Water Bottles
Many activities require water to cool down, and I wrote earlier this week about how you could sell water at a healthy mark up in certain circumstances. The other alternative is that you give people the ability to carry their own water for these occasions.
I am specifically thinking about activities such as cycling, yoga, gym, and even hiking; where many people plan ahead and carry a water bottle. Whilst some people (myself included) will carry a reusable bottle from a sports drink or similar product, many others like to dress up, have the latest gear and impress their peers. This is the group we want to target.
Marketing your water bottles will require a targeted approach, try the following: -
Ebay may be challenging unless you have managed to do one of two things, either secured a very low cost, or found something unique. This does not mean that it is impossible if you have done neither, but you will need to think hard about your advertisement to make it stand out.
Building a website may give you more of an edge, providing you are happy to work at promoting it offline. It will allow you to showcase your stock and explain the benefits in detail. By driving traffic through your offline advertising and promotions you will reduce online comparison shopping.
Gym and Yoga studios are likely to be selling products like water bottles, but your proposition to them will be to allow them to sell on consignment. This means that they pay you when they sell the bottles as opposed to buying stock upfront. This approach take you out of a direct price competition with the current suppliers and gives you an edge. Naturally you need to ensure a fair split of the profits.
Running clubs, tennis clubs etc have regular contact with their members through emails, and or newsletters with dates of competitions, training courses etc. If you can advertise or better yet get a regular endorsement in these contacts you should see your sales increase. You may also want to sell on consignment at the club reception similar to with gyms and yoga clubs.
There are many sports and fitness magazines, and they will mostly carry advertisements for accessories like your water bottles. This does not mean that you shouldn't advertise, simply focus on the benefits of your range and include web address and telephone numbers so that you can be easily contacted. You may want to include a line about selling directly through other businesses.
You can find stock for an item like this on www.alibaba.com and at www.globalsourcing.com or simply by searching on Google. You will need to find a sympathetic supplier who is willing to ship you small batches to start with which means you will probably pay a little more initially but once you establish your market you will be able to order larger batches and cut down on costs.
Shipping may also be a problem, with air freight being the quickest way to get your hands on your stock, but sea freight being considerably cheaper. Sea freight also usually requires larger order sizes.
Although this is a competitive market you will be able to market this product by thinking about different ways to reach your target audience, or by finding niches that are not being targeted by anyone else, for example a senior’s hiking group.