<$Monday, August 20, 2007$>
How (Not) To Sell Gift Baskets
*Sponsored Post* A couple of years ago I started my own gift basket company. I had about $400 in savings—an amount which at the time felt huge to me—and I was working a temp job with only a few months left to go until the gig ended. I also had previous experience putting together gift baskets for charity, and everybody said I had a knack for it. I bought a book on how to start your own gift basket business, read it front to back, made a list of potential clients, another list of basket ideas, sunk the majority of my savings into supplies, and got to work. I sold not a single basket, and my "business" tanked inside a month. Completely sucktastic self-marketing skills aside, looking back I can see that my biggest mistake was spending all of my money on holiday baskets (I launched my business just in time for the Christmas season). At least when Christmas rolled around I had ready-made gifts for the folks on my Christmas shopping list; but if I had gone more generic with my baskets, I could have kept trying to sell them after the holidays were over, and my business would have stood a chance of survival. This was a pretty stupid mistake. The book even told me not to do this, but I did it anyway, believing my baskets would be so adorable that they couldn't NOT sell. I couldn't have been more wrong. Here's a company who got it right. The Fruit Company sells gift baskets that are appropriate for any occasion, and they've been doing it since 1942. Their baskets are elegant and festive without being tied to a specific occasion. They're also healthy and versatile. Even if a recipient hates fruit, any of these baskets can still work as a gorgeous centerpiece. This is how to supply a successful gift basket business. I wish I'd used these folks as a model back when I so obviously had no idea what I was doing. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, PPP |
