Marketing Communications Blog

Starting A New Business

I am going to start a new category regarding my new business venture that I have started.

I may ramble (as usual), and may bounce around (is that new?), but, I hope that I can share some stuff that can help people (and you marketers) to a) not make the same mistake(s) that I do, and b) maybe pick up something (learn) about my actions.

I have started or, I guess, am starting, a business - and surprisingly, in the food industry. I have always loved to cook and am now going to try and pursue that goal.

My consulting business is doing well, as companies still are looking for that edge (that I provide), but, why not pursue something that can bring in some extra money as well as test my business acumen.

I have always had that delimma during a party, the holidays, etc. when I get a dessert - like a pie - and have half a pie left over. Or two 1/2 pies left over, or two 1/2 pies, some cake, some cookies, and other desserts. I came up with the idea of providing personal pan pie (like personal pan pizza's) for people who want to provide singular desserts to their guests.

Last week, we launched the project.

How did we launch it? Well, let me back-track and discuss my history and the philosophy of some of the start-ups that I have worked with - and in fact, I have discussed this in previous entries.

Almost every start-up I ever encountered, worked for, and consulted with, always opened up with, "We have to do advertising - radio" or "TV" or "newspaper", or "web", or whatever. Usually a huge expense that most start-ups don't have the money for.

As usual, they didn't define their market first, and then provide a product for that market (i.e. they went after the "whole" market, where 90% would never buy it until after it was proven).

My partner and I discussed the many ways to market our pies. Thank G*d my partner is a baker and not a business person.

We first sat down and walked through a few steps that I always do when helping a start-up.

1) Who is our market? In this case with my business, it was people who didn't bake, didn't like to bake, couldn't get to the store to purchase a dessert, and/or didn't want a lot of left-overs.

2) How much was our market willing to pay for this product? We already had competition - the typical 9" pie, so, we couldn't charge an extreme amount and remain competitive.

3) What gives us the advantage? With us, it was fresh products, baked within 24 hours, and delivered to the consumers home (all under one charge).

4) What are our operating expenses?

5) What happens if we don't get orders?

6) What happens if we are overwhelmed and can't meet demand? A good problem to have, but, if not prepared for, then, the business can quickly slide downhill.

7) And how are we going to market the product?

I'm sure that I will share more and more of the answers that we came up with as I continue to write to this blog.

But first, I want to discuss #7 - how are we going to market the pies. We knew that we had a huge market (see #1) and we knew that people wanted fresh pies (who doesn't).

We believed that we had the right pricing structure (more on this at some future entry), and we knew that we had limited resources (i.e. money).

We came up with some simple items to market our product. By the way, there was/is one caveat with this start-up - because we didn't know IF we would be successful (we knew that we would for the next two months - during the holidays)  - that we only wanted to deal with cash AND that we didn't want to approach restaurants, yet (see #6).

So, we decided on:

a) a website

b) a brochure

c) a flyer (two different types).

The flyer has been our greatest means for getting the word out (we started this one week ago and already have orders). We approached our friends, places where we do business (like our doctors office), local hospitals (my partner is a nurse practitioner), our gym(s), etc.). Everyone likes to see an underdog win, so, so far, everyone has allowed us to post the flyers. And, by the way, we even do leg work, going block by block and distributing our flyers on peoples doors.

We know that we can make 200 pies a week, and, with any direct mail campaign (this is somewhat similar), if we give out 1000 fliers, we should be able to get 200 pie orders. And so far, we are on target for this.

Of course, we hope that after our first deliveries (starting this week), word-of-mouth (or as a true marketer would call it - gorilla marketing) will help us with the orders.

That's it for this entry. I will update this when I get back in two weeks (right before Thanksgiving) to tell you all where we stand (I have to leave the country for the next two weeks) and my partner is on her own.