Need some advice from you all for 21fools
We started as a magazine (With focus on happiness), then we ventured into the greeting card space where we were not able to execute the idea of ‘Making the idea of sending greeting cards cool’ as per our expectation and now with the limited funding in our hand we need to work fast to expand it further.
Personally we don’t want 21fools to move from greeting cards to gifting segment as we are more interested in creating products and selling them. We want 21fools to be “The happiness store” where we will crowd source selected good designs and content to make different products (To start with we will have Greeting cards, Posters, Canvas, Tees etc) from them. 21fools should be the content and product hub for happiness.
There are few companies working on the similar idea and the differentiating factor will be the free content which we can offer to people along with the products. The whole idea excites me a lot but I don’t want my interest to affect the business decision.
Few doubts:
1. Our content and product is not a need for customers.
2. Is it scalable because it will be more or less a ‘Print on demand service’.
3. Differentiating factor is not so strong.
What would you suggest?
Thank you!
Anamika Joshi
Ok.. so to start with I have doubt on what you mean by – “differentiating factor will be the free content which we can offer to people along with the products.“
Sharing my thoughts on your business – I have liked many cards which you guys design but I have not been compelled to buy them – may be out of laziness or thinking that what difference would it make – Many of my friends/colleagues sit in front of their computers most of the hours to least bother about cards on table.
Few suggestions:
– create content that tells people that why they should give card. In today’s time, you need to push the product category first before the brand.
– Approach HR Teams of corporate houses with a certain plan on – “Partners to sharing happiness among employees”. Now present your “Happiness Product Line” targeting the employees – sharing cards of appreciation/fun/etc amongst each other that would help in building a good working environ within office. I am not sure if I am able to make you understand with what I mean.
– In nutshell, work out current product – make it reach to more different target group than “anyone/everyone” [You can do it with your own product instead of customized ones]. Content would play an important role in this.
– Once you are done with the above thing, I guess then you can introduce other stuffs as you have mentioned – posters/tees, etc.
I am not the best person to take advice from. But I am also working out things for nailbites and the above points are some learnings which I think would work. Also It’s important to realize that it takes some amount of time to push your idea. You never know when your brand starts grabbing eyeballs. All you need to do is remain focused and work around creating and distributing content continuously.
Chart out reasons why one should buy a card or “how it feels to receive a card” etc as basic principles of your brand. Just to make things clear, here is something which we created in our initial days to push our idea of starting nailbites – https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151154738459346&set=pb.190107899345.-2207520000.1357820056&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-snc6%2F209195_10151154738459346_746329297_o.jpg&smallsrc=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-ash4%2F486767_10151154738459346_746329297_n.jpg&size=800%2C1131
The above creative explains nothing about nailbites but pushes the idea behind nailbites in a fun manner. That’s why I keep on saying – focus on content before anything else.
That’s all.. Besides, I must tell you that you are doing great job with great cards. I sincerely hope this thing to work for you.
Best Wishes!!
Divyanshu Asopa
Thank you so much Anamika for the detailed feedback.. The differentiating factor would be the content we are capable to push via 21fools as we were running a magazine before and have a team of good writers. (Although this factor seems to weak).
You are totally true that we were not able to compel people to buy the greeting cards and there is a lot which can be done in the segment. Whether it is pushing the product category to customers or pitching the idea about greeting cards to companies.
I think I will push the greeting cards and as well as start the new categories because I am super excited about them and also it will bring new fresh energy in 21fools. Thank you again for the time 🙂
Anamika Joshi
Great.. Best wishes to you Divyanshu.. Go with your heart .. Best of luck!
Karan Ahuja
Hi divyanshu
we are creating a crm that enables permission marketing for s&m business.
would you like to partner with us to integrate your content as templates that can be sent ?
please see work here – https://kodecrm.com/
please email me a reply on karan@kodeplay.com
Sanket Saraf
Hey Divyanshu,
Just a few thoughts…
1. Appealing to their emotional needs might work for you. like:
for the environmentally responsible/tree huggers, we use only recyclable paper
for the romantically old fashioned, we send a digitally drawn unique card (SMS or Emails are too robotic)
for social liking – you could post testimonials, mention companies/people on your fb page. if people relate to one customer, you’ve got a fan.
you can have a fund raiser for the sewri kids (if you haven’t already had one) Rope in a celebrity who supports your cause, and you have his fan base looking at your site
talk about yourself and link your blogs with pics, people might relate to you more as living people and not as a company
target event invites like kids birthdays & sending cards for baby shower announcements with chocolates for young moms etc. i’ve seen people spend like crazy for those!
Most important – Be aware of your customers’ perceptions of themselves
2. Differentiating factor
What is the “free” content? can i touch/hold it?
Do you use the database the of your customer’s anniversaries/birthdays etc. to remind them about you in advance
When I think of your company, I associate it with ideas like organic, eco friendly, fair trade, hippy, indie movies, startups, fresh, board games, candy, witty, kala ghoda fair, xaviers/jj school 🙂
What did you want to project and where are you now?
If you move towards a full fledged store, will you dilute your identity? Are the products really what you’re known for? Will the same concepts on cards, work for other products?
3. Scalability:
With my little experience in the custom t-shirt business, I can say, doing single piece custom jobs is a hassle. Your time-cost spend on a job may turn out to be too expensive for the customer. Can your regular customer afford it? Are they from the high income group (small customer base) or the medium income group.
Also you may check out how ferns and petals has worked so well.
Cheers & Good Luck
Sanket
PS – An excerpt from “How to Sell Anything to Anybody” by Joe Girard, the greatest salesman in the world
Joe sent his customers a greeting card each month in addition to sending them a special Birthday card each year, and he uses a very nice, very soft sell message in his cards. He never sent direct sales pitches, but instead said things like “Happy New Year – I like You! Joe Gerard, Merrolis Chevrolet.”
Now, you’re probably thinking that it takes a lot of time and effort to send your prospects a birthday card every year plus one every month and you’re right, it does!
Joe started out writing and mailing cards on his own, but as his customer base grew he hired assistants and paid them to write and mail greeting cards on his behalf – and he did this because he knew this was one of the most effective yet least expensive ways to get new customers
Kamna Hazrati
Hey Divyanshu, 21fools is a great concept, and definitely looks a great business idea too. I say that coz we are in a way competitor to you. we sell Greeting cards, t-shirts through our portal http://www.vouchersmate.com …
a. Physical Greeting cards are always special… and nothing can match the joy they bring to humans. I say that coz we sell a lot of them, so they definitely will bring u monies.
b. Great content always helps to bring new people to u & to engage the existing ones. and i definitely love the idea of spreading happiness. we might become partners in spreading it together 🙂
c. Don’t give up. In hindsight I could feel ur passion. hence, pl don’t give up! u will find a way to make it a hit commercially. tying up with corporates is a nice idea, organic paper looks as a nice PR stunt. don’t miss on content!
All the best!
Kamna
Divyanshu Asopa
Will get in touch soon!
Divyanshu Asopa
Thank you so much for the feedback and certainly I am not giving up 🙂
Divyanshu Asopa
The feedback was super awesome! 🙂 Quite helpful.. Thank you!
Pandurang Nayak
Hi Divyanshu,
Having seen 21fools for a while from the outside and being a follower of your/21fools FB/Twitter pages, here’s some feedback:
1. You need to do some work on building some clear messaging on your product/offering. 21fools says you’re an e-magazine, you do greeting cards, you are all about happiness, etc. While all these are cute and nice, at the end of the day, if you’re a business, you should have a CLEAR VALUE PROPOSITION. You cannot be all of these since these are disparate, different things. Brand building is about the end-user saying “I want to give xyz something for this occasion. Oh wait, let me go check if I can send a greeting card from 21fools”.
If you use your business Facebook / Twitter channels for speaking your individual thoughts/mind, you will quickly create confusion and people will not differentiate the product/service from you. You might think that is fine, but it is not. Let me give you an example:
See your facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/21fools. You are talking about liking a song (Roothe khwab ko mana lenge) or your sarcasm about Taran Adarsh’s way of rating movies – NONE of these are relevant to a person like me who’s following your product/business page for updates about your product/business. It is YOUR personal thoughts/whims and I have NO interest in those. At some point, this starts becoming spam on my wall (especially when the same thought repeats from your own individual FB profile) and I’ll then unsubscribe myself. In all of this, I’m beginning to forget that you make greeting cards in the first place!
Much as you may dislike this advice, the news is – YOU and THE BUSINESS are two different things and you should keep them separate. Steve Jobs did not use the iPad Facebook page be used for talking about his eating habits!
2. Your site updates too slowly. At the point of writing this, the main page advertises Christmas and New Year cards – which is now 15 days past. You should be talking about creating Valentine Day cards and maybe bundle in a special package (one card each day for a week – leading up to Valentine’s Day, unique card not repeated for anyone else, along with flowers, – I don’t know, you know better).
The point is – dude! if you’re in the business, you need to be more agile than this.
At this very point, hallmark.com has a whole “Make Valentine’s Day special for him/her”. First become the best product that is out there, then you do your differentiation. I think your focus has been more on differentiation (mostly through PR that’s forgotten very quickly), than building brand loyalty. Make customers love your product first.
3. Focus and then diversify. I think today you have too many things under the same name – this is related to point 1, but is a different point. I personally don’t see the value of the “magazine” from a business sense, but if you want to do it go ahead! You can however do it under a different name? Many of the posts are very serious in nature – how does that go with the messaging of a “happyness store”? How does the magazine help with the store in any case?
And if you’re building a store, why not start with more things in the store? If you can do physical greeting cards, why not diversify into e-cards, flowers, small gifts, mugs, tees, etc. There’s a lot of people doing exactly the same thing – but with a LOT MORE FOCUS. Go see their sites and you’ll probably see a very clear message on what the site is, what it targets and what you can get from there. You have great talent in your drawing/writing/concepts – you should first make it ONE good thing that works and then do related things to that.
That’s it for now! All the best!
Divyanshu Asopa
Your every word make sense here. Will work on it. Thank you for your valuable time 🙂
Akshay Pathak
MARKETING -Social media marketing campaigns , free cards for a cause (few of them)
GRAB CUSTOMER – College people,young, occasion lovers
GRAB OCCASIONS – market in specific cities like metropolitin cities where people are away from their family so the probability of selling cards in that area is more
AWARENESS- aware people of the fact that a phone call is just not the perfect way to work things out cards say more than what you have to say
BE INNOVATIVE – MUSICAL CARDS LED CARDS GLOWING CARDS