The Kraken bag listing on Etsy has gotten an ok number of hits when it was first posted but no sales and buzz has lessened. I got feedback from the rest of the group regarding the description of the bag. They wanted it to sound more "badass." I looked at some other bag companies to see how they approach bag description. What I found was two things: 1, I have no idea what a "badass" bag description is and 2 that a lot of bag companies offer lifetime guarantees. Feeling stuck I turned to a friend who has a background in editorial writing for advice. She revised the statement and made a suggestion to list the size of a skateboard and the size of the bag. I went back to some old emails and found Huy's sizing of an average skate board. Next step is to find a tape measure and get the bag dimensions.
Reaching out to my marketing contact brought about some more feedback. She showed the Etsy page to her boyfriend, he is a skater. He liked the bag but thought it was expensive. The bag was priced at $70 with a 10% discount. My contact told him it was hand made so $70 was not expensive. He still did not buy one. I am pretty sure that not all skateboarders have girlfriends like my marketing contact so it lead us to rethink the price of the bag. This also brings up the question of the importance of handmade in the USA. Due to time constraints, budgeting and space outsourcing labor is not an option. We do not really have enough time for the turn around of outsourcing nor do we have the capital or space to store a lot of bags.
Reaching out to my marketing contact brought about some more feedback. She showed the Etsy page to her boyfriend, he is a skater. He liked the bag but thought it was expensive. The bag was priced at $70 with a 10% discount. My contact told him it was hand made so $70 was not expensive. He still did not buy one. I am pretty sure that not all skateboarders have girlfriends like my marketing contact so it lead us to rethink the price of the bag. This also brings up the question of the importance of handmade in the USA. Due to time constraints, budgeting and space outsourcing labor is not an option. We do not really have enough time for the turn around of outsourcing nor do we have the capital or space to store a lot of bags.
These are some statistics form the first week on Etsy when the bag cost $70:
This brings up the question: is our target market willing to pay more for a bag that is hand made? Regardless, the price of the bag was lowered on Etsy to $59.95 and no discounts for first time buyers. We have not seen much of a change in traffic.
I was able to show the bag to an accessory and bag designer as well. She provided some insightful feedback as well as having additional suggestions for sales. I will start with the feedback on the bag itself. She liked the pictures we took and said that it looked like a durable bag. She also noted that it looks like a mens bag. Her suggestion for sales was to create a paypall button straight on our website. This way we will be able to sell directly from our site by using paypall. Paypall takes between 2.2%-2.9% + .30 dependent on volume of sales during a month.
The fact that it looks like a mens bag is good but I question how many men shop for themselves on Etsy. So the logical next step for me was to find some men and ask them where they shop on line. As it turned out many of the men I asked shop on ebay. I even asked some women where they shop for men and where the men they know shop. Ebay was another popular answer.
We now have an ebay listing for our bag. It can be found: http://r.ebay.com/mWcgRt till April 22, 2013. The bag has a starting bid of 49.95. The Ebay link has been tweeted by some and I hope to see some movement in sales.
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