When I think of growing a business, I am always reminded of those words from Derrick Dauphinais, our Director of Marketing. When we began developing training products for staff and family members working with people with disabilities, Derrick probably said this at every staff meeting.
The very first step in a business is having a good product. Whether it is a jingle dress, a juice drink or customized software application, the question is the same. There are actually two questions here.
The first one is: Why would anyone pay for this?
The second is: Why would they pay US rather than someone else?
Truthfully, and I could be wrong on this, I don't think the market for jingle dresses is very large, nationwide. If you are not a dancer, you probably aren't going to buy one just to hang in your closet. However, there is a huge market for dolls and doll clothes. Doll-sized jingle dresses might sell very well to, for example, the American Girl line which does historical dolls, or for Barbie, who it seems, must own one of everything.
From cups of coffee or computer training, there are lots of products for which there is a large, established market. The question is, why should someone buy from you? It may be location - you are the only gourmet coffee shop on the reservation and they can buy from you rather than make a 26 mile round trip to Devils Lake to get a cup of coffee. That is a really good answer to question #2.
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