Is Your Future in Selling on Cable TV Shopping Channels?
Watch one of the “hoarders” shows on cable TV and you get an glimpse of one home shopping niche market. The poor guys who have fallen into the hoarding lifestyle often don’t even get their merchandise out of the boxes. There’s even a pretty long discussion thread on the topic on the QVC community forum pages. They wonder which came first, QVC or hoarding. My money’s on hoarding. However, we know that beyond hoarders, QVC and HSN have legions of loyal shoppers who can turn a little-known retail item into a viral shopping phenomenon. That’s both good and bad news for the small business owner who has developed the next great product that falls into one of the categories typically featured on these cable shopping networks. A product can get instant national recognition, but you must have enough on hand to efficiently meet demand. We aren’t on Etsy anymore, Toto Anyone making a beautiful reversible skirt that goes from office to evening wear and selling it on Etsy can’t still be making a few by hand on weekends. Serious manufacturing chops are required. However, don’t abandon all hope if you have a great idea. QVC, for example, will look at working prototypes, according to the info they post for aspiring vendors. The story is about the same over at HSN. However, it looks like HSN will go out of its way a little further to help inventors and small business owners get a great idea to a manufacturer. You can expect a network like QVC to place a wholesale order for about $30,000-$35,000 of an item. That is a significant amount of a single product. Producing that much “on spec” can be expensive and might prompt some small business owners to look for an investor to share the risk. At HSN, the inventory threshold isn’t as high. That network expects vendors to have enough product to support a $5,000 purchase order. If you get serious about placing any of your products on a cable TV home shopping channel, there’s a good chance you’ll find yourself shopping fulfillment services. QVC, for example, warehouses some of the items it features, but most are drop shipped. If you don’t have warehouse space and a shipping crew to promptly meet demand, it’s smart to go with a reputable fulfillment company. Further, contracting with a firm located in middle of this big country, will help you keep customers on both coasts happy. Good product, good narrative Not long ago, Marilyn Montross, QVC’s director of vendor relations, talked about their search for products: “QVC is very open, and in fact eager, to find entrepreneurs to do business with because our customers love the kinds of innovative products that vendor base brings to QVC.” And when she discussed what makes a successful product, it sounded a lot like what makes a successful social media presence. “(Entrepreneurs) also generally come with a back story that’s of interest to the customer. Customers really enjoy rooting for people who could very well be their neighbor or their nephew,” Montross said. Have a great product or prototype along with a good back story? If so, maybe you’re just one QVC or HSN submission away from the big time. Image: Public...
read moreGet Big Tax Breaks When Employing Your Kids
One of the tragic upshots of the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery has been a big increase in teen unemployment. It’s not easy for kids to find jobs today, even when they’re looking for part time or summer employment. Not only does this deny them income, it keeps them from learning some of the life lessons that are crucial for their success as adults. However, if you own your business as a sole proprietorship or as a partnership with just the child’s other parent, you can give your kids jobs and enjoy some significant tax advantages at the same time. Cut employment costs Here are the main tax advantages for you: If your children are under 18 years old, you don’t have to pay social security or Medicare taxes. Additionally, when your children are under 21 years old you don’t have to pay the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA). These tax benefits vanish if your company is a corporation, includes a non-parent partner, or is an estate. The IRS offers a lot of practical information on employing family members. (By the way, if your kids are the entrepreneurs in the family, you can work for them and they can skip the FUTA payments. See? It pays off to teach your children the business basics.) There are also tax benefits for your children. While they aren’t exempt from income tax, typically they can take the $6,100 standard deduction, so that’s $6,100 tax free. Further, considering the sad state of the Social Security Trust Fund, the savvy parent will have their children contributing to an IRA and that adds another $5,500 children can earn without having to pony up a share of the dough to Uncle Sam. You can pay your children $11,600 virtually tax free. You’re going to be forking out funds for your kids anyway, it makes a lot of sense to insist that they earn it. Know the requirements Be certain that you are following the IRS rules. When you employ your children, they need to have job duties and descriptions that match their ages and abilities. If you think you can game the IRS on this, it could come back and bite you big time. Treat the employment of your children as you would any other hire. In the same way, be certain that their compensation is reasonable for the duties they are performing at your business. If you pay your son or daughter to bus tables at your restaurant at a rate of $50 an hour, you’re going to end up in trouble. Beyond the IRS rules, you’re teaching your children some very bad lessons if you compensate them beyond their true value at your workplace. You would be telling them that favoritism is okay as is cheating on their taxes. In the long run, the work ethic and business principles they learn from you are much more valuable than the wages you pay them and the tax advantages you enjoy when you employ your kids. Do it right. Image: Efile, used under a Creative Commons...
read moreTHE Small Business Expert’s 3-Minute Growth Strategy Primer
There was a time – believe it or not – when baking soda was used pretty much just for baking. But then the market for this simple product exploded. (And I’m not talking about fifth graders using it along with vinegar in their “volcano” science fair projects.) In the 1960s and ’70s, Arm & Hammer developed a wide variety of applications for its baking soda that created several new markets. Sales erupted, much like the previously mentioned childhood volcanos. Moms were tucking away a box in refrigerators to prevent odors, toothpaste makers developed formulas featuring baking soda, and aficionados of natural personal care and cleaning solutions started using it in dozens of different ways. Let’s use this as inspiration to do a quick fly-over of five solid growth strategies that you can apply to your small business. New uses for an existing product or service. This is the Arm & Hammer formula for baking soda (no pun intended). If ideas don’t come immediately, do some intelligence gathering. Talk to existing customers, you might find some that are using your product in ways you hadn’t intended. Check out product literature from competitors and see if there onto anything that hadn’t occurred to you. Find new markets. Is there potential demand for your product in an industry sector that you haven’t yet developed? How about overseas? How about the nonprofit sector? Explore cost-effective modifications you can make to your product or service that would open up new markets. Create new markets. This is closely related to finding new markets, but to do this, tweaking your product or service will probably prove more important. Ditto for your marketing materials. You might need to learn the argot of a new industry. Research groups like Gigaom work hard to predict where emerging technologies are headed. You might want to invest in industry insights. Forge a new partnership. Is there a great peanut butter out there that will go perfectly with your chocolate? Lately I’ve been following the drama of Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to buy Time Warner. Gaining the Warner Brothers catalog of movies and TV shows would set up Murdoch’s Fox network quite nicely. Who would complement your business? Identify ancillary products/services for your catalog. What do your customers and clients buy from someone else? Be careful as you evaluate possible additions. You want to make sure that you can maintain your margins and not dilute your brand. Look how Amazon has ventured into a wide range of products and services. Perhaps setting up a separate, related brand would be the way to go. See if it can stand on its own merits. The point of this list is to stress the importance of not standing still. If your business is growing by leaps and bounds today, that will keep you moving forward. If, however, your growth curve is tapering off, it’s time for some creative thinking. Image: By Michael Francis McCarthy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sagamiono/4299196396/) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia...
read moreCan You Hear Me Now? It’s Time for Some Cellphone Courtesy!
July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month, and I think there are a lot of people who can’t wait for the month to be over. They are only outnumbered by the folks who didn’t know July is National Cell Phone Courtesy Month along with those who just don’t care. Call me a curmudgeon, but I think we would be a lot better off if we weren’t quite so addicted to 24/7 on-demand communication. If you expect your wife to go into labor at any moment, okay, but in most other cases, calls and text messages can easily wait for the proper setting before being engaged. I speak at a many conferences and award dinners and I always start the sessions by asking attendees to turn off or at least silence their cellphones. Invariably there’s one person who either wasn’t paying attention or just didn’t care and suddenly everyone is treated to the world’s most painful low-fidelity broadcast of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” Your undivided attention These settings are natural places to do some networking after the main event and you don’t want to be pegged as “the person whose cellphone went off.” And in the more general sense, being distracted by a cellphone during any business interaction is not a good thing. First, it tells your contacts and associates that they don’t have your undivided attention and second, even when it’s innocent and others seem understanding, it breaks the flow of the conversation. Of course, this gets even worse if you utter the dreaded, “I have to take this,” turn your back and walk away. Further, I think there’s sufficient research today proving that we are really incapable of multitasking efficiently. I’m thinking of this in the context of taking an evening out with family and friends. Last year a colleague of mine told me about an NHL game he went to. About four guys sat down in the row ahead of him and one was on and off his phone for business reasons all night long. This poor guy had no chance to truly enjoy the experience of being at the game and or in the company of his friends. Don’t multitask pleasure out of your life. The happy places A recent survey uncovered an astounding piece of information: The five cities in the United States where people are the happiest are all in Louisiana. Gee, shouldn’t number one be New York City, with its extensive and diverse cultural life? No, in fact the Big Apple apparently has some core problems: it made the “five unhappiest cities” list. If you’ve ever experienced Louisiana, you know that it’s a place where people take the time to enjoy family and friends, and they don’t let the encumbrances and distractions of modern life impede savoring those special times spent together. It’s a lesson we could all learn, and a good place to start would be by practicing cell phone courtesy all year long. You won’t regret it; I can assure you that no one’s last words will ever be, “I wish I had spent more time on my cellphone…” Image: By Hotdigitals (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia...
read moreDirect Mail Marketing: Is It Dead?
The other day I got a big envelope in the mail. I knew it was a direct mail marketing piece of some kind. Although I usually toss these immediately, I opened this one up. Inside was a sample of a 39-cent pen with my company’s name imprinted on the side. It’s not exactly the way I promote my business, but it did start me thinking about the state of direct mail marketing. Can it still be useful for small businesses or would you be better off attaching your business cards to the legs of passenger pigeons? Out of curiosity I looked at the Twitter frequency of two hashtags. #Emailmarketing is used about 90 times an hour. When I checked #directmailmarketing, I found that it hadn’t been used in five days. However, given that hashtags and email both live in the electronic, virtual world, I don’t think it was a totally fair comparison. In fact, before you think that I’m totally negative on direct mail, I need to point out that tech giants like Google and Apple often make excellent use of direct mail pieces. If you have a Google AdWords account and haven’t run a campaign in a while, there’s a good chance you’ve received some snail mail from Google. Usually it’s a succinctly written postcard prompting you to contact them for advice. Go local or go home In recent years, I’ve published many articles on the importance of local marketing initiatives. Further, Internet marketing has increasingly targeted the local market. If your business depends on local customers, have you tried gathering all their email addresses? There’s really no good way to do an email blast to everyone living within five miles of your business, is there? However, you can easily target a direct market mailing to the geographic area that best represents your customer base. A well designed direct mail piece to your local area can be an excellent tool for your marketing efforts. If you want to expand your business, or announce new products of services, a good brochure or postcard can be very effective. Premiums I believe that the company that sent me the imprinted pen missed the target a bit. However, some premiums sent via direct mail can do a great job helping you brand your business in your local area. I would bet that more than half of the people who read this have one or more imprinted magnets for local businesses holding up a drawing or some other important notice on their refrigerator doors right now. (I certainly do.) We see those business names and logos every day for years. Apple, by the way, has used direct mail campaigns to distribute slick posters that feature its products. These posters are so well done that they are often plastered to the walls of tech writers and other industry influencers. Finally, as much as I believe in smart email marketing campaigns, so far I haven’t received any email enclosures that will stick to my refrigerator or are beautiful enough to post on the office bulletin board. Direct mail marketing may still be very useful for your business. Give it some...
read more