Handkerchiefs
Whilst many of you will see the title and think “boring”, and maybe wonder if anyone really even uses hankies anymore, I can assure you that they do not need to be, and more people use them than you might think.
My father, who is admittedly now is in his 60s is a keen motorcyclist and cannot get enough large sized handkerchiefs. He doesn’t suffer from Rhinitis as far as I know, but does use them to cover his face when riding with an open faced helmet. He particularly likes bright designs that can be seen as he rides towards you.
As with any product, if you can find a new market you are likely to be able to charge a premium. My father asks me to take large hankies back for him from the far East for the simple reason that he has trouble sourcing them at home, and when he can get them they are very expensive. Once you start marketing a product like this you may find other unrelated uses for Handkerchiefs that will help you to market at a premium.
We suggest the following approaches to selling your handkerchiefs, whether they are large sized or normal, bright or conservative, cotton, silk or synthetic: -
Ebay
Website
Direct Response
Advertise
Sell through other shops
Ebay is very competitive, with over 4000 items listed as hankie and 3000 listed under bandana. Using the full word handkerchief still gives more than 500 results. This does not mean that you should not sell your hankies here but be creative, there are only 56 results for bike accessory and this may be a better place to try advertising, or simply make sure that your adverts stand out, and advertise all of your stock under every search term you can think of.
Google only has 3 million results for handkerchief and the top two are not retailers. What this means is that you can probably drive traffic to your own website by asking an SEO (search engine optimisation) company to optimise your site for search terms relating to handkerchief. If you can get a large number of people who are searching for hankies to your site and you have a shopping cart system then you should make a lot of sales.
Direct response can work for you in a number of ways. I am thinking about either dropping leaflets in your local area advertising you high quality handkerchiefs, stressing their suitability as gifts, and practicality for everyday spills, colds etc. This is likely to drive a response rate in the region of 0.5% i.e. for every 200 leaflets you drop you should get an order.
If however you want to save on the legwork then approach local motorbike retailers and ask whether they would like to co-operate with you to sell your handkerchiefs to their customers. Target customers who have bought chopper style bikes, or open face helmets specifically and offer designs such as skull and crossbones, plain black, bright colours, tie dyes etc. Use an individually addressed letter along with a colour sheet showing some of your stock; include email address, phone number, and website address if you have one. I suspect you can sell to between 10 and 15 people in 100 using this approach simply because your audience is more targeted.
Advertising can also work well with this type of product. Definitely use motorbike magazines, but also think about conservative designs to elderly readers, gifts for magazines targeted at housewives, and large hankies or bandanas for youth targeted periodicals. Try an advert a month if funds are tight and see which responds best for you.
Some shops are well suited to sell your handkerchiefs for you. Allow the shop to keep some stock on consignment (they sell it they pay you, or they return it to you) and target motorbike shops, tailors/suit shops, and possibly small independent operators such as barbers shops. You may also want to pay for a display unit of some description to increase your chances of sales and make sure that the retailer a) offers the product to clients {would you like fries with that sir?} and b) benefits sufficiently financially when he does.
Thankfully hankies are lightweight and large numbers can be shipped at relatively little weight or bulk, which makes them a good candidate for buying in bulk from abroad.
www.alibaba.com has 551 adverts for handkerchief suppliers out of china. If you can’t find what you are looking for then email a few and see whether they can make up your own designs.
Other options include searching for specific countries, e.g. Malawi handkerchief suppliers using Google or other search engines. This may give you a topical edge in your customer proposition (Malawi is where Madonna adopted her African baby).
Even the most competitive businesses have niche markets that they serve, look for these and exploit them where you can
This will be a cheap business to get involved in, even if you need to carry some stock.