The big launch night has come and gone, and I am so thankful for the many people and businesses that made it possible to get to that point including friends that provided moral support. And now the real work begins.
The toughest thing about making a new product is to know if the market is happy to buy it. Using a crowdfunding campaign to market-test the concept before significant investment was a good way to see if people would truly put their money where their mouth is.
When doing market research, it’s one thing for people to say that they have a problem and will spend $X on the product. It’s another thing – the only real thing that matters is whether or not they are willing to actually pay for the product when it comes time.
So far, the results are less then stellar for the pet barrier. Enough people have seen the product now with plenty of shares and publicity. And yet, we’re nowhere near where we should be in terms of pledges at this point. Plus the surveys were pretty average meaning that only a handful of the people at the launch really loved the product. Others were sitting on an ‘okay.’
I still have a couple of major media things happening over the next week or so. So, we’ll see if it gains anymore traction then.
In the meantime, I had so many people asking about the digging prevention product for pets at the launch that I contacted my manufacturer to ask that we go back to the design work for that product. I’ll go ahead and push the button to get the prototype made now to see how the market responds to that. It will unlikely be through a crowd-funding campaign though.
Such is life as an entrepreneur. I have to pivot until I find the sweet spot now. It happens all the time for other businesses like in tech. So, I shouldn’t be too surprise for this to happen with my business too. Now the real work begins – first with the right mental attitude, and then to make this pivot happen if the first product is not selling to the first target market.
