New York City Web Business Tip.

By Nelson Bates;

I just got home from a trip to New York City.  What an invigorating environment for both business and creativity. 

A few things I got to see were, Trump Tower (a magnificent building he built when he was only 36), went to GQ Magazine headquarters in Times Square and stopped by Tom Ford's Men's store.  Tom Ford is one of the most brilliant and elegant business men I know.  I think I need to do a separate post about just him and his accomplishments in the fashion industry. 

I had met a man inside the Tom Ford store who wanted to start his own Web business where he recommended the best-of-the-best in products.  Things like shaving kits, shoes, suits and accessories.  I've heard this type of recommending idea a lot and it sounds great, but there's almost certainly no money in it.

I wanted to give you the same advice I gave him.  It's okay to have a website that recommends things but take at least one item and make it your own.  Since he knew fragrance mixing I told him to brand his own cologne so he'll have his own product to sell.  If you don't own the rights to the asset, it's almost impossible to become wealthy.

Is it hard to produce your own product?  Absolutely!  Will it take him years to do properly?  Yes, it will!  But the consequences of not doing it are a life working for someone else and making them rich.  To me it's far more risky to try and do something mediocre just because it takes less time and initially seems less risky.

Whatever project I'm working on I ask myself "do I own the asset?"  When I'm done putting the hard work into creating the product, marketing it, and building the business, at the end of the day is there additional value being created more than just the day-to-day sales of the product.  I seem to sell the businesses I start about every four years.  If I didn't own the asset then I have to walk away at the end of the project with no second payday.  A requirement of any project I work on is the ownership of the asset that creates the second payday.

So his to-do list looks like this.. (I'll go under the assumption of a very limited budget.) 

1.) He needs to mix his own fragrance.
2.) Choose a name.
3.) Find a drop-shipper to produce.
4.) Design a logo. (try eLance or 99Designs)
5.) Trademark it.
6.) Build his website. (Since it will be a small site just use a WordPress template and customize.)
7.) Put together some amazing advertising photo's featuring the fragrance. (Join a model and photographer Meetup group in New York and he can produce a stunning marketing campaign for $100 or less.)
8.) Put a "Buy it Now" PayPal button on his site to sell the fragrance. (no upfront money needed.)
9.) Research keywords for cologne using Google Keyword Tool.
10.) Begin Search Engine Optimization. (My book shows how.)
11.) Think outside the box for how to gain interest in the product. For instance shoot a short video of how he mixes the fragrance and upload it to You Tube and Vimeo.  Just shoot it right on the iPhone, you can edit it and upload it just using the phone. 

With almost any quality product it will likely be this last step that makes it or breaks it. Thinking slightly outside the box of how to promote something is key.

Notes:  Tom Ford is known for pushing the envelope, his marketing campaign for his own fragrance line, photographed by Terry Richardson, were so sexual they were banned in Italy.. and that's hard to do.  Although they can be viewed as raunchy, I think the campaign did exactly what it intended to do, which was to create a crushing success of his product.  

Thanks to Nelson Bates for this article, www.bestwebsite.com