Cable Ties
In this day and age we seem to gather more and more electrical equipment particularly around the living room where our entertainment centres live. Even a modest set up with cable or satellite TV receiver, TV, DVD player and/or Tivo starts to create a pretty muddled set of wires, add a surround sound system and a games console or two and you are in cable hell.
There simply is not the room to make it all look tidy but thankfully a host of accessories is appearing to help us make sense of the mess. Whether it be cable ties, channelling or cable gripping tubes there is a solution for just about everyone. I have one friend in Swindon who is an exception but most of us can find a fix.Find as full a range of products as you can, have a look at a site like www.cabletiesplus.com to see the kind of options that are available, or www.NelcoProducts.com/cableties which has an unbelievable collection of different ties without getting into tubing and other options.
Once you understand your range you can go about marketing it. Remember to be enthusiastic (but not too geeky) about your product with everyone you meet as well as trying the following: -
Networking
Ebay
Website
Trade fairs
Hi Fi Shops
Once you start showing people how effective your cable tidying solutions are and how innocuous or fun they can look in matt finishes or neon they are bound to be impressed. These are not expensive products and the simple increase in safety around the home, keeping children and pets from getting tangled and reducing the chance of anything chewing through wires must make this a shoe in for any family. Once they are bitten by the bug you will of course have to encourage them to spread the word.
Ebay has only 6 listings under “cable tidy”. That’s fantastic news! There are a further 6 stores and 128 international sellers but simply listing “cable tidy” right now ought to find you buyers where you can simply re-order online and mark up the price. Of course you could do it properly list a bunch of products link them all back to your website that uses a store creating a virtuous circle etc etc. but you know you’re going to try the evil mark up idea so just get on and do it.
“Cable ties” and “Cable tidy” both have over 1 million results on a Google search but the top 2 on “cable tidy” are Amazon listings which means you are in with a shout if you get a decent SEO consultant on the job. Of course search engines are only one way to drive traffic; you could also approach online hi-fi / home cinema stores and magazines and ask them to promote your site which should be of interest to their users or you could start posting on hi-fi / home cinema forums and chat rooms with your website url in the signature block.
Trade fairs allow you to meet real people who may be interested in buying your product, or re-selling it to their customers. This is where a large range comes in. If you have oodles of cool cable tidying solutions they can’t just bob of to China and re-source what you already have; well they could but they’d have to quit their day job probably whilst you are sat there with everything they need already sourced. Ok so there aren’t actually cable tidy trade shows (are there?) so you should probably go to hi-fi and home cinema type affairs where you just may find people who want to re-sell your stuff. Even if you don’t rent a stand take bag of samples with you and hand them out, ideally attached to your business card.
If none of the above works take your bag of samples around the high end hi-fi and home cinema shops in your area. Talk to the sales men first and ask whether they think that their customers would be interested, if you get some interest then ask to talk to the delivery guys and the guys who install the systems. A few quid in their pockets each week ought to see nice tidy cable wraps on almost every installation.
www.alibaba.com has 23 leads for cable tidy and 749 for cable tie. Don’t be afraid to run some lines from Ebay and other online shopping to boost your range and remember that it is the choice you offer that allows you to charge a small but important premium.
This is not a sexy product but it is cheap and should sell by the bucket load, plus it is light and easy to ship.