAY and online selling may not be obvious for the older generation but if you start to look into this you will be surprised at the number of retirement aged interest groups that exist online. Many retirees have learned to use www.Skype.com to stay in touch with their friends and families, and many recent retirees will have been used to using the internet for work. Our advice for how you sell your products is no different to the advice in our "finding customers" pages.
The reasons for having an online shop are similar to using EBAY, you can use your other marketing strategies to drive traffic and keep a database of customers who have made purchases online so that you can make them additional offers in future.
Direct response is where you advertise to drive traffic to you. It works on the same basis as advertising a trade like a plumber or electricians in the Yellow pages except you choose where to advertise based upon your market. For the older market you need to identify publications that will interest them, for example Saga holidays market their holidays to the older generation (50+) so an advert in their travel brochure would be fantastic. Again with a little research you should be able to identify some other publications that will be more likely to hit your ideal audience. Including a small (read thin) catalogue in another publication is also a great way to get more attention.
Finding stock for this business will require some knowledge of the industry and the types of items that you want to stock. Initially I had some trouble finding the kinds of things that I wanted. Using Google I was able to find a couple of companies that are already in this business, and have comprehensive web sites, have a look at www.assistedlivingstore.com and www.activeforever.com to get some ideas. My search criteria were "assisted living" and "retirement assist aids".
Once you know what you want to stock you can do a more specific search for each product item. Note that www.activeforever.com will do bulk discounts but you can probably get things cheaper bys sourcing from overseas. I would look in www.alibaba.com and use www.google.com to search for items that you cannot find there. Use country specific filters such as China, India or Vietnam.
Finding appropriate stock at appropriate prices will be the hardest part of this, as you will need to search out individual items to get the best prices. You can do comparisons online to see whether your prices will be competitive, and if you can get hold of an existing catalogue that will also be useful. Try not to just copy someone else's product range though as you may find yourself in a bidding war, where ultimately you will both lose.
If you go down the route of having catalogues, leaflets or doing direct response ads you need to make sure that you have a slick ordering process. Making sure you can accept credit cards, and prompt delivery will be key.
You may want to think about offering an installation service for certain items, or work out a deal with local tradesmen, to help keep prices down for your customers.
Many adult children worry about their parents and want to make their lives easier. You may find another market for your products in this segment of 30+ year olds with strong disposable income and retired parents when you target your marketing.