Your Market Designs the Product, You Sell It
In a bold and bright rose gold color, it read “15% of $20,000 goal”. Now anyone who has ever started a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, Kickstarter, or any other site knows that those words flashing on your page in the first hour, day or even week of the campaign is usually a good sign. However, this was not the case for us as those words were flashing bright and bold on the last days of our Indiegogo campaign. Yes, after an exhausting 30-day campaign, we had achieved $3,044, only fifteen percent of our audacious $20,000 goal. Considering that we had set the goal to “fixed”, it meant that if we did not reach this amount, we were going to lose every single cent pledged in our favor. Yes, all $3,044.
A few hours before time ran out, the team met to discuss what could have gone wrong and why despite all our pre-launch hype efforts, we had barely crossed 10% of our goal. During this meeting, a number of rectifications emerged. However, at the end of it, we all unanimously agreed that our company, our product, and our services had no unique value proposition; a differentiating factor that would compel prospects or consumers to choose our company over a competitor’s. We could’ve stayed there all night trying to plan our next campaign, but deep down we all knew we would achieve the same or even worse results because we simply had no value that we were offering to a market that we had done no research on. So for us, going back to the drawing board meant starting from Phase 1: Finding out who exactly comprised our market and testing it.
Initially, we had thought our market was college students. We had designed this sleek modern product based on our own attractions and we felt that other college students who fit our profiles would like it because, well, we did. However, the Indiegogo campaign left us disillusioned and the market we had placed all our hopes on, disappointed us. During our 1 month pre-launch campaign, one of our team members had been approached by this lady who said she really admired the bottles and wanted to purchase 125 for her employees and a couple of delegates who were attending an upcoming mini-conference she was hosting. “If only there was a way they could be customized to fit the theme of our conference”, she said as she walked away from our sales efforts. She passed on us because, at that time, our products and services did not match her need.
This led us to explore a slightly different market. We started to look towards conference organizers, corporate offices and organizations who could have aligned with our mission. Our extensive market research produced tangible results including the fact that our market was never college students all along. At least, not directly. If we wanted to sell the maximum volume of bottles, then we had to sell in bulk to larger entities. Based on this critical information, we were able to build our product to follow the guidelines of the market’s suggestion and create the most value per dollar for our customers. We went into the co-branding/customization business and started to fulfill bulk orders to sell at discounted prices. Our market wanted customization, so we contracted manufacturers/printers who were capable of fulfilling such orders. Our market wanted more for less, so we offered discounts that were dependent of the volume purchased.
Since then, we have been able to sell close to a thousand water bottles and have completed our first water project in Northern Uganda. A significant part of this successful jumpstart was because we took the time to find and then listen to our market. They designed the product and now, we sell it.
Written By: Kwame Wireko | IQ Magazine X Calabash
