Soweto Festival Expo Competition 2013

1000 Beautiful Bracelets was privileged to be selected as one of the SMME's to be part of the Soweto Festival Expo SMME Program which comprised a Stand at the Soweto Festival Expo as well as seven invaluable full-day training sessions with Bill Gibson of Knowledge Brokers International over the next six months to assist the business in marketing itself.

Many people visited our stand, where we hosted a competition which was very popular.We are thrilled to announce the Prize Winner of the "1000 Beautiful Bracelets" Gift Set today: The Winner is Gordon Leeuw, of  Molofo Village, Soweto who was very excited when we called him to notify him that he won the Competition, he said he would give the Gift Set to his wife, Ntombi!

"1000 Beautiful Bracelets" Prize Gift Set comprising two Beautiful Bracelets and Luxury Chocolates...

On Sunday, the Soweto Festival Gospel Concert attracted at least 15,000 people and there was the most amazing vibe, the music was thoroughly enjoyed by all. Gospel Music is the most popular genre of music in South Africa: there are more sales of Gospel Music at the music retail stores than any other genre!

The CathSSeta Bus - the Kind Sponsors of our involvement at this event...

Create a Blog for Your Startup

A Blog  is a useful tool to inspire or help others, provide updates, information about new product launches and opportunities as well as to share greater detail on a highlight or opportunity with your potential customers that  may be too much information for other platforms (website or social media). Some tips:

Don't become too promotional. People don't want to read advertisements, if they want to do that they will click on the adverts at the side of your Blog. Make sure the links to your website are clearly visible. A reader pointed out that the link to Beautiful Bracelets wasn't clear (actually he said it wasn't there). It was, but I fixed the visibility.

Plan Ahead. Work out what themes you want to cover, perhaps a series of topics you want to write about. I don't believe a Blog should be too long. Break up one potentially over-long post into several rather than load your reader with too much information in one sitting. People are more likely to follow your Blog longer term if your posts are organised.

Use Photos. Give your page a visual interest with good photos. Bad quality ones can make it look cheap. Take photos of your business in action, your products on the go, your employees, custsomers/clients or other businesses you interact with. Makes it more interesting to read. If you can't take your own quality photos (which I feel is the best way, at least they're original), use stock photos.

Be hands on. Encourage action. Ask for feedback. Platforms like WordPress or Blogger make it very easy to create and manage a Blog. You can read a comparison of  the two here. Get a dedicated domain. This Blog actually goes under www.1000beautifulbracelets.com. 

Generate Sales and Leads for your Business. Referrals (or clickthrough's) from this Blog to the Beautiful Bracelets website have resulted in sales. And that, for me, is a very good reason for a Blog. The other reason is to help and inspire people who are perhaps thinking of or already running their own businesses.

Week 7 Reportback!

Today was a good day, I had more customers coming back to buy even more Beautiful Bracelets as Christmas Gifts, and much of this business was repeat business. Which is gratifying. And I received a phone call from a customer in Cape Town who was ecstatic, having received her Beautiful Bracelets order. So far the feedback from all customers who buy online has been great. The best customer is a happy customer who buys again!

I am toying with the idea of continuing with a weekly summary and feedback report as I did in the first 6 weeks. Perhaps continuing to Week 10. But Week 7 has been the busiest yet, I have been literally "run off my feet" with the Beautiful Bracelets Business. Just when I thought, great, the challenge is over, now I can rest a few days and put my feet up. Not so. The orders in the first 3 days after the Grande Finale exceeded the first 3 weeks of the Money Show Challenge, it has been quite something to keep up! Especially as all the profits are in the hands of Starfish, one would usually re-invest profits especially in a Startup situation. Since I want to keep this R1000 as close to the original idea as possible and just see how far it can go within 6 months, I will invest R4850 of my own money into the business to put it back to a "real life" scenario.

From now on, Beautiful Bracelets needs to secure its own Markets (flea markets) and it turns out, places like  Irene Market apparently have a waiting list of 2 years! Which is why it was wonderful to have the support of people like Corlia who has an existing Antique Jewellery Section and broke her own rules to "host" Beautiful Bracelets for the duration of the Money Show Challenge (It is quite a responsibility to take on other people's products due to high theft levels at these Flea Markets: a shocking thought). We have been accepted onto at least one Christmas Market (although it seems some of them prefer to be branded as "Festive" markets). And another to confirm shortly. Then I have so many other avenues to explore, it is time-consuming, but this is the groundwork needed, and it will be covered. My business coach said he wanted me to double employees and profits in the next 6 weeks. That would be great, especially since this is traditionally a good time of year to be selling "gift" items like Beautiful Bracelets! As I go forward, I will let you know where Beautiful Bracelets may be found and what I am doing to boost sales. One new store where you can find Beautiful Bracelets probably within a day or so, is at The Ballet Box in Tygervalley, Cape Town.

Beautiful Pendants

The other great thing is I managed to secure the domain www.beautifulpendants.co.za which will point to Beautiful Bracelets and we will be launching Beautiful Pendants shortly due to popular demand. At the Grande Finale of the Money Show Challenge, Tracey Webster, CEO of the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship actually said to me (live on air): you should branch out into a wider range of products like necklaces/pendants and earrings. Well, one of the new Beautiful Pendants had already been presented to the Starfish Foundation Charity Art Auction and I have had requests from clients who want to buy matching sets. So Beautiful Pendants will be available soon!

Daily Routines for Success

“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.”

― Mike Murdock

One of the tips Donald Trump gave for business success is that one should do a little work, every day. In a product related business, especially initially, one has to make sure sales are happening daily, if not, be working daily on opening up selling opportunities, every day. Pavlo Phitidis (Radio 702's Small Business Guru) says one should make 20 cold calls a day. I believe that in a start-up situation especially in the service industry (or for a new sales person developing their territory) this should be increased to 100 cold calls/tele-marketing calls per day! 20 calls is just a "maintenance" figure once the sales are happening.

For Beautiful Bracelets, I am finding the best approach to opening up new business and selling opportunities is to actually meet the owners of stores face-to-face (or in the case of fleamarkets, the owners of stalls/stands) and negotiate for them to stock Beautiful Bracelets even on a trial basis. One person agreed to stock just 4 Bracelets on Thursday and phoned me with great excitement today (Saturday) to say he'd sold all 4 Beautiful Bracelets to a person who was returning to India and would have bought 10! I have a very keen new retail customer now! Most people are prepared to do a trial run for a month or so, and re-assess after that.

I haven't had time yet to explore e-Bay, "Bid or Buy", or Alibaba as potential platforms for retail, but that is on the "To Do" list. One comment from someone I mentioned it to was that "Bid or Buy" is expensive for retailers. Got to check that. Starting up a new micro business is very time-consuming since you are the product developer, manufacturer, employer, accountant, publicist, marketer, sales rep, etc. It is hard work if you require excellence of yourself.

But the fun and the "joie de vivre" are worth it!

How to get your Products into Retail Stores

Yesterday was a red-letter day. Beautiful Bracelets are now proudly displayed in the main window and inside the shop of Gossip (Fashion & Accessories Shop) in Carlswald Lifestyle Centre, New Road, Midrand! After having already done it...I thought, what do you say to someone who needs advice on how to do it themselves? Well I then googled "how to get your products into retail stores" and found a whole lot of rubbish. Like write a business plan. On how to do it. I say if you have only 6 weeks to make a profit you need to be much more pro-active and you cannot waffle through writing a business plan on how you will achieve getting your products into retail stores with 19 points. Take a few samples of your products and knock on doors. You could do the "cold-calling" idea and make some phone calls first with a view to setting up an appointment with the owner but in this case it would probably yield a less than satisfactory result. And of course, unless you're not paying for the phone calls, it would eat a large chunk of your profits (in South Africa all phone calls including local are exhorbitantly priced which is why more people here use text/SMS or Whatsapp and email.)

I am assuming that by Week 3 of the "6 weeks to profit with only R1000" you've already done your market research by selling quite a few (or a few hundred) of your products and now you really do know what the market wants, and if it is actually a fashion item like Beautiful Bracelets is, you've also researched and discovered in the previous 3 weeks what shades are people actually buying at the moment. In South Africa right now, it is late Spring, Summer is almost on us, and this season the fashion shades are "sorbet" or "ice-cream" shades. Soft pinks, lemon yellow, mint green and turquoise are selling like crazy. And "grey" is the new "black". So of course, amongst the different types of bracelets I am making sure these colours (spelt UK way for any American readers since half the readers of this Blog seem to reside there) appeared in my samples.

Of course, then the next thing you want is to have direct access to the decision-maker for the retail store, usually for a small gift or accessories shop this would be the owner. Who might not be easily available. The first store I stopped at wouldn't even give me the owner's phone number. They really lost out on a wonderful opportunity. Such a pity. Because within a few minutes of that conversation it just so happened that the owner of the Accessories store I walked into, was present, re-designing and re-arranging all the displays in the store. We have all probably heard the saying "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity". Well I certainly made the most of that opportunity. And Beautiful Bracelets are just that. Beautiful. They sell themselves to anyone who looks at them, and they seemed to preen in front of Louise, the owner of Gossip  Fashion & Accessories Store..

One has to be very business like and negotiate a proper contractual arrangement on a selling price you can afford to release the goods for, yet still make a (smaller) profit and have the product stocked in the shop at a price that would still be attractive to the customers. This selling price needs to be the same as the price reflected on your website for each item! Payment terms need also to be negotiated if the products are on consignment. In South Africa a verbal contract is binding but for a long term arrangement it would be wise to put in in writing and have both parties sign, fairly early on.

To get products into the national Retailers, which one would do having grown to a level to sustain supplying that level of demand, one would have to hire an Exhibition Stand at one of the Trade Fairs/Expo's that all the Retail Buyers attend, like SARCDA or Design Indaba (for South African Retailers).

It's a memorable day, and the overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude.

Rainmaking

Sales is everything. The only time a products or services based business is making money is when face-to-face with a buyer or a seller in a buying or a selling situation. So, Beautiful Bracelets we are energetically searching out new selling opportunities. This is not quite the kind of product that one can sell on the street like coat hangers, sunglasses, peaks, flags (think World Soccer Cup 2010) or the countless other products one gets approached with at robots. Go where the customers are. Especially to start with. The ideal scenario would be to hire a stand at a Trade Show where Buyers from large retail corporates frequent, but those shows are not on the Calendar this month. Guess where we’ll be next year! But for the moment, it’s small time venues: craft markets, any school or corporate that will allow a walk-in to scout their employees in case they want a Beautiful Bracelets. Various opportunities have already been negotiated, for dates falling within the 6 Week Challenge. Some opportunities like certain Christmas Fairs are also confirmed but these dates will only materialise after the Challenge is ended. This is such a wonderful business it is certainly not going to fold after the Challenge ends, but of course the idea is to WIN it!

And then we have to juggle with all the aspects of running and managing the business, taking care of orders arranging deliveries, designing new bracelets, keeping up with the demand by maintaining production and quality control. A new business start up is extremely challenging on one’s resources of time and energy.

But it is also so much FUN!

Radio 702 MoneyShow Challenge Update:Week 2

A good week!

Some of the Beautiful Bracelets on display at the Launch Party

Some of the ladies at the Launch

Beautiful Bracelets Launch was incredibly successful (even with fewer attendance numbers than hoped for, with the short lead time this was anticipated). This was held at a friend’s very upmarket home. The friend kindly sponsored catering for the Event (the Launch was suggested by her from the outset). The food and ambience, and support from those present, was phenomenal and very encouraging. There were good sales as a result of the Launch.

The most significant part of the week for me, though, was a meeting with my friend and mentor, Stan Close, of www.ikusasa.biz who offered his services as a business coach for the 6 week Challenge, free of charge. He gave excellent feedback and a wake-up call as to pricing and what I need to do from here to move closer to the profit margin I desire. Stan helped me to take step back and face reality. He also helped with cash flow analysis of income and expenditure and pointed me in the right direction for the next steps.

Wrote Press Releases for publication in the Women of Acts monthly newsletter. Was requested to write an article (after my email to the Editor) for GoodNewsSA.co.za. This is all part of promoting Beautiful Bracelets in order to gain traction on sales.

Maintained daily Blog as an encouragement to others who may wish to start their own micro-business.

Had orders placed/received online via the Beautiful Bracelets website with some people thinking ahead to purchase Christmas gifts already!

Twitter followers doubled week-on-week. I would like to secure more than 1000 Followers by the end of the Challenge since social media is one of the best methods to promote and create awareness of the products with a view to increasing sales. I need every bit of help I can get to reach that goal! Twitter followers please retweet whenever possible.

Lungi, Zukiswa, Valerie (me!) and Pinkie at Acts Church Business Dinner

Highlights: Somebody bought the bracelet off my wrist at the Acts Church Business Dinner on the Friday evening! A colleague seated at the table offered to arrange an official invitation to a flea market opportunity. More on that next week if it works out.

Lowlights: Sold only half the bracelets I’d hoped to sell this week, blogged about Disappointments and Setbacks. Not one of the flea markets applied to responded to emails or phone calls yet.

Main objective/goal for Week 3 is more SALES!!

New Markets..

This week I attempted to get onto two of what must be the best markets from attendance point of view. I called the one (Irene Village Market) who directed me to email them via their contact form on the website. Which I did, requesting an urgent response since I would like to have displayed Beautiful Bracelets at the weekend market today (I know it's late, but with now only 4 weeks to go the time is flying by and I notice there are only 3 market dates left after today.) No response to my email yet. Neither to my application to the Bryanston Organic Market (which I'm applying to on the grounds of using beads which have recycled materials in them).

An amazing thing happened at the Acts Business Dinner last night (which, by the way, had the MOST inspirational speakers... on "coming up higher" to a level of integrity in business that may be scarce in some parts of our country if one judges by how busy Thuli Madonsela is. It just so happened that at this Business Dinner I was sitting next to a lady who somehow is involved or linked to people in Government who arrange flea market events for Special Days like Women's Day (9 Aug), Heritage Day (24 Sept). I asked her if people actually buy stuff at these markets and  if there were any "days" coming up soon. Yes to both questions. This coming Wednesday, 16 October, the MEC for the Department of Agriculture will be present at an event to market International Poverty Alleviation Day, in Bronkhorstspruit, and I was invited right there and then to be there (official email confirmation to follow). It may be a bit far, but perhaps travel could be arranged with the friend who suggested it, also, it seems an opportunity not to be passed up considering the ethos of the "day" fits some of my goals. And of course, last week I had a number of people ask if I would please bring Beautiful Bracelets to Acts Church this Sunday, as they wished to purchase (there is a rule that one cannot have a table or stand at the Church, but there is nothing stopping me from engaging in transactions with people who approach me directly.) So quite a few sales are happening by word of mouth and it seems the "word" is spreading like wildfire, and this is a congregation of about 3,500 people so I could be very busy just with that. I have also been given permission to have a stand at the next Acts Women's Conference and sell, they will have a kind of "flea market" situation at the conference with many people selling their goods. A funny thing happened last night. As we were getting ready to wrap up and leave, one of the ladies (a friend of someone at my table), decided she just "had to have" the Beautiful Bracelet I was wearing (it was Turquoise) and she bought it on the spot! (The first time she'd heard of Beautiful Bracelets.) Actually, there wasn't even time to tell her about the business, I will get her number from her friend and follow up. Follow-up marketing is the best and easiest way to get more business. Get loyal customers who will either purchase more Beautiful Bracelets, or will refer their friends to buy either online or in person.

Sales are starting to flow more steadily via the website www.beautifulbracelets.co.za. I have noticed even amongst some of my friends a certain level of suspicion and hesitancy to purchase things via the Internet. Some quote hearsay evidence of things going wrong. But I personally have only had excellent experiences purchasing online and I intend to ensure that Beautiful Bracelets is a pleasant experience for anyone who tries it. "Under Promise" and "Over Deliver" on service. That's what I hope to achieve.

It's beginning to seem as though I may soon need to employ more people (the 2nd person) to assist making the bracelets just to keep up with what I can already see is an increasing demand due to the marketing I've done, via friends, social media, and of course the very fact that the Radio 702 Business Challenge is receiving Publicity.. I don't want to run ahead just yet, I will be sitting with Stan Close of IKUSASA later today and working on the strategy for growth for the business. This is something that has to be carefully managed. No point over-reaching and hitting bankruptcy before one even starts.

Celebrating our first sale!

Well, today was busy. My car had been in the car workshop for repairs, so my friends, Anthony and John kindly drove me to Allure Beads, a local bead warehouse in Midrand where Thomas helped me spend R1000 (he gives excellent discounts on purchases of R1000 or more) and purchased the start up materials to make Beautiful Bracelets.

Fortunately the car returned soon after that and I took a few bracelets with me to an appointment with Dr Wian Stander, a wonderful bariatric physician (weight loss specialist doctor, this "make a profit in 6 weeks from R1000 702 Money Show Business Challenge" pales beside my personal challenge to reach my goal weight by January 2012!)... Anyway, I talked about my new business to 2 other ladies waiting for their appointments, and gave the website address so they could check out the bracelets on the website via their smartphones. As I walked out of my appointment, the lady waiting for her 3pm appointment grabbed me and asked if I had with me a particular bracelet listed on the website. She bought it on the spot! R70! But that's not all. I asked Dr Stander if he would like me to advertise the Slimming Clinic on the Beautiful Bracelets website and blog since it is already just in the first few days receiving massive publicity. Well, in return I received a discount on my appointment fee. And I will pay over this discount (R200) to the Beautiful Bracelets business as a "payment for advertising". So I am monetising the website and blog with returns going back into the business!

A great start to what I am absolutely sure will be a wonderful business that is going to help many people who need hope and inspiration to start and run their own small businesses!

Cashflow is EVERYthing

Well, it was great to meet Bruce Whitfield yesterday when I collected the R1000 "Business Startup" cash and touched base briefly with some of the Team from Radio 702.. Cecile, Pearl, Alistair and Tshego, a worthy competitor..

How High Can You Fly With R1000 Startup Capital?

My schedule for Wednesday includes an early morning shopping session to purchase materials for making new bracelet designs which will then be posted on the website, including a few tried-and-tested, much loved versions of the bracelet. I already have a few people (friends) who wish to make purchases. Someone once said to me that you first sell to your family, then your cousins, then your friends, then to strangers... That is a good technique for building a business... ripple effects, making the circle bigger each time.

I really need to get my team of ladies together, the new employees of this startup business, to make the bracelets... this business needs to fly. The best advice for a brand new business with very little start up Capital, is to drive sales, to sell as much as possible, as quickly as possible. Cash flow is everything in a new business and I'm already sensing that I need to build more stock early on in this R1000 Moneyshow  Business Startup Challenge, and to do that I need to multiply the Cash On Hand. Sales, sales, SALES... I call in the business from the North, the South, the East and the West. And if you're reading this, please get onto the website immediately and order your Christmas presents! These bracelets make wonderful stocking fillers!

Bear in mind that for every person in this Business Startup Challenge we each have a whole other life: a "day job"!! Can't drop the ball. But I am firmly convinced that an ideal way to start a new business is actually "moonlighting". What that really means, I think is, you work a full 8-10 hours in one job. Then after hours, you work a full 8 hours again on the Moonlighting Project... Am I getting enough sleep? Maybe after 12 November.