It is basically a box of samples from various Australian fibre designers who want to have their product tried by eager, addicted, discerning knitters, spinners, crocheters and fibre artists.It works by you contributing your products to the box then I distribute them to a bunch of buyers who know the need to feel a fibre before buying bigger amounts.
So why advertise this way? There is nothing like playing with a fibre to get the feel of it and to envisage all the exciting projects that could unfold from it! You will be able to target a wider range of buyers who might ordinarily be put off buying something that they haven't had a chance to feel and play with first.
It will go out once a month, you can join in as many months as you want, but to keep it fresh we will be having a theme for each month after the first month (August). This will mean that you can showcase different products for each month, keeping our buyers interested and allowing you to get as much exposure for your business as you want.There would be a minimum of 20 samples in each box depending on the sizes of samples sent in, with a minimum of 20 samples being required from each business. If 40 samples are contributed, then you will also receive a box. You can send a variety of products (eg, mix of yarns, fibres, etc) or just one (say, just black alpaca fibre), it is entirely up to you. All products sent in will be featured on our blog site and a video of the fibres will be set up on youtube.
The pay off for you to advertise this way is that only interested buyers are targeted, you can get your name out into the knitting/spinning community more and there will be more ways for people to find your business through links on this blog site, so buyers can keep coming back for more! The box will be advertised in spinner newsletters, forums, Ravelry, other blogsites and we are also currently looking into getting it into bigger magazines such as 'Yarn'.
We will also hold competitions for buyers from time to time that will encourage them to blog about the box and your business on their own networking sites and blogs. You are more than welcome to run your own comps like this through our website where you can offer a full size version of your product as a prize for that month's blogging. More info of this will be available as we have the basics established first.
Now for the practical matters-
Each sample size needs to be big enough to be played with by our box buyers. A rough estimate is 20-25g of yarn, but it is totally at your discretion, you may even want to send out a few full size versions of your product as a one off for a lucky box buyer- this will be advertised on the site and the youtube video should you wish to do this.
As mentioned before, 20 samples is the minimum, but we will contact you if there are higher numbers of buyers interested from month to month to give you the opportunity to get you product out to as many people as possible.
Boxes will go on sale at the beginning of each month, August being the first, so products need to be received by late July for the first batch. You will also need to email me you logo and website link by then as well to have your info on the website. If you would like to offer any specials to coincide with your box product, just let me know and I can advertise that next to your logo and product.
If you are not a fibre producer, you can send in patterns, row markers and other related products, as these can definitely be included too.
All it will cost you is your samples and any postage to get them to me. (I will be in Sydney late June til early July, so if you want to drop them off in person, email me and we can make arrangements).
Make sure that each sample has a label on it with your business details and the name of the sample so that people know what to buy! Feel free to have fun with the individual packaging of the samples, but rest assured that we will be displaying your products beautifully in the box.
Box buyers will be able to purchase the sampler box on Etsy, which is free to sign up to and is a secure website to purchase on with credit cards and Paypal. At this stage we are polling our interested buyers (on the side bar) to see whether they would prefer a sale time to pounce for the product or a preorder system. We will run this for a week and then decide the best method.
If you would like to check out the overwhelming interest so far, there is a thread running on Ravelry.com in the group 'Australian Knitters'. The discussion is called 'Aussie only sample box' with the posts giving an indication of interest for this project.
For those who are now wanting to get involved, send me an email to either ewebeaut@tpg.com.au or jdrobbo@tpg.com.au and I will send you the address to send your samples to.
Any other questions feel free to leave a comment or send through an email and I can add the information onto this post.
No comments:
Post a Comment