Lo que las ligas de pelo me enseñaron acerca de la demanda de mercado

What Scrunchies Taught Me About Market Demand

Ligas para el pelo o scrunchies

NORA ABOUSTEIT: The first time I faced this problem, I didn’t even know what a market was: I was 13 and started a business to sell hair scrunchies. This was in the ’80s and I found that neon colors sold the best. I would produce a few and see what people wanted most, and then produce more of it.

It was the first substantial money I ever made. And it grounded my passion for building businesses. From 13 onwards, I have always started and run one business or another, whether it was renting videotapes in high school (Breakfast Club was a great money maker), brokering supermarket research, or selling flash stickers for cell phones in college.

And there is always the question when you start: Will anyone want this? But it turns out the right way to really answer this is to feel with great passion: I WANT THIS! (I didn’t want the cell phone flash stickers; it didn’t work out, and we lost quite a bit of money).

So each case teaches you something that gives you confidence as you start your next business.

My last business was a good example of this: It was a site for people who sew. I started it because I wanted a community like this myself, and it turned out 750,000 others wanted it as well.

It is now the largest site of its kind on the Web. And guess what? The whole time I felt I was making something for me.

Being an entrepreneur means seeing demand and then coming up with some creative and innovative way to meet it. Having a team that shares that vision from the inside out, so that they can execute it, helps.

This sense of making something I wanted to use; that old instinct from my scrunchie days is behind what I do now. My latest company, Kollabora, helps to make crafting easier. (Kollabora is set to reboot the $30-billion-a-year, dusty craft industry.)

The entire team is passionate about teaching and learning from each other: how to knit, sew and make jewelry (and yes, that includes our developers, too!). We are our community.

I always say, when I retire, all I want to do is be a Kollabora user. But I know that would last about a week— I’d be off starting another business.

WSJ

Posted in: curva de demanda,disposición a pagar,estudio de mercado