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

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¿Está la gente buscando tu producto?

Are People Searching for Your Product?

KATE MITCHELL: The good news is that there are more tools than ever to market-test your idea. The bad news is that there are many of them and some may cost more than you can afford for your startup. Here are a few simple ideas for gauging initial market interest:

1. Google AdWords can tell you how many searches there are for terms like your offering, which can give you an idea how many people are hunting for a solution like what you plan to offer. You can type in a product idea and see how many searches occur for that term. In addition, a bunch of terms Google thinks are related will come up.

2. Put up what are called “ghost” pages — fake Web pages for products you might offer, including the price and a “buy” button, and then run a small ad campaign on paid search and/or Facebook, and see how many people click through to the page, and how many of those click on the “buy” button. For around $500, you can estimate demand and cost to acquire a customer.

3. See how many “Likes” for comparable products and companies there are on Facebook, and how many followers on Twitter. Put out images on Pinterest and see if they get re-pinned.

Being objective about customer interest is important before you commit more time and money to your idea. It may take a few tries before you get it right, but nothing replaces hard data.

WSJ

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