You are not my target group

As some of you are aware, am starting to do an online accessories business with spidy. Actually I dont really like to term it as "business" because what we are doing, are mainly for leisure and at the same time, generating some some extra earnings to keep us happy.

When we started out, the idea came when we were wasting too much time meeting up for gossips and foods. We both thought it will be a good idea to do something useful during our meet ups.

We first started by window shopping through far east plaza and bought some lowly priced accessories which we thought of repackaging them and resell at a reasonable (to me, it’s reasonable to mark up at least 6 times the cost price) price.

Spidy thought it would be ridiculous to sell 4 dollar earrings at the price of 24 bucks. But to me, a 1 dollar earring could be selling at 6 dollars, ppl will still buy. We could just do a whole markup for all items and do re-adjustments to those we feel, have been obviously overpriced. After a few rounds of arguments and discussions and debates. I finally relented and we did a very minor markup of 70% of the cost price.

Of cos I am unhappy with that, because after adding in all the other costs we spend on packaging, electricity spent on the late nights and lap tops, our returns were just like a tiny little grain of rice. But thanks to her, we got our first two batches of orders (and a third one coming).

I have seen her talking to the wholesaler from overseas. Many times we communicated only through msn or via emails. Many times she gave up because of her limited vocab and patience with him, so I stood in and we resolved. Now that we have agreed to up the markup even more so as to be fair to ourselves and er....not so fair to the buyers but thats what business is all abut right? Anyway, the mark up is justifiable with extra touch of service we provide (going the extra mile to repair damaged accessories), good communication with our buyers, provide benefits to those who intro their friends to our site, providing exclusive packaging for each items they purchased, etc. And many more other stuff we will want to provide to our customers (oh yes, the right term to use should be customers).

We learnt quite a lot along the way and have also our disagreements and arguments that nearly snap our friendship but many times, we reminded each other when we gets heated up in the middle of the argument, that the online accessories that we are doing will never surpass our friendship. And I am glad we trusted and have faith in each other on this. And along the way, we have also identified that she is more “human touch and better with financial control” while I am more “IT and design Savvy”.

We are still working on many ways to improve and get more deals and broadcast our site to reach out to the many ladies out there. I am still pondering on how to identify our USP while getting things on going. There are positive and negative feedbacks along the way. Negative feedback do not get me feel edgy at all although I take them objectively but many times, I ignore.

Recently, there are ppl who dropped comments in our tptp site, stating that it’s too pricey. Spidy highlighted that to me which, I have already read them but chose to overlook. Then she suggested we should re-adjust our pricing strategy again. I refused.

If we change every time one or two negative comments arise, it will mean our pricing are easily manipulated! Most importantly is to understand why prices were set at that level in the first place and we will not get too affected with ppl who complains about expensive.

So here’s my notes to those who feel my accessories are expensive:

1) That means you can’t afford (thus not my target group)
2) You are not willing to spend on accessories (thus not my target group)
3) You are not looking for authentic and quality products (thus not my target group)