Slippers
Those that know me will definitely be laughing at this suggestion, surely the onset of old age? The truth is that my apartment has all tiled floors, the weather is not yet warm enough, and my favourite slippers just disintegrated with old age about a week ago. In short my feet are cold and I canˇ¦t find any slippers that fit.
Whether you live in Iceland or the tropics as I do there are times when you just want to put something dry, warm and comfortable on your feet. Slippers have become something of a standing joke at Xmas but in truth well worn they only last about a year and millions of pairs are sold every year around the world.
Focus on getting a range that is suitable for your market, there is a huge choice from novelty through to ultra conservative. If you try to carry some of everything you will end up with a mass of stock before you know it. Personally I would go for conservative luxury but I am a 35 year old man, whilst you may prefer to do something more fun. The point being know what you are going to focus on and stick with it at least until you build some experience.
Marketing will be easier when the weather starts to get cold again, but you will need 3-6 months to get yourself set up, so it does not hurt to be thinking about this now.
Possibilities for marketing include: -
Family, friends, and colleagues
Ebay
Website
Community events ˇV school fetes, car boot sales, charity sales etc.
Direct Response
Family, friends and colleagues can either be the most daunting, or the most natural group to sell to depending upon our personalities. If you believe in your product and love what you are doing you will naturally enthuse them with your own positive energy. Be sure to tell people when you get your stock, make your first sale, and add a new line. If they show an interest, ask to see your stock, ask abut prices these are signs that they are interested in buying. Donˇ¦t be afraid to tell them the price, or to ask whether they want to buy. If you are braver by all means ask if they want another pair for their mum/husband/kids etc. and offer them a multi-buy discount but the first thing is to be brave enough just to tell people what you are doing.
Ebay is great because it is automatic, you donˇ¦t have to face any potential buyers directly and once you post your stock up there they just come to you right? The truth is that the internet in general is just not that simple any more. There are hundreds of sellers on Ebay for every imaginable product, you have to be at the top of the page, or close to it at the time when someone is looking for your product to stand a chance of a sale. Increase your chances by posting different stock items at different times of day, Ebay rotates their adverts so the more often you can post different items the more chance you have of being at the top when someone is looking. Equally there are a lot of untrustworthy people out there, posting new stock regularly is one thing that many buyers look for as well as customer feedback. Get family and friends to help build your credibility by posting comments about you and your stock. There is probably a whole book on how to be successful on Ebay, you certainly will need to put in more work than you think if you are to be successful.
Similarly building a website is a quick, cheap and relatively painless exercise. You could have all your slippers online and a payment gateway in place in less than a month from deciding what you wanted to do. Having the site is a bit like opening a shop in the middle of a field with no signs though. You are unlikely to get very many customers other than those who randomly stumble across you. To give you a feeling for this, I work on marketing my sites almost every day, the most established one is www.ideas2earn.com and I get approximately 70 people a day coming to the site, after approximately 10 weeks. Again there are books of stuff on this, and plenty of free advice on the internet but you will have to study to learn it and then work hard to implement it. The Web is a fantastic place to do business but all business are ˇ§1% inspiration and 99% perspirationˇ¨ as Thomas Edison said.
There are many community events where it is accepted, and even encouraged to have a stall or stand selling things. You pay a fee to the organisers and then get access to those in the community who choose to support the event. Slippers are a great product for these types of events as they are often attended by families. Many of whom take the opportunity to shop for birthday or Xmas presents. These events also seem to encourage the impulse buy, with no real opportunity for comparison shopping; you would be very unlucky to set up next to another slipper stand. To keep abreast of these events read your local newspaper diligently and follow local oriented bulletin boards, chat rooms and/or forums.
I am a huge fan of direct response, it is how I have generated the most money from the lowest investments for my employer, and indeed I am experimenting with it for selling shirts in the US market at present. At its simplest level this can be the printing and handing out of leaflets advertising your stock, website, delivery service and phone number. You could hand them out on the street, put them under car windscreens in a car park, or drop them through letter boxes. Better yet if there is someone you trust who needs a little extra cash you could pay them to do this bit for you. Response rates will be low, typically 0.5% or so but you can run tests for your flyers in batches of 200 and when you find one that works well increase the numbers. You can buy mailing lists from all sorts of organisations when you are ready to start posting using the postal service or simply buy a telephone directory from a list and take the addresses from there. If you donˇ¦t have much luck writing your on copy try hiring a professional, many will work for a share of the profits, and they may be prepared to share experience with you from previous campaigns.
Finding stock will be easy, complicated only by the amount of choice available. Google has over 13 million hits for slippers and even Ebay has nearly 10,000. Use overseas manufacturers such as those found on www.alibaba.com and try to find someone who will allow you to order in small batches to start with.
Read our pages on finding suppliers at www.idea2earn.com/findingSuppliers.html
Unless you head down the direct response route you are unlikely to earn a large income from slippers, but this is a product that people need every year and you could derive some pleasure and a small extra income from it.
Donˇ¦t be afraid to ask people for money. If they have been asking questions about your product it is a sign that they are interested in buying it.
All business is hard work, but there are ways to remove the customer facing element of selling from your business if that is what is blocking you from getting started.