In my last reel i said building a brand is significantly harder than you think — esp. when you don't know your customer, have no prior experience in retail, and no connections to leverage. But that doesn't mean you give up. A few people asked what i meant by that, so here is my more considered opinion.
Yes it is hard, but that doesn't mean you can't do it. you can still succeed if you remember 3 things.
1. Don't measure yourself against any metrics for 3 years
This might be an unpopular sentiment in this era of try fast, fail fast, but it is essential. Think of this as college, or advanced training. You are entering a new field and you need to give yourself the time to figure out the many many aspects of it — product, supply chain, photography, copy, pricing, customer service, fulfillment, ads, taxes. You cannot speedrun this and if you measure yourself in month 4 against people who have been doing this for 10 years, you will quit. So, just don't.
Treat this like college. Set the metrics aside and learn
2. Sell on etsy
If there is 1 actionable piece of advice i can give people, it is this: don't resist it. Whether you are eventually selling in a physical shop, on amazon, or on your own website — build an etsy presence, and build it early. And no, I am not making money of this advice.
Etsy is a readymade marketplace where people come to buy small. They trust the platform, so all those friction points are removed for you. That is huge when you are a brand nobody has heard of yet.
But more important than even that is that etsy is the cheapest market research you will ever do. If you are able to sell a product on etsy, you can sell it anywhere else.
And if you can't sell on etsy, you immediately know a few things: either it is a tactile-first product (meaning people usually want to buy it in a physical store), or it is a commoditized product (meaning convenience matters and people would rather one-click on amazon). That doesn't mean you shouldn't sell those things — in fact that is the whole point. This is valuable data that tells you how to enter the market with your product.
On the other hand, if something does sell well on etsy, you know people care about quality, they would rather buy small, and it is probably what i'd call a broad niche item — like our deckled edge paper. Artists love it, Event hosts love it. Fairly broad user base, but still niche.
More than product-specific info though, what you get from etsy is an understanding of customers in general (which you don't have, because you are not from retail) and your specific niche customers in particular. And this is because the culture of etsy is such that customers are generally nice and forgiving. They will message you, discuss their needs with you, give you feedback on what they didn't like and leave reviews praising the things you do do well. This is really important. Because a time will come when you will want to expand product lines. You want to become a brand, not sell 1 product. That means no single product can or needs to make you rich — but you do need multiple fast movers so you can offer multiple designs, iterate, and keep buyers coming back.
3. Once you figure out your broad niche, put blinders on.
DO NOT LOOK ANYWHERE ELSE. Not in terms of products, not in terms of customers, not in terms of business models. So don't suddenly start doing corporate gifting (which we did do a brief foray into… so yes, i am talking from personal experience).
You are mostly a 1-man show, which means you need to be really, really jealous of how you use your time. Every shiny new direction is a tax on the thing that is actually working. Say NO a lot.
Do these 3 things and you will build a brand.
Have we done it yet? Great question. In terms of customers, we definitely have 2-3 clear archetypes now:
- Artists and event planners who buy on etsy
- Gift givers who buy on amazon (we sold out of many of our gift bag designs in our first quarter of selling — some are still available, you can check them out here)
- Wholesalers and gift shop boutiques who buy through our website
So the honest answer is: we are not "there" yet, but we know who we are talking to. And after telling ourselves not to measure anything for 3 years, we are taking it one day and one challenge at a time.
I f you find what I share here useful or you are curious to learn how to build something from scratch, come back next week (Monday 5pm PST) for another episode of "Stop what you are doing and listen to me right now"
Best,
Isha Sethi, PhD
Founder, Decoy Galleries
San Francisco, California
