First - I want you all to attend Sunsmash on friday. It will be held in front of the U.C. from eleven until . . . who knows - We (Canvas & Hide) will be selling caffeinated drinks to kick off the second half of your friday (or jumpstart your weekend). I hinted at this side project a few blogs ago, and am excited to say that we are moving forward, and we look forward to seeing you there.
I've been seduced by the daily insights of Seth Godin, and todays posts1 are especially relevant. He talks about how scaling our reach results in the inability to take the time to treat different people differently. This has been a recurring subject on Seth's Blog, and one that I am inclined to agree with. At Canvas and Hide we are pushing into a crowded space that will be hard to differentiate in. It is a space that we are passionate about, and we believe that our passion and personablility will make us stand out in this space. Essentially we will be known for treating different people differently. Despite our growth, we will have to focus on personal connections and individualized interactions. Without this we will just be another bag that has a bit of a price tag.
While writing our business plan I've noticed two things. 1: We aren't going to be a bag company. We are going to be a service company. Our purpose will be to empower people to take care of the things that they own so that they can live long fruitful lives that far exceed the premium price tag. We will do this through an involved product servicing team, the building of an space that encourages and supports user repair, care, and d.i.y. modification. This leads to the second point, 2: We can't look at how much of the pie will want to buy into our product. We have to look at ourselves and say "how many people can we realistically serve and how to we grow that number organically and effectively?" From there we can leverage the knowledge we have gained from our existing customers, our support department, and our community of users to identify existing demand and meet it. By bringing our customers into a community we retain them as a network, and can leverage their networks for grass roots, word of mouth advertising. Our marketing department IS our service department. Our marketing department IS our d.i.y. space.
I know that we still need to identify our early adopters and size the market to predict growth, but these numbers are only important relative to our capabilities. if M>C then go for it. if M<C then rethink your strategy. In the end, don't lose time in the books. A lot can be figured out by going out there and testing your business - which brings us full circle to Sunsmash.2 We will be out there selling on friday and we'd love to give you a taste of what we are all about. Browsers and Window shoppers are ALWAYS welcome.
1 or perhaps the weekends as well, i'm not a psychopath, I take time away from the internet to stream game of thrones and relax a little. The blogs mentioned are these two↩
2 Just a warning - the Sunsmash promo page leaves a lot to be desired. I did look up times though and its 11am to 4pm.
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