I decided to market a product that would be for girls, because many of the girls I know always carry money and they don’t hold back when it comes to spending it. I also have many more friends that are girls so it would be easier to sell to girls than boys.
Since I decided to sell to girls I had to come up with a girly product. My cousin taught me how to make bows a long time ago and they don’t cost a lot to make so I figured it would easy to market it.
I am not a very creative person at all which made it very hard to come up with a name for my product so I went with the simplest name I could think of. I decided to name Bella’s Bows. My sister Isabelle really likes the bows I make and I thought it’d be a catchy name since there are 2 B’s in the title.
Making bows is very simple, all I need is: › Fabric › Hair clips › Hot glue gun › Glue sticks
Fabric: Cost varies from $1.00-$3.00 per yard depending on the type Hair clips: Cost is $1.50 for six individual clips I already had a hot glue gun and a package of 100 glue sticks so all I needed to pay for was the fabric and hair clips.
I was clue less on how much to buy, so I went around in all my classes and asked girls if they would buy bows, and showed them a picture of one that I found on the internet that is really similar to mine. Pretty much all said yes, so I bought about $10.00 worth of fabric and $6.00 worth of hair clips.
Generally the fabric cost about $1.50 and I would buy about 1/3 of a yard. Off each 1/3 of a yard I could make 7 bows, which would be about $5.50 dollar profit. Since the clips were about 25 cents a bow, I just figured to price them at $1.00 per bow.
To make sure the price was just right, I went in my classes again and asked the girls if they would buy one for a $1.00 and all of them said yes. I also wanted girls to think the price was fair, and I still needed to make a profit and it was just right.
I decided I wanted my little business to be a Sole Proprietorship. I was being a greedy person and I knew I could make a lot of bows in a short amount of time and I didn’t need another person to help me. I also didn’t want to share any of the profits, considering it was my idea and I didn’t want to have to raise my price for the product.
When I started making and marketing the product I found out that another girl was selling bows. We were the only 2 people selling bows. The were both the same idea they were just different types. The market I was in was a Oligopoly, because there were only 2 sellers but the products weren't identical.
Since there was another girl that started selling bows a few days before I did I looked at her prices and talked to some people about how they like her product. A friend that bough one of her bows said she paid $2.00 for one and It fell apart within a few days. Hearing this I decided to put a lot of quality into my product ant to price it lower to make it more appealing to consumers.
I spent about 3-4 minutes on every bow. I didn’t make them each one by one. I got all the fabric cut it up into 7 sections, the I folded each one, then glued, then attach the clips. It was very similar to an assembly line for one person, but it got the job done really fast because I wouldn’t just sit around and do nothing while the glue was drying. By the time I finished the glue for the 7 th bow the 1 st bow would be ready for the next step.
Just like most teenagers I have social networks like Instagram, so I decided to use it to my advantage. With having 400+ followers I figured a few of them would be interested. I posted a picture and asked people to comment if interested and a lot of them did.
All the bows were different so when girls would order them I would pick something specific about that bow that I know would make me remember. Them I would write the girls name down along with the specific bow. After so many orders it felt like the list would never end.
After selling bows I decided to stop because so many people were ordering it took up all of my time. I counted all of the bows ordered and it was a total of 75 bows. About 5-10 girls would tell me day after day that they didn’t have their money, so I figured I just sell them to other girls that had the money on the spot. This prevented me from loosing money and helped me sell quicker.
In total for fabric and hair clips I spent $ I sold 75 bows which comes out to $75 and in total I made $40.50 profit. I think I did very well for selling these bows and making all of my money back plus doubled. I would do it again, but not for a while.