Huy week 8

 This week Yu-Yi and I filmed a few shots for our upcoming promotional video in between class when our schedules correlated. We want to show the world the bag in action to try to get people excited about it. It is much easier to show someone a product as opposed to telling them about it. The skateboarding industry itself is a media based industry. Ever since the 80's videos have been the main vehicle that has helped spread skateboarding culture. Nowadays with the internet, the skateboarding industry has grown faster and much more quickly to a global audience.

The general idea behind the promotional video is to tell a story that involves the Kraken bag at different times in the day and in different weather situations.  There will be a loose narrative of an urban commuter throughout the day showing the bag in different user scenarios, from waking up and leaving the house, to going home at night. We hope that the video will help bring our product to life in the eyes of potential consumers and help us gain a presence on the internet. We will also be able to see the analytics of the site, to easily see where our visitors are coming from, how long they are on the site and how many people click on our Etsy link.

In terms of the internet, we may rely on our blog at krakenbags.wordpress.com to be our landing page for the time being while we figure out our host and how to code html. Though the address may be long and a bit of an eyesore, being on wordpress will help us out in the infant stages of our company. It is somewhat easy to gain followers on wordpress and since none of us are web developers it saves us a lot of time and energy that we can use to focus on validating our assumptions and selling bags. We need to focus some efforts on making "blog" friends like Stichtagram so we can reach a wider audience base.

Last Wednesday there was a thunder storm and I happen to be outside of 2 w 13th enjoying a cigarette underneath the scaffolding. Many people took refuge under the scaffolding from the torrential rain, including a skateboarder named Donte. I started speaking with Donte and ended up showing him a picture of the Kraken Bag. He was extremely excited about the bag and said he "need one, now" and asked me several times when they would be available. I took down his e-mail address and told him that I would contact him as soon as it was available. He also started following @krakennyc on Instagram. Though our Instagram account is only a week old and we only have 7 pictures we are starting to gain followers outside my own friends. Users are finding us through hashtags like #skatebag #skateboardbag. One of the users that began following us in an independent bag maker in the UK called Rucksack Village.

Unfortunately for us because we are trying to sell water resistant bags Spring has seem to sprung in New York and we were blessed with another nice weekend. As usual I spent Saturday afternoon cruising around Brooklyn with my skateboarder friends on bikes looking for new things to skate. The picture below shows various methods of biking with a skateboard. My friends were once again very impressed by my bag. They were curious of when the would be available and for how much? Price point has been something that we have been wrestling with. I asked them, how much would you pay for something like this at a skate shop? The average answer that I got from the group of 5 guys was $50-60.