Change Is Inevitable
My last post was all about my decision to start a Print On Demand business. If you remember, it’s basically just me creating products as they are ordered. My plan was to get creative and start coming up with some stickers that I could sell on some popular eCommerce sites.
That is STILL the plan. However, I did come up with what I think is a very clever and creative idea. The first design I started working on needed to be really simple. And simple is exactly what I got.
The Idea
Originally I started out in my image AI tool of choice, and began the process of creating stickers. I of course started with things I would want to create for myself or my daughters. First thing that came to my mind was to do something cute, so naturally I created some stickers of my dog that I could print out and give to my twins. If anyone will give you unsolicited feedback, it will be your 9 year old twin daughters.
As I got a little more into playing with AI image creation, I thought to myself what would be something that I would buy if I were looking online for something printed. One thing you should know about me is that I do really enjoy my morning coffee. It’s not just the taste of coffee, but the ritual of making coffee or the activities that go with morning coffee. I do have a favorite couple of mugs and rarely do I take coffee on the go. I like to sit, read email, a book, or anything that doesn’t require me to move around much. Thus, a to-go coffee to me means I’m not doing those things, and I like doing those slow morning things. And, I really really like drinking out of a mug.
Here is where I get to the idea. I used AI to generate a mockup of a coffee mug. I was simply just playing with some prompts and out came a really cool coffee mug. I then used my vector drawing tool, and carefully selected a font to write three (3), yes three whole characters. Yup… I wrote the word “Hi.” with a period.
I know what you are thinking…. Creative Genius!!
The Not So Unique Idea Again
At the end of the day, I came up with the idea to sell some coffee mugs printed in one color on a different color mug. There isn’t much more to it than that. I started playing around with the design and found that I really liked what I had created and couldn’t wait to have one for myself. I decided to start with a mug, simply because it’s easy to source and seems to have fairly good demand. Also, I’m testing this idea before I throw a bunch of money into it. I have to print at least one so that I know what I’m doing, and I really want one. It will help me discover the following:
- Is there any demand for this?
- Is this as unique as I think it is?
- How much time does it take to source, create and complete?
- Am I producing a quality product?
Basically I am doing exactly what the Million Dollar Weekend taught me, I’m launching. I realized that I have to stop worrying about what others think, because when I do I get consumed with pleasing them, and they are only a small sample of what’s out there in the world. I truly believe that most people want simplicity and don’t deal well with a lot of complexity. Giving someone endless options only creates confusion and overwhelms the customer with choices. I’m going to make it easy for them, the options will be limited. I’m making it ridiculously simple. One color print on one color item. That’s it!
I’d like to think with my maturity that I’m enjoying the K.I.S.S ( Keep It Simple Stupid ) method of entrepreneurship.. For clarity I’m not calling anyone stupid. What’s Next So now the real work gets started, and I’ll of course document all of it here. With that, here are a few of the steps I think I must accomplish fairly quickly.
- Grab a catchy domain. Once I’ve secured it, I’ll note it here.
- Start building my app. More on this below, so keep reading you made it this far, why not.
- Register with a payment gateway. Probably Stripe or even Paypal.
- Create some creative copy and imagery.
- Create a social media plan. This is basically my shoestring marketing budget.
- Launch
That’s really about it. I’m trying to not overthink everything. I just want to get this up and running and see if some gorilla marketing can pay off. Keep in mind the goal is to simply pay off the equipment I’ve already purchased. In the process of making some money, I’m sure I’ll learn a few things too. The learnings may be the most valuable thing I get out of this.
The App
I’m sure you are wondering why I’m creating an app instead of just listing things on Etsy. I will most definitely list things on Etsy, eBay and probably a few other places. However, I still believe that real success will come when I can sell my stuff off of the large marketplaces.
The app is going to be simple. Each product will have its own listing. I don’t plan on having a shopping cart. I think I want more of a “Buy It Now” type of thing. Eventually there will be more things added to the site outside of coffee mugs, but that’s where I’m going to start. In fact, I won’t spoil it now, but I think I can expand this into other areas. I have ideas, but nothing to share at the moment.
Document the process
For the next several days I’ll be documenting what the process was to launch my new idea. I’ll try to provide as much detail as I can. Again this whole experiment is to see if this is really possible. I still have my doubts, but I don’t think any adventure is without its dangers of failing. I don’t ever expect to fail, but I’m certainly navigating into unfamiliar territory.
Please check back here as I detail my daily chores. Remember the goal is to launch and tweak things as we see fit. Feedback is also important, so making sure feedback is working before launch is essential.
Let’s get this party started.