Manicure / Pedicure Sets
With the advent of the metro-sexual, stars such as David Beckham publicly admitting to certain more feminine activities and the popularity of TV shows such as ¡§Queer Eye¡¨ (for the straight guy), a whole new market has opened up for male beauty accessories. Added to the already huge market for female oriented products this has to be a hot ¡§now¡¨ product.
The great thing about having a manicure is that once you have had one or two you will not want to go back to the old feeling of cruddy nails; painful hang nails, jagged edges and dirt. In other words if you can persuade people to try this, the chances are they will buy your product..
The distribution methods below will not change fundamentally based on the pitch, but I would try to package this product so that it looks masculine or at least neutral gender. No pink cases or Hello Kitty here. The other thing I would do is package it with an instruction manual, with clear pictures showing how to undertake each step of the process. This doesn¡¦t have to be super professional and can be produced quite cheaply at home or self published through an online publisher. The key is that you will immediately have differentiated your manicure/pedicure kit from every other kit on the market.
Where would you sell this new concept? The following ideas should work: -
Ebay
Website
Networking
Direct Response
Gyms /Saunas
Search on Ebay for <Men Manicure> and you will only find 14 items, 3 of which are a tutorial DVD selling for $22.50. This compares to 1080 items listed just under manicure, which means that almost 1 thousand people are missing the male angle and only one out of all those people has thought of instructing men on how to perform their manicure¡K.and they aren¡¦t even selling a kit.
Google has 7.7 million hits for the word manicure, but narrow that down to <men manicure sets> and you are at 770,000. If nothing else it seems that most of the manicures set sellers out there are not targeting the Metro-sexual demographic. Building a website can cost anything from nothing if you use a standard template and free hosting to several thousand dollars for a complex site with a shopping cart, but at least the job of marketing your site will be easier given the lack of competition in this segment.
Part of the reason that I like Ebay and a website for this type of transaction is that it is effectively anonymous. Many guys who use beauty treatments still borrow from their wives or girlfriends and aren¡¦t quite comfortable being open about it. Ordering online saves the embarrassment of being caught shopping for something ¡§illicit¡¨.
Networking here may be difficult as a guy. Actually I think the key is to network to the opposite sex whether you are male or female. Many women want their guy to make more of an effort and may use another guy as an example to pressure them into trying manicure/pedicure type beauty treatments. Equally many men can feel pressured by an unrelated woman who points out that they could make more of themselves. Engage your family and friends and get them to help you find people who are interested. If you get the instruction book right some women will buy for themselves.
Direct response here is definitely advertising as opposed to direct mail or telemarketing. At a minimum place an advert in your local newspaper, and use adwords or something similar online. Emphasise that this is a set designed for men with full instructions. Your ad does not need to be big but does need to include website address, email, and phone number. If your budget stretches to it then try to get into men¡¦s magazines, or the beauty supplement of a Sunday newspaper.
Gyms and Saunas are places that guys go to take care of themselves, if you can persuade the operators to have a display stand with your stock in it then you will sell some by default. If you directly incentivise the reception staff to sell them by paying them a commission on each one sold you will sell a lot. You will need to persuade the owners that this is in their best interests but providing you are willing to share your mark up I think this could work very well.
As simple search on Google will find you 7 million or suppliers. Think about the product you want to sell, and how high quality you want to be. If you want to go high end then make sure you get your supplies from Sheffield in the UK, or Germany or another developed market with a strong reputation for Steel. You will pay more for your stock but the quality that this imbues on your stock will make for a higher mark up.
If quality is not that important and you are aiming to sell quantity at a lower price then you can simply search on www.alibaba.com . I would recommend ordering sample sets from at least 3 suppliers before settling on one. This allows you to understand the difference in quality as well as shipping practises and the service levels of the companies you are dealing with.
Be careful not to upset a suppliers simply because you can find a product cheaper elsewhere, you never know when the service elements may prove to be more important than the price.
You don¡¦t have to sell this product to men, in fact by doing so you limit your market size, but you also reduce competition dramatically
If you can¡¦t take a bit of teasing then this is not the product for you
There is a potential spin off business here giving manicures, or having a manicure service with the benefit of being able to keep your own personal set.