OK, we're running a couple of months
behind on The Insider, but we have a great excuse. The
retail industry comes to a crawl during the Summer. We
would have written something last month, but nothing happened...literally.
At least our golf games have improved somewhat.
Lessons
Learned
John is thinking of dying his
hair Platinum Blonde! We're not talking about the casual
highlight here.we're talking jet white. We'd like to think
that he's contemplating this because of his desire to
be a renegade, to show the world that he's not afraid
to be different and go against the grain. And, of course,
to continue to bring much needed awareness to the company
(Platinum Concepts, Inc.). However, we know that if he
actually does make a visit to the salon down the street,
it will be a direct result of working out of our apartment
kitchen for 13-MONTHS (seriously!).it's absolutely amazing
the things you'll do to "change your environment" when
your creativity and motivation are stifled in such a lackluster
setting. On that note, we've finally found office space,
and it's conveniently located two doors down from our
former strategic boardroom. Starbucks. Thanks to a friend
on the Insider Distribution list, we've secured the back
room of.get this.an old massage parlor. It's not much,
but it's relatively inexpensive, has phone and network
connections, and adds another virtual stop to our repertoire
of workspaces.
We've run into a little snag during
our search for regional, stock-holding gift distributors.
THEY DON'T EXIST!! Although we were hoping to find distributors
who would purchase MouseDriver from us and then deal with
all of the selling, shipping, invoicing, collecting, etc,
we've discovered that products in the gift industry are
primarily sold through manufacturers representatives.
So now, we've got a huge decision to make with regards
to our overall strategy and our company structure. Do
we continue to hold out and hope to stumble across a distributor
(or another manufacturer) who can actually hold inventory
and sell MouseDriver to gift stores and department stores,
or do we start utilizing rep networks and find a way of
billing, collecting, etc. ourselves? We've pretty much
decided that the latter is a "no-option" as neither one
of us is particularly excited about spending the majority
of our time in QuickBooks (our accounting, invoicing,
financial software package) and essentially becoming a
collection agency. Hopefully, those expensive MBA skills
that we acquired will help us to very quickly come up
with an alternate, creative distribution strategy.
On Monday, August 14th, we will
officially launch a broader public relations campaign
to help generate more product awareness, to help us secure
some speaking engagements and to help tell the "business
story" of MouseDriver and generate credibility for Platinum
Concepts. We've been planning on launching this campaign
for some time now, but the search for the right public
relations agency/individual took a lot longer than expected.
In the end, we were torn between an agency in NYC and
an independent consultant in LA (a reference from another
Insider member). Here's what we found out: Agencies can
offer lots of resources, experience in launching other
consumer product campaigns, credibility with the media
and potential overlapping synergies with other clients.
Independents can offer lots of motivation/pride, lots
of time/availability to dedicate specifically to you and
your product, and most importantly, the ability to align
themselves with your company culture. In the end we chose
the independent consultant in LA for two reasons: she's
a 45-minute plane ride away and she has shown a tremendous
amount of enthusiasm in working with us. Look out.the
publicity is just beginning!
Managing inventory sucks! If you
don't buy enough for the Holiday Season, then you get
to kick yourself and think about all of those sales that
could have been made. If you buy too much (like we did
last year) you get to kick yourself and think about all
of the money that was spent inefficiently. It's a never-ending
quandary and especially difficult when you don't really
have past sales in which to base your next inventory investment.
For all of you business school crods out there, we are
living one giant beer game simulation (aka inventory simulation).
Fortunately, we've spent an exorbitant amount of time
developing a financial model that allows us to perform
all sorts of different inventory what-if scenarios and
have a pretty good idea of what we should and can afford
to invest. It's all still a crap shoot though.let's just
hope MouseDriver will be as hot as we expect it to be.
What We've
Done
- Played two rounds of golf in Pebble
Beach free of charge (and made complete jackasses out
of ourselves).
- Gathered sales estimates from all
of our current distributors and retailers for the rest
of the year.
- Redesigned MouseDriver packaging and
point-of-purchase display based on customer/retailer
feedback. It's going to have much more of a gifty feel
to it.
- Began discussions with distributors
in Asia, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Europe.
- Purchased wireless web phones so that
we can continue to work virtually (the email feature
works great, but everything else is pretty suspect)
Priority Goals
- Complete our inventory production
run for the 2000 Holiday Season.
- Achieve full-penetration in all of
our target segments by Father's Day 2001 (golf stores,
gift shops, department stores, sporting goods stores,
and mass merchandisers).
- Kick-off and support a broader PR
campaign. We're hoping to be spending a good amount
of our time speaking/guest lecturing and different schools
around the country.
- Move into the new office space ASAP!
Mood Meter
Let's be honest here. We've put
in the work, we've paid ourselves 3 times in the last
13 months, we've solidified distribution and the Holiday
Season is just around the corner. We're ready (and very
anxious) to bank some serious cash!!
Questions, comments, or criticisms
about the Insider? Email us at info@mousedriverchronicles.com.
