Dress Screens
Remember in those old cowboy movies the lead lady would disappear behind a screen and her clothes would come over the top. All very titillating and of course evocative of another era. The screens have made something of a comeback, not as a protector of modesty (society has moved on my dear) but as an item of home décor, sometimes practical to divide a living space or hide something unsightly and sometimes just as decoration up against a wall or behind a sofa.
Many styles are oriental looking but they can be as diverse as you (or your customer) can imagine. There is no reason not to make customised ones to order or provide to a niche and they can be made in a variety of materials, from cast iron through to MDF.
There are just over 1 million results on Google for dressing screens with the top (un-sponsored) listing by www.dressingscreens.com. Their screens are very modern in design for more traditional and Asian designs you can look on Amazon (yes really) under a search for “panel screens”
If the product appeals to you then you will find them easier to sell. Looking at the listings on Amazon they are not cheap at between US$500 - $1000 which should leave plenty of room for mark up.
In terms of distribution I would look at the following: -
Network
Ebay
Website
Furniture stores
Direct Mail
Networking is great, once you show your friends and family some of your products they will tell their friends and family and before you know it orders will start coming in. That’s the theory anyway, in truth you will need somewhere to display your screens and some kind of catalogue or website for them to view the ones that you don’t have space to display. Then the price will prove a barrier to many but consider discounting as these guys will tell anyone who sees their screen and likes it where to get one.
Ebay is a natural place to look for this kind of product. There are 6 items listed for “dressing screen” and a further 159 for “panel screen” clearly there is scope here to be found when people are looking. Don’t worry about the lack of advertisers, Ebay is the worlds most efficient marketplace with millions of transactions every day, I am willing to bet that there are searchers out there who are frustrated by the number of listings.
www.panelscreen.com and www.panel-screen.com are both available as of this morning as are all variations of them (.net, .org.co.uk etc.) If the idea interests you I suggest you go and register it now, of course only one of you can do that. The advantage of this is that if Amazon lists under this name people will search for it and yet the top search results on Google are for Amazon listings. In short you can get found with this one!
Furniture stores come in many shapes and sizes, and we do not recommend you approaching Ikea when you start your business. You can however go to that little bespoke place on the side street in the middle of town. You can go to the independent mid sized place in the out of town shopping centre and you can go anywhere that has a design based outlook and pitch your screens to them whether you are specialising in traditional or modern screens they are unusual enough to fit in both traditional and modern settings.
Direct mail in its simplest form is dropping a letter or a leaflet into every household’s letter box. You can do this one house at a time in your neighbourhood or in the rich neighbourhood the other side of town. You can print leaflets yourself using a home printer or have them done a few hundred at a time at the local copy shop. You will find buyers doing this. You don’t need fancy copy, you just need some nice photos of your stock and if you have the ability to customise then say so.
For once it appears that Alibaba is not the website for you. I found one supplier on there and a lot of mis-categorised items.
One option is to make your own; if you are handy then this should be pretty straight forward. A few hinges some simple joins and a nice design on the panels. Another option might be to buy a plain screen from say Ikea and then decorate it yourself, perhaps replacing the panels entirely.
If you are not handy (like me) or creative then you could pay a local craftsman to manufacture, find a craftsman overseas, search for say furniture manufacturers in China or other developing markets. Personally I would look for big providers and ask them whether they discount for trade. Commit to selling at least 10 units and ask for a sliding scale when you hit 50, 100, 500 units.
The advantage of working with a small craftsman or running your own manufacturing is that you can produce custom pieces. Different heights, numbers of panels and customer specific designs are all possible.
There is huge diversity out there and no accounting for taste. Cater to as many styles as you can find suppliers and make sure they will support minimal orders i.e. orders of one piece at a time.