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- Oct 14, 2012
- 215
- 273
I'm finally kicking off a serious D2C e-commerce project with me and my wife and I'm calling it "project Brandkenstein."
Without giving too much away, it's in the women's accessories/fashion (kind of) space and caters to the British-Asian demographic here in the UK. The idea surfaced from her doing occasional freelance gigs related to the product.
We realized that there aren't many competitors in the UK who offer this product as a single kit or bundle, and that's going to be the main flagship product that we test and bring to market.
Smaller competitors exist in the market, but they're very "ma & pa" and don't have a strong marketing brand and operations strategy behind them. There's also an opportunity to address more of the market by positioning the product to a non-Asian audience, but that's for later.
(FYI: I Previously worked with @biophase when he did e-commerce/Amazon FBA coaching years ago and that failed due to my product selection, so here's my second serious foray into ecom!)
What the wife and I bring to the table:
La wife:
Lead product designer and graphic specialist: Creating this product involves creative skills in design, art, and knowledge of specialist equipment. I suck at creative hands-on stuff, so her skills are very complementary to mine. She's also learning graphic design and has video editing skills, so our website and branding materials are a great place for her to exercise and build real-world skills while growing our brand.
La me:
- Initial capital: I saved around 9K cash for a project over the years and it's time to pull the trigger. 3k has already been invested in initial resources for the product and designing the flagship MVP (which involved sourcing from overseas and local suppliers).
- Marketing background: I've worked in content marketing and SEO for the last decade and increased traffic and lead gen for the companies that employed me, so I'm VERY eager to test myself and see how I'll wield my skills to grow my own thing muahaha!
Current progress:
Gonna share my progress on my LinkedIn too, but not disclosing that this is my project as I don't want my employer to know lol.
Without giving too much away, it's in the women's accessories/fashion (kind of) space and caters to the British-Asian demographic here in the UK. The idea surfaced from her doing occasional freelance gigs related to the product.
We realized that there aren't many competitors in the UK who offer this product as a single kit or bundle, and that's going to be the main flagship product that we test and bring to market.
Smaller competitors exist in the market, but they're very "ma & pa" and don't have a strong marketing brand and operations strategy behind them. There's also an opportunity to address more of the market by positioning the product to a non-Asian audience, but that's for later.
(FYI: I Previously worked with @biophase when he did e-commerce/Amazon FBA coaching years ago and that failed due to my product selection, so here's my second serious foray into ecom!)
What the wife and I bring to the table:
La wife:
Lead product designer and graphic specialist: Creating this product involves creative skills in design, art, and knowledge of specialist equipment. I suck at creative hands-on stuff, so her skills are very complementary to mine. She's also learning graphic design and has video editing skills, so our website and branding materials are a great place for her to exercise and build real-world skills while growing our brand.
La me:
- Initial capital: I saved around 9K cash for a project over the years and it's time to pull the trigger. 3k has already been invested in initial resources for the product and designing the flagship MVP (which involved sourcing from overseas and local suppliers).
- Marketing background: I've worked in content marketing and SEO for the last decade and increased traffic and lead gen for the companies that employed me, so I'm VERY eager to test myself and see how I'll wield my skills to grow my own thing muahaha!
Current progress:
- MVP idea fleshed out and documented.
- Shopify website is live and running.
- Basic branding and design on the site are live, but not completely ready to open to the public.
- Materials sourced for the MVP product.
- Initial product photography complete (we have a small number of products that can be purchased individually, these will be part of the MVP which combines them into a single "kit.")
- Finalize the physical MVP (we're awaiting some packing items to wrap it up and order the instructions).
- Set up backend operations stuff for Shopify and the business. (Includes payment processing, email marketing, and a landing page to test the MVP).
- Shoot our instructional video showing how to use the product.
- Shoot a promotional video to help with the product launch.
- Get our/her network to promote it and drive initial traffic and sales.
- Promote via small Instagram/Tik Tok influencers (TBC because it depends on the cost, ideally we select a handful of influencers and go live at the same time once we have an inventory of the MVP to increase chances of a "viral" like effect). May also consider PPC/FB.
- Monitor and measure demand and adapt from there...
Gonna share my progress on my LinkedIn too, but not disclosing that this is my project as I don't want my employer to know lol.
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