Expert internet marketers: Seeking advice on how to market an e-commerce business! (5)

Hello fellow STMers ,

Recently , I started an e-commerce business selling vintage classic neckpieces . I have attached some pictures for illustration.

Price - 65usd-100usd per necklace, 30-50usd per bracelet. Rather steep but we will get to that.


Target Market - I would say the young fashionable hipsters or folks aged approx 16-35 y/o but its actually quite a niche market. The main group of people who may already have interest in these are the Japanese, and reason being this particular neck-pieces are closely affiliated to an exclusive Japanese silversmith brand called Goros.

What special about this? - Handmade wooden bead signifying the brand which is woodburnt and lacquered. Quality goods/materials imported from all over the world( 92.5% sterling silver, deer skin lace...) . Competitive prices ( looked up competitors and compared) . Able to customize your own necklace .

What we have done
- E-commerce website is underway, www.kurashikkugoods.com
- Setup an instagram account (@kurashikku.goods) , posted fancy pictures and looked up hashtags which potentially will generate sales and start to gain followers.
-Setup a Facebook page, currently nothing there yet.

What we plan to do
- Place retargeting script into ecommerce site, setup retargeting campaign on FB.
- Promote FB page targeting that particular age group and have interests heavily linked to our product.
- Use of lottery and giving out 1 free product for those who share our product on FB
- Perhaps setup twitter and other social media but i doubt that works alot
- Setup store in online marketplaces such as Etsy.com
-Hire bloggers to market our products in their blogs, maybe send as gift to lesser known bloggers/youtubers to review
- Look up forums which is close to what we are selling and market there as well.

Answers or advice needed!

1) I am worried this market might be too niche as we are not targeting people who are budget conscious but rather those who will treat the neckpieces as their identities and take pride in our product. What are the best ways to generate sales??

2) There might be a way to get more people interested in the product but as somewhat of a near first mover in country except Japan, there might be a heavy cost to bear educating consumers about the product.

3) For those who are good at FB marketing, any advice as to how to properly use the FB marketing tools for an e-commerce business?

4) I cant picture such products going on mobile or even marketing it to a wide range of people would not be advisable as we are not targeting budget conscious people who will get a fancy necklace from Forever 21 for $15. Anyways affiliate marketing can relate to this?

5) Long term wise we can obviously look at setting up physical store and placing our products as consignment product in certain stores. Any other long term goals and ideas we should build towards?

I will continue with updates to this thread as the business progresses and see if there are any setbacks and hopefully milestones to share! . Thank you for responses in advance! I hope the pictures are alright as I'm not too sure how it works i included them as attachments.


Attached images include : Box packaging for the product , wood burnt and lacquered handmade wooden bead with the brand , some images for illustration , and famous Japanese actor and singer Takuya Kimura( gatsby commercial anyone?) wearing a similar neckpiece.

i would like to suggest the idea of a MVP, which means minimum viable product. is there a way you can get to launching in 1-2 weeks to test the viability of this idea? to see whether people would actually be interested in your product, in the way u are selling it? this usually means sacrificing a huge part of what u originally intended to do... i would estimate more than 80%, which is the point, to get things moving within a week. when i started my online shop a few years ago, i managed to get everything running within a month. and if i could run it all over again, i can now get it running within a week. obviously not perfect, but running so i can collect data and see what i want to work on. and im glad i did it, because many of my initial assumptions were all proven wrong. a different group of people ended up buying instead of the original group i targeted. and that was for my food and beverage business too.

here are some of my suggestions-
instead of building a full scale e-commerce website, why not just set up a simple wordpress site that can be usually done yourself personally? then u can start testing the viability of the idea, even if u make losses, its probably cheaper than setting up a whole e-commerce website without getting any sales.

have you researched on how your target customers buy? where are they? the last time i sold in singapore, i realised that at that point in time, people were buying alot from qoo10.sg. and that site itself made me 2-3x more sales than my wordpress website.

also at the same time, i realised that most of my users were from facebook, so i used facebook ads to bring them to my website, and the quality was great, i was breakeven or even slightly profitable on that traffic. it might not sound fantastic but this is a group of customers i might never have had. and with the knowledge i have now, i would have captured their data and sold to them again, which means increasing the lifetime customer value, which means now i can afford to LOSE MONEY when acquriing customers on facebook. (dont do this yet, because ur model is not yet proven to even have a single customer)

you are doing too much on facebook, just pick one thing and move ahead, something u can do within the week. test it out, see if it works, then use the data to see how you should move ahead. a simple facebook ad should do. find out where your target customers go. u need to spend alot more time on research. and simple testing.

find a market that u know best about, for example u are from singapore, chances are u know the singapore market alot better than any other country. that gives u a competitive advantage which means that your business is more likely to succeed. take note that this is not limited to singapore. singapore is just a testing ground, in the internet whatever you are doing can be easily scaled to any other country you wish.

i happen to know someone selling these necklaces, and i think they were going for around US10-20 a piece. its not about the quality of your necklace, its about what your market is willing to pay. i remember something from steve jobs, he stopped his team when they were working on a supercomputer, and this is what he said >> "the market said they will pay 3000 for a computer, they did not say they would pay double for something that works alot better, the limit is 3000, make something under that, that is not negotiable."

Interesting product! The crafts market is pretty tough (I've tried and failed to launch a successful product in it in the past), so best to be aware of that going in - it sounds like you are!

All of xavierfok's points are spot-on - in particular, I'd definitely recommend the MVP approach. The key thing here is going to be for you to get to market fast, start getting customer feedback, and iterate from there.

2) is definitely going to be your biggest issue outside Japan. What strategies are you considering to get your market interested?

Feedback is probably going to be the thing you want and need the most at the early stage. Can you get to any craft markets in your target geographies? Actually physically selling these necklaces to people is likely to get you a lot of market insight fast - it doesn't scale, but it's a very good way to figure out who is likely to buy them and why.

Originally Posted by xavierfok

i would like to suggest the idea of a MVP, which means minimum viable product. is there a way you can get to launching in 1-2 weeks to test the viability of this idea? to see whether people would actually be interested in your product, in the way u are selling it? this usually means sacrificing a huge part of what u originally intended to do... i would estimate more than 80%, which is the point, to get things moving within a week. when i started my online shop a few years ago, i managed to get everything running within a month. and if i could run it all over again, i can now get it running within a week. obviously not perfect, but running so i can collect data and see what i want to work on. and im glad i did it, because many of my initial assumptions were all proven wrong. a different group of people ended up buying instead of the original group i targeted. and that was for my food and beverage business too.

here are some of my suggestions-
instead of building a full scale e-commerce website, why not just set up a simple wordpress site that can be usually done yourself personally? then u can start testing the viability of the idea, even if u make losses, its probably cheaper than setting up a whole e-commerce website without getting any sales.

have you researched on how your target customers buy? where are they? the last time i sold in singapore, i realised that at that point in time, people were buying alot from qoo10.sg. and that site itself made me 2-3x more sales than my wordpress website.

also at the same time, i realised that most of my users were from facebook, so i used facebook ads to bring them to my website, and the quality was great, i was breakeven or even slightly profitable on that traffic. it might not sound fantastic but this is a group of customers i might never have had. and with the knowledge i have now, i would have captured their data and sold to them again, which means increasing the lifetime customer value, which means now i can afford to LOSE MONEY when acquriing customers on facebook. (dont do this yet, because ur model is not yet proven to even have a single customer)

you are doing too much on facebook, just pick one thing and move ahead, something u can do within the week. test it out, see if it works, then use the data to see how you should move ahead. a simple facebook ad should do. find out where your target customers go. u need to spend alot more time on research. and simple testing.

find a market that u know best about, for example u are from singapore, chances are u know the singapore market alot better than any other country. that gives u a competitive advantage which means that your business is more likely to succeed. take note that this is not limited to singapore. singapore is just a testing ground, in the internet whatever you are doing can be easily scaled to any other country you wish.

i happen to know someone selling these necklaces, and i think they were going for around US10-20 a piece. its not about the quality of your necklace, its about what your market is willing to pay. i remember something from steve jobs, he stopped his team when they were working on a supercomputer, and this is what he said >> "the market said they will pay 3000 for a computer, they did not say they would pay double for something that works alot better, the limit is 3000, make something under that, that is not negotiable."

Originally Posted by caurmen

Interesting product! The crafts market is pretty tough (I've tried and failed to launch a successful product in it in the past), so best to be aware of that going in - it sounds like you are!

All of xavierfok's points are spot-on - in particular, I'd definitely recommend the MVP approach. The key thing here is going to be for you to get to market fast, start getting customer feedback, and iterate from there.

2) is definitely going to be your biggest issue outside Japan. What strategies are you considering to get your market interested?

Feedback is probably going to be the thing you want and need the most at the early stage. Can you get to any craft markets in your target geographies? Actually physically selling these necklaces to people is likely to get you a lot of market insight fast - it doesn't scale, but it's a very good way to figure out who is likely to buy them and why.