Half way to potential and the intent to get there!
Holy Moses I got thoughts! For real the ignire name sums up the way I have felt for the last few months...on fire, ignited and spreading. It is hard to convey in type, esp without the ability to monkey with typesetting in Illustrator or InDesign, just how I feel tonight but I am hoping you can sense some sort of positive energy and urgency!
Tonight is about half way points, potential destinations and framing the current state of intent.
First, half way: there's a lot to be said for the idea of meeting someone half way. Give take, negotiation etc. Even more can be said for setting out to find the half way point prior to embarking on a journey. Really think about that for a moment...conceptually this really torques me the right way for some reason especially in the business/value sense. How are you meeting people half way...customers? Are you planning to meet them half way to develop future potential relationships or engagements? Have you asked them to meet you half way? Have you determined what half way means?
Why does it matter? There's a huge amount of staging value in the first half way moment. It implies and assumes trust and being 50% it splits the conceptual costs between each party...neither is taking advantage of either and it is assumed that each will plan to bring something of value to the other. This is to say that if you can get a customer to meet you half way they will in turn share the liability (cost, time etc) in some capacity and bring value to you as well. That is pretty cool, right?
Btw Deb, Mike and I greatly enjoyed meeting tonight. Thanks a million for your time and advice. It was a ton of fun and I have a feeling that our chance meeting will turn out to be something awesome in the future!
Second, potential destinations! I realized tonight that this blog was working for me and at the same time realized that I was falling into it's trap, thus not working! What the hell does that mean you say? My goal with this blog was to post business ideas, value proposition ideations and product concepts (value generators) because I have a lot of them. A lot! Big and small and in between. It is an obsession really and my plan to post here for several specific reasons.
A. Writing down ideas creates more ideas. That is a fact for me, once you turn them on you will get more and more and more. Think of this as my hobby...the thing I like to do for fun. The more I get the more fun.
B. I have more concepts than capital or time...but really it's the money dummy. We all know what that means. If I don't have the cash to get them going perhaps someone else will and that is my plan, give em' away! Something will stick for somebody somewhere and perhaps that person will buy me a lunch someday!
C. Meet people of shared interest, esp these so called innovator people who do cool things to add value...this much is working swimmingly and nothing helps to meet others who share similar pursuits like taking a position and putting it to "paper".
D. Perhaps along the way happen upon an idea or concept that is so awesome that I actually take the grand leap into full-on committed entrepreneur. This idea is as much about idEAting potential destinations as anything and to my surprise it has spawned more potential destinations than I previously thought possible. So much so I lost sight of my mission which was to post them all, big and small.
So what happened? I have two friends who delight me and round me greatly. They are my ideation buddy's, my virtual partners and my go-to brain trust. In the last month, bouncing grand plans with those knuckleheads, I have created more business models and product ideations that I/we thought were viable and worth pursuing than not and thus worth NOT posting. Honestly, just looking for entrepreneurial opportunity led to heaps of ideas. User centered design process took those ideas to awesome and awesome made us/me not want to share them because of some potential value that I might reap from the ideas in the future. While driving half way to meet a friend tonight I realized that was exactly the wrong answer for me because it meant I wasn't posting anything. I was simply hoarding ideas which was a lot like what I did prior to the blog...capture them in a sketchbook for no one to see and no one to benefit not even me! Moreso by not posting them I lack urgency...the urgency that will force me to actually do something with the ideas because "the cat's outa of the bag" so to speak. If the ideas are really that great then someone else would dig on them and I would have competition and that would motivate me to "get'er done" right? Well that's the thought anyway!
Third and last: the current state of intent. There are three of the last months worth of business ideas that won't make it on Ignire but the rest are going up. This is my announcement of intent...more for me really...I will stop hoarding and start posting and actually begin exploratory action on the three ideas that I am keeping for myself.
Still it kills me to post most of them for some reason. This month there were so many. They will begin to flow in the next post.
...Heh I can't even bring myself to post even one of them tonight! I am so lame. LOL. Tomorrow!
OK, it's tomorrow and time to add one. Pretty simple really. Soft sole shoes for infants to pre-toddlers. Sure those exist...it's true. Some are great and have full scale collector groups behind them, like Robeez... or at least as I was told by a local retailer, had a lot of steam before pushing mfg'ing to China (note- I doubt asia mfg'ing is gonna hurt them...afterall that business owner did say the unit cost dropped and her margin increased and sales went up because of the cost drop so...). Some go after toddler age function and comfort like Jumping Jacks. There is Pediped and Shooshoos but that is about it really...for strong brands at specialty retail. Any recent parent who has bought Robeez or Jumping Jacks knows that kids, even though they cannot speak yet, prefer the soft soul shoe. No kidding my little guy when presented with 3 options, 2 being a shoe with a lame/thick inflexible sole (like these little Adidas shoes), will pick out the soft flexible soul shoe to wear. It is actually crazy because he is literally 2 years old and the first time I noticed this behavior was at 18 months. Fact is even little brains can discern comfort! And why not right?! Btw, Zappos you weren't ranked as high as Tinysoles on google search for infant shoes and too bad cause at least 6 pairs of shoes have been given to us as gifts, 4 pairs coming from people who don't have kids...opportunities. Enjoy the typo's and sleepy grammar cause I don't plan to edit this...hope you will forgive formality.
So here is the rub and crux of the opportunity. They are wildly expensive really! Or rather the retailers I spoke said people will pay high dollars for shoes that have about a 4month life span. As in my family's case, close to 50bucks @retail for the first pair of Jumping Jacks, 45 for the second pair all bought within one years time. That is more than I have spent on shoes in the last two years geeez! And those are pretoddler shoes which are a totally different animal than the infant slip-on's sold by Robeez. The opportunity there is gift registries. Holy cow, they are expensive and grandmas and aunts and friends and teachers (oh my) LOVE them and give them as gifts or even collect them! That is crazy. More crazy is they have little to no real competition. From what I was told by a very solid retailer, they do have competition but the competition has no story and no real brand power/marketing innovations thus they are not really valid as competitors. Thus you get high margin product with perhaps maybe only 2 truly awesome competitors and the heart string gift sale...or rather a product so cute and a situation so powerfully emotional that people are completely irrational about what exactly they are purchasing. For real go to the Robeez home page and tell me you don't want to buy some of those just because of cute/fun factor. Are those cool or what? Seriously you should buy some and for 36bucks why not right!? 
I assume you get the picture, literally right? If not I will recap again: High margin retail sale, irrational/emotional shopper, "new arrivals" gifts (first baby/showers etc), infants showing preference and parents who tell other parents how their pre-toddlers, who can't wipe their own ass, actually have a preference and the craziest consumer behavior weirdness...strangers in Walgreens who comment on your son's awesome shoes which creates some sort of strange consumer/dad pride and makes you want to tell others who cool the shoes are. And I forgot to note that after consulting a footwear design/developer friend I found out that the shoes themselves are quite simple and the cost for even limited runs would be fairly minimal as compared to adult shoes and specifically developing and stocking a full adult size run which you'd never have to do if you kept your core business to infants and toddlers.
What's the business value rub you ask?
1. Focus on a building a strong brand iconography through design (think CrateNBarrel/Target level design cohesion). Nail the funky fun comfortable kids story. Mix it with a little hip grandmotherly love, crafty authenticity and an urban twist (like AmericanAppare made in the USA thing). I assume you are starting to get the picture.
2. Supply/Value Chain: it's pretty obvious that a few of the lesser soft shoe brands are getting their product from the same factory, in Asia. The designs are the same. The hotpatch or insert molded logo is different. Managing style sku's is the killer in the fashion space so keep them to a minimum or rethink what makes a think distinct or different. The value hook here would be to bring in "blanks" of similar base shoe shells (the construction base) from high volume factories in Asia., specifically the factory where everyone else is getting their work completed. Keep diversity and distinction to a minimum (upper body of the shoe) but nail the soft sole. Example, buy a bunch of the same plain ole model, like say a brown slipper looking product. Increase base quantities for best pricing by decreasing diversity. Then secure a range of customized component accent parts such as die cut flowers, silly patterns, boy/girl theme shapes (you're smart, you get the picture). Call the customize components something like customized cuteness and run with it. The customize parts would ship completely separate from the blanks thus could come from anywhere...anyone who could make a custom pattern, even user generated patterns.
3. Kit it up and Craft industry marketing. This is the real value hook. Craft = Love. Provide that range of customized cuteness to be affixed to the "blanks" by consumers/end users and specifically crafty moms and grandma's. Leverage crafting clubs and the very large, established crafting market to disrupt the establishment (shoe mfg/retail model). Think of this as bedazzling for baby shoes but a whole lot more interesting and relevant. Every gift would be modified by someone who put some real love into the product.
4. Grandma it up. Sell limited range of premade shoes online. Not everyone has a living grandma. Mine passed. Such is life. But I miss my grandma's greatly. They were lovely, lovely ladies. So how could I get some grandma love? There is a vast pool of capable, reliable and talented labor in the USA. Imagine an army/workforce of certified grandmothers, retired or not, who work from home assembling and customizing the shoes. They would be shipped shoe blanks and the customized cuteness components of their choosing. They would assemble and affix and provide Made in the USA of domestic and foreign parts. They would manufacture and distribute via several online outlets. ...But mostly it's about the Love and the story. Imagine getting a picture of the person who "made" your shoe...that's the rub. It could play out wonderfully esp for gifts.
5. There is no five really. It's a pretty simple model. Buy a bunch of one style, the primary component with highest associated cost and drive that cost down. Procure a range of awesome customization craft components. Spend more on diversity at this level because the customized shapes and patterns are less expensive/less or no cut and sew time.. Enable the customization and expression through existing craft communities or home business model. Engage your core audience as manufacturing participants and provide the online retail outlet or tools such as Amazon store fronts. After solidifying the model online, move it to specialty kid or shoe retailers.
There are probably more but I am tired of typing. Whew, I did it. I gave away a good one. The barrier to entry on this one is pretty low really both from initial costs to distribution if starting small. Plus the awesome part is it is scale-able from a club level model (200 units to start with limited range of customization parts) to full blown national and international operation (large quantities and the home mfg model plus web support/retail). Someone with 5 grand could turn this into a pretty fun little local business in about a month. Hope someone does!
cL!
Push and pull...tis life! Am honored to be a part of yours!!!
Posted by: Dscofield | 12/02/2010 at 07:15 AM