Starting business marketing methods - Kind of?

[8thsinner]

I have worked out several variations of products in different ranges and wondering about a few things.

Heres the dynamic to start with to give you an idea

My partner is the financeer, admin, and book keeper type.

I am the designer, laborer, net guy, sourcer and supplies type.

We have an initial 6 ranges of products for home and person. mostly ranging in jewelery and furnishings.

We are not sure how its best to start. We definately want to release more than 1 range to begin with.

We will be advertising on a website and ebay

We have been doing very little of any thing other than discussing different methods of doing things to start up...

So several questions have come up

1) Range display. (This question applies to more than one range of products)

- Should we make enough of the range to photograph the main product only.

- OR

- Should we make enough of the range to photograph, + cheat on display products by providing partial pictures of that range using different colours, It's cheating because were not saying we have that product just implying it, whilst keeping enough supplies back to make a handful of any product.

2) Database codings (She will be writing this bit)

- Because we will have several ranges of products I personally like the coding system where the

- reference number = production code eg references to a product in our data base broken down as follows.

- (Range - Subrange - Size - Material - Material 2 (or reference code to a material number the same as the supplier)

- Example SSR-CHK-25-H29-RED = Stone and steel range, choker, of 52 balls (13") made with (obsidian) using Red leather.

notes

In total we will be offering lots of variables within the range, such as colour variations, upto 30 in some cases, so the data base itself will be quite large. Completely guessing approximately the total number of products = 3000

The data base will be used mainly in house for stock levels, inventory on certain types of products available for wholesale for printing for clients etc,

Also this reference number will be on the picture of the product in the customers gallery section for custom orders, So that future customers can simply request this product again. So her data base understands it when it's been ordered and stuff and I understand it when making the product.

This to me makes a lot more sense than using product numbers plain as 0001-2999

And I know I am being completely selfish in this area because I am used to working in situation where using the production codes become second nature. But are there any alternatives or other benefits from using the simple numbers versions???

[Bree]

Start by writing a business plan. And ask yourself how one worker bee is going to do production for 6 ranges of products and maintain the website and order supplies and maintain supply inventory among other things?

Try one or two ranges first. Get to where you can produce ONE product (not range) well and in volume... then think about #3, then #4, and then #5, and then #6. Methinks you guys are biting off more than you can chew right now.

My $.02

[Johanna]

Who cares how you do the database coding as long as the customer doesn't see all that? Make it easy for the customer and don't make them type or say 12 digit alpha-numeric stock numbers. You may want to think about additional ways to market the products. Just because you have a website doesn't mean anyone will come. Diversity is great, but confusing the customer is bad. Might want to have different stores set up for products as different as home furnishings and jewelry. Just my two cents.

Johanna

[8thsinner]

Thanks for the response.

You do make a valid point Bree concerning the running of all this.

But some of the ranges are so similar they could be the one range.

We don't expect to start of selling in thousands. Nor would we want to.

We are starting small.

The business plan has been taken care of.

We are currently working on different marketing and advertising methods, even if we haven't gotten very far.

We are not going to have the site up and running until we are ready, we also have a deal with one of our local shops so we can take our time with that first.

Realistically we are not going to be ready for maybe even a couple of months. But I am hoping to get individual products up on eBay before that.

Tho other thing Johanna, The site will be set up as a place where craft products are sold at the highest quality found. And we think that embroidered cushions are not all that far away from hand crafted jewelery. There certainly is a difference, and we are not starting with all the ranges, the most we will start with is three. The furnishings will probably be the last ones on the list.

Personally my favourite, and the range I am most excited about will be the second to last probably, due to the initial costs of production. And the fact that it must be started as a range rather than a product.

I suppose your right about the codings, but the customer would be unaware of these codes unless they analysed the site thouroughly, lots of coded patterns are found all over in page and picture references online so....they Shouldn't notice.

I like the idea of several sites to deal with different ranges, we can pass each one of the other then for more effective SEO, however the running time of all that will be considerably higher, And probably is beyond us. And theres a lot more things planned, I have had ideas running round my head for at least the last ten years. And surprisingly all but one of our range is new. LOL

We will diverge into the adult products at some point however and that will definately have to be seperate.

Thanks for some food for thought.