After twenty years of working entirely in digital I decided it was time to make something. Out of solid bloody brass.
Like most of us, I'd hankered after a business of my own, where the most internal politics I would be likely to encounter would involve arguing with the dog about where to go for a walk. However, I was slightly hampered by having little in the way of knowledge, experience, connections, skills, resources... You get the picture, there are always reasons not to turn off the motorway up that interesting looking road, that might well make the journey take longer, but will be a lot more rewarding on the way.
The dog (above) helped, as they so often do. We were buying yet another dog name tag, the previous one having decided to wear itself out, make its excuses and leave after the usual six months. Okay I though, let's get a really good one and I did and it was really good, but it appeared to be the only really good one among a sea of cheap tat where every e-tailer was competing to sell at the lowest possible price point.
Cut to the end: 1 year of research, spending far too much money on brass, engraving machines, a vintage fly press, generally learning the hard way later and we're in business.
There are a heck of a lot of competitors all over the country, with some of the core SEO competition coming in from offshore and passing off as being in the UK (and in multiple other countries) I decided there's more than enough UK business to be getting on with, while we scale, so we went with https://tenyeartags.co.uk Ten Year Tags? Yes, we offer a unique Ten Year guarantee. Wait for it: even if:
Your dog loses his or her name tag while herding starlings in the Leamington Spa area (or doing anything else anywhere else)
Your dog trades it for food or sells it to fund any other unseemly habit it might have (has happened)
It snaps in half, wears out or implodes into dust (all unlikely)
Okay, it's a simple product to make (harder than you'd think to nail the quality and consistency) It's nothing 'Internet Of Things' though, it's not a digital analytics platform or anything that's going to have me invited to speak at conferences any time soon. However, it's mine and I like it. We do other things that Surprise and Delight our customers. We're not the cheapest and are never going to be. Who would want to be?!
It's a market of circa 9 million in the UK alone, there's room for plenty of suppliers!
If you want to start your own business, follow a few simple rules and you will do just fine:
Make it something you're actually interested in, that you care about, that you'd 'do' or be involved in anyway, even if you won the Lottery next weekend.
Stretch yourself, don't just think of buying something at price X and selling it at price Y, find a way of having more ownership. I don't care if you don't know how, find out! People do help you know. Have some Brass yourself! Don't worry about the work pension scheme and other crappy benefits you've been reeled in with, you'll have your own business that will yield far more than any pension scheme.
Look at the market. Is it a massively crowded marketplace with thousands of competitors? Good! Find a unique position in it, get to market properly (okay, I am a PPC, SEO, Digital Performance and copy writing expert, which helps) and make sure you've got techniques to keep it interesting. We love it, I mean LOVE it when people send photos of their dogs wearing the tag that they can tell we have put a considerable amount of care into (we have techniques for that)...
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| Moose was one of our first customers. What a TREAT it was to get this great photo of the handsome wee fellow! |
Make it something you love and you will do fine and will look forward to starting work every day. Guaranteed.
I'll help with SEO, Copywriting and PPC if I can. I've a few clients I work solely on a Cost Per Sale basis with, not always easy or possible, but it can work. Give me a shout if you've any interest, I'm working on a front end for cost per sale ecommerce - it's a work in progress! Contact me via there though.
And if you do need a dog name tag pop over to Ten Year Tags and we will sort you out. For ten years. Even if you lose it, guaranteed.
