How Products Sell in the Digital Age
In the past, selling your product could be a simple matter of who you know. A general marketing strategy could consist of walking into a store, talking to the owner, and getting your product on the shelf within minutes. With enough effort and the right steps, you could clearly – and literally – see your business come to life.
While there will always be value in utilizing your network, selling your product is no longer as simple as putting goods on shelves. As carts have shifted from a three dimensional object to an emoticon in the upper righthand corner of a screen, the challenges of catching a customer’s eye can seem harder to master when consumers will likely never see the product until it arrives at their doorstep.
The digital age is shifting product selling points. Now, it is not always as reliant on physical product placement as it is on the design of your website, the pictures you take, or how you as the artist are perceived. While this can be daunting, it also opens the opportunity for personal connection. Potential customers have the opportunity to get to know you as the artist; you’re no longer alienated from your work on the shelf. When shopping online, customers have the opportunity to look beyond the product, and you have the opportunity to position yourself as a relatable artisan.
Personal Brand Matters
Establishing yourself as a credible brand can seem daunting, especially if you’re just starting out. While it may take longer to start building an audience and generating sales, that also gives you time to gather inventory and experiment with your work.
Unlike the traditional method of getting your product into stores, this digital shift has lessened the need to purchase large inventory stock ahead of time. Sure, you should probably create some samples of your work to establish yourself, but the concept behind the work, including your general artistic aesthetic, can be just as important when you sell the majority of your product online.
With greater value on your personal brand, you can grow your business and brand simply through showcasing what you find visually appealing. For example, generating digital media assets to showcase some of your designs is a great way to gauge potential interest. Since people feel connected to you as an artist, there is more freedom and time to decide how you will physically implement your vision.
Focusing Your Personal Brand and Evolving the Medium
The heart of any business is empathy. It is important to understand the heart of your potential customers, and be able to connect with them on an interpersonal level. In the past, listening to your customer’s heart could have come from friends who encouraged you and friends of friends who loved your work as a result. However, with both increased potential audience size and increased competition, the importance of a minimum viable product is also increasingly important in the artisan world.
The Value of the Minimum Viable Product
For traditional businesses and start-up ventures, a minimum viable product is a “bare bones” concept that solves the main issue the product is meant to solve. In the artisan space, a minimum viable product is an extension of the artist, reflecting the center of their inspiration and the basis of what they create. Once that starter product is established as a core jumping off point, or point of focus, it is something that can then be expanded upon and implemented through various mediums as your brand expands and you develop new crafting skills. Taking time to understand and create a minimum viable product for your work can help you focus your brand and give you a central point to always refer back to in order to maintain a consistent brand identity.
Building a Brand Takes Time
Of course, taking time to develop an aesthetic or digital proofing (creating a digital blueprint for your work) can potentially delay starting to put time into your craft. Though it may seem that the first step to launching your business is to start generating products, that style of work is often more suited for the store-to-store method that is becoming increasingly outdated for many business models. In a digital landscape, focusing on yourself as an artist and the point of view you bring to the world can often be far more valuable.
Furthermore, you may experience an increased buffer of time from when you decide to start your business digitally and when you actually start selling your products. Though this may be discouraging, take this waiting time as a period to solidify your voice, setting yourself up for long-term success and granting you more flexibility to grow as both a seller and creator.
When you have a clearly defined aesthetic that is easily communicated through digital proofings of your work, you can adjust more easily to trends and shifts in demand. When strictly focusing on selling store-to-store, you may miss an opportunity to evolve your product at the right time.
Say, for example, you’re a painter and your main product is floral decorated bowls. Your designs are impeccable, yet customers would prefer to have your designs on cups. If you were only selling in stores, you wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to receive feedback and you may think your painted bowls aren’t super popular because people don’t like your designs, which isn’t necessarily the case. With digital proof and branding, you can test out your designs on different products to see how your audience responds. You have constant feedback, and with the alleviated bulk inventory start-up cost that comes from online business, that can save you a lot of time and effort.
There are certainly challenges that come alongside this digital shift. Particularly within the artisan space, the web can make your work feel more distant and less authentic. There’s a certain personal touch a potential customer can feel when they pick up your item in a store or when they meet you in person, which they can’t necessarily feel through a screen.
This challenge further highlights the importance of personal branding. If you can make people feel a connection to you, and you can communicate the care you put into your work, you can overcome any potential drawback or feeling of impersonalization.
You and Your Products Go Hand-in-Hand
You are at the core of your creations. In the past, that core was less visible to customers. But now, in this digital age, you have a great opportunity to showcase yourself as a person to further grow your business.
Virtual stores can give you more freedom to explore your work and starting your business can sometimes be as easy as sketching some designs. When in doubt, focus on your aesthetic and perspective as an artist, and communicate that vision to customers. The medium of your work may ebb and flow, but you will always be at the core of your products.
You know how sometimes you see someone in public who looks so indescribably cool. It feels like they have their own authentic, irreplaceable style that you couldn’t replicate even if you had all the time and money in the world. Depop is like seeing that stranger and being able to buy their style directly off them. Even if that stranger isn’t your size, Depop will automatically show you the same, or very similar, articles of clothing from other sellers. On Depop, you aren’t just buying someone’s used clothes, you’re buying their sense of style.
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