Ask HN: How do we get our first sale?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10484337

by jnardiello • 11 years ago

16 32 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Hello HN, I'm writing here as I'm running our of options. Me and my wife have decided to invest a good chunk of money to bootstrap our own business. I'm a software engineer (currently employed in London), she has been working with high fashion handcrafted clothing brands for years (we are originally from Italy).

The natural choice we made was to start selling online the same kind of products my wife has been selling for years. The store is: http://polghi.co.uk/

Long story short: we spent months going around Italy to get the best suppliers we could find (italian artisans mostly, which have 0 presence online and that were still interested in selling abroad), we set up the online store and started some heavy campaigns with Facebook and Adwords. I knew form experience that selling online was difficult BUT so far the result is beyond worst: 0 orders.

We have cut all the prices, started promotional campaigns. Nothing seems to work. Any suggestion? Am I missing anything?

This "bootstrap your company" thing is really becoming an emotional roller coaster.

ddingus3• 11 years ago

This screams Pinterest!

Setup an account and start pinning. Secondly, purchase some of their sponsored pins.

The other path I would take is to send out some clothes to people who can recommend, review and talk about them.

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion. Pinterest is a recurring subject, you are not first one suggesting it but none of us ever used it. I do definitely need to spend some time with it.

ddingus3• 11 years ago

Well, it has spread like wildfire among women, particularly younger women.

They see stuff that represents their style, pin those, and get followers who also appreciate both the things and the sense of taste about things.

Secondly, they use it as that, "I want" or "feel of shopping" type experience, and that's a big part of what the sponsored pins are about.

A lot of women I see using the site use it to spot trends and or help them figure out what their look is, or could be, and that's inclusive. Dress, home, etc...

It's not enough to have good looks. It's about who is talking about them and some exposure. Just running an AD might net you a click from a woman who is intrigued, or who has her own well defined style and tastes.

Getting some sharing and discussion may well see you a lot more clicks from women who follow trends and or other women.

The language on your page might use a tweak too. It's clean and clear, but not entirely suggestive. I would get help changing that, if it were me.

jkahn• 11 years ago

I know nothing about fashion so take this with a grain of salt.

Your products are definitely on the very high end of price when it comes to clothing. Do people buy expensive clothes from a brand they've never heard of online? Maybe you're better suited to a bricks and mortar store so people can touch and feel the product, without the heft of a well known brand behind you. If not a store, then supplying other stores.

The discounting strikes me with cognitive dissonance. You're trying to sell a premium product - why would you discount? Personally I'd never buy clothes that were this expensive outside of a premium suit. I am a purchaser of other premium products, though. Look at what the brands you want to imitate do. Do they discount? Do they do run out sales? Better to just change your price if you didn't pick the right one. If someone's looking for a discount, they're probably after a $20 sweater, not s $500 one.

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Bricks and mortar store is something we are considering. To be fair, we don't have enough money to actually setup a "proper" store BUT in London it is possible to open pop up stores, which you can rent for a few days or a few weeks. We are probably going to do that as I'm 100% convinced that our products are actually the best marketing we have.

Beside that, the "discount" topic is a hot one. We are still in the process of testing our assumptions. So far, all we know is that if we sell full-price imitating the "big brands" in our segment, we get 0 attention. As you mentioned, people are after brands and we are still unknown.

Now we are trying to see if there is a segment of people who care about quality and is ready to pay a bit of money to get higher quality but still would never pay 250$ for a scarf from the big brands as they realise that it's all about the empty brand with little quality behind.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, it's really important to have the chance to speak with someone about this stuff (other than my wife, of course).

smeyer• 11 years ago

I'm the farthest thing from an expert here, but why do you need your own pop-up store? Could you also try getting an existing brick and mortar store to carry part of your product line? That might result in a few sales and give you some insight into buyers, both at the retail and the individual level.

mozumder• 11 years ago

If you have good products, try some of the trade shows first: http://www.modemonline.com/fashion/mini-web-sites/tradeshows

Thousands of wholesale buyers will be able to see your products here. You will find out quickly enough if your products are good or not, based on the actual quality of your product.

You'll also meet industry people that can help you with advice or offer to sell you your products. Learn from the fashion experts there.

Gustomaximus• 11 years ago

Professional marketeer here. I came to say something close to this comment. There's a bunch of good advice in these threads but the fundamental point is here. You're trying to sell upper end products without any brand strength to justify this. Until you can establish some kind of premium knowledge/experience with the brand, sales are not going to happen.

This will take some seriously good marketing or luck to make successful. It can be done but it's not a natural/easy win.

tixocloud• 11 years ago

My thoughts exactly.

A mistake many people make is trying to go premium without having built the brand first. As a customer, I am not convinced why I should pay more when I don't see the value.

You may want to spend some time working researching directly to understand why someone would/would not want to buy your product. If you can find a way to interview those people who've visited your website and then left, you'll get some insights.

mrcsparker• 11 years ago

If you want to attract a buyer like my wife (she isn't here at the moment, so I am guessing) have a US-based version of the site in US dollars. She buys a lot of clothing online, and this looks like the type of clothing that she likes to wear.

A lot of the higher-end retailers in the States allow the buyer to exchange online products in-store. Your return policy looks fantastic - I think that she wouldn't think twice about ordering.

I will ask her when she gets back. It is really beautiful looking clothing.

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Added to the to-do list, tomorrow I'm going to add multi-currency support to the store!

If your wife will decide to be our first customer, tell her to get in touch via mail. We will be super-happy to offer free shipping to the US :)

Thanks a lot for the kind words regarding the products, they are (quite literally) our craft!

Mz2• 11 years ago

You need to rewrite your landing page. It currently sounds like it was written by someone who speaks English as a second language. Here is the current text:

Polghi is a niche fashion brand that offers a contemporary view of “elegant simplicity”. The designs of our exclusive clothing and accessories line have been conceptualised to facilitate comfortable yet refined outfits.

Polghi is a blend of the finest artisan traditions of "Made-in-Italy" and the newest technological trends. We rigourously follow the life of our range of pure cashmere products from their origin as handpicked fibres to post-manufacturing quality control.

Our dedication to excellence and to the highest quality in all our endeavors is something we wish our customers to experience firsthand.

_-----

Suggested edits to start:

Polghi is a new brand that offers a contemporary view of elegant simplicity. Our exclusive line of clothing and accessories are comfortable to wear yet present a refined image.

We blend the finest artisan traditions of Made-in-Italy with the newest technology to bring you practical beauty. We follow the life of our pure cashmere products from their origin as handpicked fibres to post-manufacturing to ensure the highest quality control.

Our dedication to excellence and to the highest quality brings the best and most beautiful fabrics and designs to our customers.

----

Do not use the word niche. It signals small rather than exclusive. If you sell high end clothes, you need to be a bit of a snob about it.

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

I'm blown away! Thank you so much for this!

I do realize that speaking english as a second language is an issue considering our target. We definitely need to find someone to proof-read our texts and landing pages.

Mz2• 11 years ago

Get yourself a copy writer. Look for someone who is a native speaker of English who writes proper UK English. Look for someone who knows how to write about clothes for a high end market in specific.

Instead of calling it "niche", you might try describing your business as a boutique. Boutique is the correct word (at least in the U.S.) for signaling that you are a small but upscale business. Most of the time, when someone is describing a business as "niche", they are basically dismissing it as small and irrelevant. There are exceptions, but those exceptions do not appear to apply to your business model.

Here is one of those exceptions and their business history is a good read: kitchen.johnnycupcakes.com/story/

I would describe Johnny Cupcakes as a niche business because of the limited scope of their products. They are very focused on one thing, they do that one thing and they do it well: They mostly produce limited run t-shirts with their unique set of themes. IIRC, it started as just t-shirts. They appear to have expanded their product line to other items, but it still all follows their weird little theme. From what I gather, they are quite successful.

Best of luck.

kamphey2• 11 years ago

Have you thought of getting into People's views with YouTube influencers? Since you do need someone to check out the clothes and "recommend" them, digitally this gets you a very targeted audience.

Depending on your budget you can go big and spend on influencers making specific videos, or go low budget and have them do shoutouts during their regular programming. or just send them free clothes.

Here's a few that might be good: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGentlemanCove https://www.youtube.com/user/DulceCandy87 https://www.youtube.com/user/lindsayslatest

Here's a few things I thought while on your site:

1) It looks like you're in the sheep business. 2) It took me a bit of digging to get to "Products" and even find out how to purchase anything. 3) You can deliver something directly to your potential customers that they are looking for, based on at least season. Right now I might look for hoodies or sweaters, show those right away!

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Having a list of youtubers or bloggers is probably the next thing we will do. We will try to get in touch with them and see what we will need to do in order to get some coverage. The hard thing with our core business is that our stock is limited. Because everything was made by either artisans or local family-run laboratories we had to place our orders with months of advance (in order to make sure they had the time to prepare everything) and products are still limited.

Before sending out samples, we need to make sure they are well-worth it!

You made a good point saying that we should show straight-away products that relate with the current season. We will probably remove the "Bestsellers" (which actually are not bestsellers at the moment btw) with something more relevant.

kamphey2• 11 years ago

Feel free to email me if you want to get into YouTube Influencers. I work in the YouTube world and am happy to help fellow hustlers! kamphey @ gmail.com

no1youknowz2• 11 years ago

I would say, you don't have a traffic problem. But what you have is a metrics problem.

Do you have any metrics associated with the flow of traffic.

1) Are you seeing what happens when you place banners on facebook?

2) What demos are clicking (if any) your banners.

3) Where are you losing people. Are you direct linking to your home page, or are you pairing a banner with a product page?

4) What is the title of the headline that you are using?

5) What is the copy of the product page that you are using after the FB advert?

6) Are you doing any sort of re-targeting? Do you make the checkout process easy or easier on revisits?

7) Are you capturing any data from people who are visiting?

8) Do you have any type of newsletter?

9) How do people know you have slashed prices, are you telling people why they should buy at your site?

So many things I could go on. Put it this way, I have sold other peoples t-shirts on facebook as an affiliate. It's not terribly difficult, but the devil is in the analytics.

1) Images

2) Headline

3) Copy

4) Call To Action

5) Devices / Useragents

6) Geo-location

7) Retargeting

8) Opt-in

9) Funnels.

All of these matter and if you get it done right, not only will you start making sales. You'll start to make a lot of sales!

Good luck!

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

These are all good suggestions/insights. Some of the things you mentioned we do, others we don't. I'll be spending the next few days trying to optimize our campaigns and define a clear demographic for the people we target.

I haven't yet implemented retargeting as it requires quite some time and I need to understand how it works. We do use cookies to rebuild the checkout when a user returns on the website (at least something!)

We tried building a newsletter, but we wasted a lot of time as people simply would not subscribe. We might want to try again but we will need to understand exactly what we can offer people and what would motivate them to give us their email address.

In order to let people know we are reducing prices, we run campaigns with specific collections and landing pages (so that we can track at least what people is doing as soon as they arrive on the offers page), an example here: http://polghi.co.uk/collections/winter-is-here

Tomorrow I will do a long list with some of the stuff you mentioned and will try to further optimize what we have, thanks a lot for your suggestions!

threesixandnine• 11 years ago

Before optimizing marketing please, please, please optimize shopping process. I don't want to click through three(four??) Cart pages. Also, I don't want to register with your shop. I just want to put my details in and order - all in one page....make sure it works great both on desktop and on mobile.

You obviously run analytics on the shop. Check how many people ran away because of cumbersome order process.

One more thing. What does "Save this information for faster checkout next time" mean? I don't get it. Will I be registered, will you put cookies in my browser....how does it work? Get rid of it I say....

Oh, and, photos are dull. Get some fire going in me when I am looking at your web site, product photos. You are both Italians, you say? You have it in you!

Good luck!

sdnguyen90• 11 years ago

Most of that is a premature optimization IMO.

First of all, are you sure you are targeting the right market?

I've worked with fashion companies with similar price points as the OP. At that price, many people expect heavy branding or very good quality.

Since you're looking for a quick win, you should put your focus on improving the product pages. Your selling point is the product's quality. You need to emphasize the product features on every page. You currently only have a few sentences on each one. Also, you have a great opportunity to tell a story with sourcing the product from artisans in Italy.

I see too many people jumping into conversion rate optimization when they don't have their base marketing strategy figured out.

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Since you're looking for a quick win, you should put your focus on improving the product pages. Your selling point is the product's quality. You need to emphasize the product features on every page. You currently only have a few sentences on each one. Also, you have a great opportunity to tell a story with sourcing the product from artisans in Italy.

This is absolutely true. I honestly think that we should both try to find an "empathic" connection with our customers AND tell them the story behind each product describing the months of work we spent traveling the country to actually truly get the best, both in terms of raw materials and local hand-made production

no1youknowz2• 11 years ago

Most of that is a premature optimization IMO.

Since when is analytics, premature optimisation?

jnardiello9• 11 years ago

Apparently we are receiving quite a few visits (and some positive feedback) from the US. We do really appreciate all the help we got on HN.

If any of you guys will decide to place an order, please use this coupon code during the checkout: FREEUS

It will give free worldwide delivery :)

seanwilson• 11 years ago

Not something I know much about but I like the clean professional look of your site. Good luck! By the way, I noticed the Pinterest link at the bottom of the site is malformed and 404s.

buildops• 11 years ago

Have you done marketing? Do you have a marketing plan? Who is your target audience - your first buyer? Ads don't help if the people who are likely to buy from a no name (regardless of quality) don't know about you.

First thing is to develop a marketing plan - target audience/first market, then promotional channels, price (cheaper isn't always better - if you are priced like a cheap Chinese knock off but are high quality Italian fashion, I won't trust your claim), and product - which you are working on

akg_67• 11 years ago

we spent months going around Italy to get the best suppliers we could find (italian artisans mostly, which have 0 presence online and that were still interested in selling abroad)

Did you make similar "offline" effort on customer side like going around and talking to the potential customers? It seems you took "active hands-on" approach for supplier acquisition, but you are taking "passive hands-off" approach for customer acquisition.

While online promotion through advertising is good, I will suggest do some offline reach out to potential customers. Consider going around the places and events where people who like high fashion, handicraft, clothing hang out. You need to find a few early adopters who can be brand ambassdors. You need to be in close contact with some of your early potential customers so that you can see their decision making process, hear their comments, etc.

Time for some guerrilla marketing.

[1] If you can identify a few vendors, places, or events, offer to give them at cost all the sale of your line, display few pieces of your clothing with oversize tags on the clothing, banners directing to see more choices at your website.

[2] Ask a few people who mingle in such groups to wear your "attention grabbing" clothing that would potentially spur conversation among people.

[3] Show up at the gatherings of targeted people wearing your own clothing with a small tag hanging out, like you just bought a new piece of clothing and forgot to remove the tag before wearing and going out.

[4] Instead of buying gifts for any occasion to your friends and family, give out pieces from your clothing line as gifts.

[5] Take some of your low cost clothing to a few consignment stores who sell "high fashion clothing" and sell them as seconds. You will also gain insight into pricing.

[6] Hang out on online forums relevant to your line of clothing. Become a subject matter expert on such forums.

LarryChiang2• 11 years ago

My six mentors mentored me to "Cross the Chasm from the Right". The first sale should be a rebated sale where 100% of the money gets refunded after the supermodel wears the clothing item and then tweets or Instagrams this.

Then you execute marketing and sales protocol: "#ReGram"

LarryChiang2• 11 years ago

The rebate is done using sales protocol; "#LCRRM". It is what I learned at Engineering 145, "Startup Entrepreneurship" (how to pay for Stanford by lec 12, #ENGR145)

BTW, i used #LCRRM to launch "Reverse VC". tier one VCs paid me thousands to pitch. Do not think I am great. Think of my mentor: Mark McCormack.

He did all sorts of sales 'protocols'. I made a hashtag for his "Signature business recipes"

Ask HN: How do we get our first sale?

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