5 Things I learned from my first limited edition event
5. Customer Testimonials
It’s a powerful thing; having a real life person who purchased from you, take a picture, post to their friends and remark how they felt cared for as a customer in interfacing with you. We got a few orders this way that we might not have otherwise. I definitely feel that going forward, we will make a more concerted effort to encourage customers to do this where they are so inclined.
4. Collaboration
Collaboration, unfortunately sometimes seems like a foreign concept in our Jamaican reality. Outside of musicians it can be hard to think of examples well known successful ones. In approaching some larger companies to collab with them you may even begin to see why.
In trying to work together to offer some of the available designs for World Cup viewing events, I have had a few metaphorical doors shut on me and even a few of the modern “ghosting”, cold email/ call or not. The rat race, it seems, has largely insulated people so much that it is hard for them to see past their own nose to any road ahead; It’s about the 'right here and now', 'time is money', 'dollars and cents' mentality. Inversely, I found that many MSMEs are excited at opportunities to collab and display a “Stronger Together” kind of outlook to business. They have also recognised where collaboration is great for visibilty and discovery; how it can simply increase the volume, variance and richness to the music that we aim to sell (haha) as opposed to the belief that one artist's (read: business) track cancels out another. I plan to and look forward to working with my fellow MSMEs in the near future and those select larger companies that have a little chutzpah!
3. Be customer flexible
At the start of the event there was a rule of sorts that I had in place if someone wanted a design from a team that was not pre-printed. I would ask them to get a few of their closest friends who were also interested in that order and if they had enough people I would go ahead a get them printed. This definitely makes sense on paper when dealing with bulk items. However, I came to understand that in our specific situation, we could have done a few things differently, especially since it was entirely possible at the time to get some smaller number of prints, sell these to the prospective customer(s) and turn a small profit. Rigidity to a hard and fast, non-principled rule worked against us. In retrospect I think helping that customer would have gone much further than looking at the short term dollars and cents. I suppose that's why the chinese run wholesales here not going to allow you to leave with your money haha.
Going above and beyond for a customer is paramount. As the saying goes, "You are not the hero of this story, the customer is."
2. The power of a pre-order
I originally printed designs for Brasil, Spain, Germany, Argentina and England. As I shopped my wares around, there were a few people who asked if we had done one for France. I mentioned that we had a design ready but had not printed them because the other teams had larger interest at the time. I asked if they were interested in placing an order (even if France were to fall out before they received their order) and took their contact info. There were about 5 people total, a very small order. But guess what? When I printed them they all found an immediate home, no muss, no fuss, no waste to sit in inventory. I am now in love with preorders haha.
1. Portioning
This was perhaps the biggest lesson for me. Before printing some of these designs, I thought that 100 shirts of 1 design was a small order. I later learned that unless you already have momentum (very regular purchases and brand awareness) or preorders, 100 shirts is quite a large order to sell over a short time. I later learned this to be true for even 30 and 15 (for an newly started brand with a small market presence). The shirts won’t be wasted of course as they will help to round out inventory but the point carries. I am very grateful for the experience and the lesson though as it was cheaply learnt and will be applied to all future product developments.
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Pop Like Corn,
The Popcorn Maker
