I follow a podcast that has gone from like 10k subscribers to 50k subscribers in the past year. I'm expecting the pod's trajectory to blow up in the next few years. The pod has merch that is only available on the pod's site.
Problem: the website is absolute garbage. It was so bad I must've visited it 8x before I placed an order. Then it never came. The site had no customer service page. I went into my PayPal account (thank God I used PayPal) to cancel my order and saw a phone number through my PayPal dashboard for the merchant. It went to the guy's cell phone and he was like, "Oh I'll get right on it." I still watch the pod and he gets phone calls mid-show of people asking about their order lol smh.
He's got great content; a loyal following that is small but growing; he doesn't pay a dollar for advertising his merch; he just does the pod. He has zero analytics on his website currently, but his products are selling and the prices he's selling them at are imo ridiculously high. They're good quality shirts, but again imo they're unnecessarily high quality, dry clean only type tshirts.
So I call him up and tell him I can redesign his website. He agrees to meet with me for coffee.
I learn everything I need to know about his business and find several ways I could help him out. Long story short, he's a one-man operation--he even prints the shirts himself on a made-to-order basis; so there's a ton of holes to be filled. I offer him my web design services and he says he won't be able to do it for another month due to financial reasons. I've been in sales long enough to know the chances of me closing that deal are slim-to-none. I tried to close him on paying me $200 as a retainer and he can pay me when it's finished. Nope.
Option 1: Try to close him again in a month, fail, and go to next option...
Option 2: Figure out how much it'll cost me to replicate the items that I know sell on his website; build my own Shopify store that's way better than his; run the fulfillment and customer service way better than he does; and figure out a way to get it exposed to the market.
He sells such high prices probably because the quality of shirts he uses are dry clean only. Right there I can offer lower prices. I was thinking I could go to him after I build it and be like, "I'll run this, and you just run the pod" but after talking to him I doubt he would accept that.
The best thing would have him be my influencer through some kind of agreement. That would be awesome. Regardless, if he decides to not have anything to do with my store, then it almost doesn't seem to be worth doing. I could run ads that target his brand, but I don't feel good about that. I could hire another influencer, but I'm afraid people are gonna recognize like, "Hey, they stole that from that podcast."
The problem with his shitty website, poorly executed fulfillment, nonexistent customer service, and high prices still exist for everyone who wants this merch though.
What do you guys think?
Problem: the website is absolute garbage. It was so bad I must've visited it 8x before I placed an order. Then it never came. The site had no customer service page. I went into my PayPal account (thank God I used PayPal) to cancel my order and saw a phone number through my PayPal dashboard for the merchant. It went to the guy's cell phone and he was like, "Oh I'll get right on it." I still watch the pod and he gets phone calls mid-show of people asking about their order lol smh.
He's got great content; a loyal following that is small but growing; he doesn't pay a dollar for advertising his merch; he just does the pod. He has zero analytics on his website currently, but his products are selling and the prices he's selling them at are imo ridiculously high. They're good quality shirts, but again imo they're unnecessarily high quality, dry clean only type tshirts.
So I call him up and tell him I can redesign his website. He agrees to meet with me for coffee.
I learn everything I need to know about his business and find several ways I could help him out. Long story short, he's a one-man operation--he even prints the shirts himself on a made-to-order basis; so there's a ton of holes to be filled. I offer him my web design services and he says he won't be able to do it for another month due to financial reasons. I've been in sales long enough to know the chances of me closing that deal are slim-to-none. I tried to close him on paying me $200 as a retainer and he can pay me when it's finished. Nope.
Option 1: Try to close him again in a month, fail, and go to next option...
Option 2: Figure out how much it'll cost me to replicate the items that I know sell on his website; build my own Shopify store that's way better than his; run the fulfillment and customer service way better than he does; and figure out a way to get it exposed to the market.
He sells such high prices probably because the quality of shirts he uses are dry clean only. Right there I can offer lower prices. I was thinking I could go to him after I build it and be like, "I'll run this, and you just run the pod" but after talking to him I doubt he would accept that.
The best thing would have him be my influencer through some kind of agreement. That would be awesome. Regardless, if he decides to not have anything to do with my store, then it almost doesn't seem to be worth doing. I could run ads that target his brand, but I don't feel good about that. I could hire another influencer, but I'm afraid people are gonna recognize like, "Hey, they stole that from that podcast."
The problem with his shitty website, poorly executed fulfillment, nonexistent customer service, and high prices still exist for everyone who wants this merch though.
What do you guys think?
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