We’ve all heard the stories of “unicorn” startups, and their meteoric rise among millions of users. What you might not know is that every startup has the potential for this kind of growth. But unfortunately, not all startups go from “3 people in a garage” to “250 people in a San Francisco loft office” overnight. In fact, according to Bloomberg, 80% of startups fail within the first 18 months.
So, as a start-up company or store, how do you avoid failure and achieve steady growth? Today, we will show a real case of one of our Vietnamese customers, Ngan, and hope to give you a little hint. She has boosted the company’s net profit by 120% in just three months and is still growing steadily.
As a long-term friendly partner, we asked her about the reasons for the company’s development, and through this content, we can judge how we can support our customers more in the corresponding areas. Eventually, she gave us her own opinion.
“Keen Sense of Smell”
As newlyweds, Ngan and his husband decided to open a company for the future. What industry and product to choose has become an urgent matter. In the end, they chose jade, crystal scraping board-led natural beauty products as their main business. Regarding the product selection, she explained to us what she and her husband thought.
Ngan: “The beauty industry is a huge and almost non-recessive industry. No woman will give up on being beautiful, whether she’s 16, 17, or over 50.” Ultimately, they decided to enter the beauty industry.
Although the beauty industry is huge, the competition is very fierce. It seems that it is not so simple to get a share of this industry. Indeed, looking at the sheer variety of beauty products available online and on the streets of Vietnam, Ngan was a little lost, not sure what kind of beauty products would make them stand out. The turnaround took place on an ordinary afternoon.
Ngan walks into a beauty massage parlour, which is common in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. She enjoyed the clerk’s massage as always. In the middle of the massage, the clerk took out a tool from the tool table and continued the massage service. Soon, Ngan was drawn to the tools in the clerk’s hands. She knew what it was, a pink scraping board.
“The most attractive thing to me at the time was the feeling it gave, except for its beautiful pink color. When it touched my face, a cold hit, a little irritating, but very comfortable.” Ngan Immediately asks the clerk what material it is made of, it seems to be very different from the ceramics and horns used before. In the end, the clerk told her the real answer. It is made from a piece of natural rose quartz.
Ngan immediately realized that it seemed like a business opportunity since she had rarely seen this kind of gua sha stone before. So she and her husband immediately googled it. They were delighted by the results, as a Google search turned up. The search trend of the word “gua sha” on Google is in a stage of rapid growth. And they feel that in the future, nature seems to be a trend, whether in the beauty industry or other industries. In the end, they decided to use natural beauty products such as natural crystal jade gua sha boards and rollers as their main products. This is March 2020.
The end result is what makes them happy, because in just one year. The search index of “gua sha” shows a geometric increase.
Product is the Key Factor that Determines the Stable Growth of Business and Increase Income!
In fact, in the initial stage of Ngan’s development, we were not their original suppliers, and we didn’t even have any intersection. They initially sourced products from another company. This company is not the source factory, but a trading company. They will look for suppliers in China based on the products that customers need. But also because of this, it is difficult for such trading companies to guarantee consistent product quality, because they order products from different factories and try to keep costs down to improve their profits.
Soon, Ngan found the problem. Because the quality is not uniform, customers often find her trouble.
“In the first sale, it’s not a big problem, because the customer doesn’t know the product, and they don’t know the quality of the product. The problem happens when they repurchase,” Nagan said. “When customers repurchase. There is a high probability that the quality of the products you bought is not the same as the first time you bought them. If the quality is better than the first time, there is no problem, but if the quality drops significantly, the customer will start to distrust you.” This situation Ngan has encountered many times has led to a high level of returns and exchanges in their stores for a long time. So they made up their minds to switch suppliers.
“By chance, we saw your product on Instagram, and the pictures were beautiful. So I contacted you to order some samples.” Nagan explains why she chose us: “When I got the samples, We are very satisfied with the quality. To be honest, we were skeptical at first about your ability to provide stable high-quality products for a long time. Because the quality of the samples provided by our original suppliers was also gratifying. But from the results Look, it was the right decision to choose you.”
Thank you to Ngan for her endorsement of our products, we are very proud of her review. As a leading crystal, and jade gua sha and face roller factory, we are confident to continue to support their business operations with high-quality products. We also agree with her statement. Good quality is the key to maintaining the customer base, and the customer is the direct factor to maintain business development. From this point of view. Product quality will be directly related to your business development.
Private Label Increases Income
Many people know that private label customization is a great way to increase profits. But not everyone is right for private labeling, and not all private labeling content is right for you.
When it comes to the private label part. Ngan is also very emotional. Because they are also doing private label customization of their own brands.
“Private label customization has increased the profit of our single product by about 30%-50%.” Ngan expressed her joy to us: “And because of adding private labels, customers have a deeper impression of our brand and products. , the repurchase rate has also increased significantly.”
While private labeling sounds great, there is a lot to be aware of. When we asked Ngan for advice on private labeling, she responded: “Don’t be too ambitious, be realistic. More unique is not always better. We also considered a full range of private label customization in the early stages. Include style, material, and logo of the product itself, the style of the packaging, etc. But we quickly changed the plan, because if all these contents were customized. Not only did the cost increase a lot, but the supplier’s MOQ, etc. The requirements have also increased a lot, which is far beyond what we can currently accept. So after combining with the market situation, we finally chose simple logo printing.”
Indeed, we have met many clients who require private label customization. But in the vast majority of cases, customers are unaware of this aspect of private label customization.
Take our company as an example. If you want to print your logo on our existing gift boxes and another packaging, it is very simple and low cost, and the MOQ usually does not exceed 100pcs. And if you want to include the design of the box’s style and structure, the situation will be very different. The price rises sharply and the requirement of MOQ also rises sharply, often more than 1000pcs. This is beyond what the vast majority of customers initially expected. So usually, we persuade clients to take it to step by step. Start simple, then consider deeper private label customization when your business has reached a certain level, and it’s best to do market testing first to make sure your customers actually like your designs.
One-Stop Service can Save Your Time And Increase Income
One-stop service enables you to obtain solutions including products, packaging, transportation, etc. from one supplier, which greatly reduces the time you spend on supply chain issues, and you no longer need to Navigate between suppliers of various processes. It gives you plenty of time and energy to devote yourself to mental work. For example, think about the company’s next course of action.
“In the past, I was hands-on in all aspects of the supply chain. Every day I had to deal with product suppliers, packaging suppliers, and logistics suppliers. When will the goods be produced? Is the packaging ready? When will the goods arrive? Hong Kong? Almost half of the day is spent on these chores. Sometimes I feel really tired.” Ngan looked tired: “Some people like to take everything into their own hands, which makes her feel safe. However, I would say that when you have a trusted supplier on your hands, you might as well leave all these steps to them. Provided, of course, that they provide a one-stop shop. This will make it easy for you. It also gave me enough time to think about the next development of our company, such as whether to develop new products, whether the product’s logo needs to be improved, etc. These are things that I rarely had time to think about before. The problem”
Don’t be too obsessed with immediate small interests, but should focus on longer-term interests. Time is money, this sentence is simple but full of meaning. It is the cornerstone of your long-term benefits
Maintain Good Communication with Your Suppliers.
Good communication with suppliers is not just about getting a bigger price advantage, it can also bring unexpected benefits.
Better Payment Methods
Based on good cooperation, we have given Ngan a more favorable payment method. 30% advance payment and 70% balance payment, or even 15% advance payment and 85% balance payment. This is a payment method that we rarely offer to our clients, especially for new clients. Ngan bluntly said that this has relieved the pressure on their capital flow to a large extent.
First-Hand Information on New and Trending Products.
Factories are the source of the entire industrial chain. We develop new types of products according to changes in market conditions.
“We deeply know that products are one of the key factors that determine the fate of a company. Therefore, we will often ask you about new products, and constantly feedback some market information to you. I hope you can develop more new products for us. ”Ngan smiled slyly: “In the end, we talked about a lot of your new product information, some of which really gave us a head start in the market competition. Let me thank you again.”
While accepting Ngan’s gratitude, we also express our gratitude to her. Because of their feedback, we can better understand the current situation of the market and create more products that meet the needs of different customers. Therefore, we welcome all customers to feedback on this information to us.
Communication Allowed Her to Ease the Pressure on Inventory.
“Our brand sells high-quality products, which is our purpose. Therefore, in terms of product cost prices, we will not pursue low prices too much, because low prices often represent low quality. We feel the most troublesome is the inventory problem. “When sales are good, we need a lot of product inventory to meet our demand for on-time shipments, and when we enter the off-season, excessive inventory backlog will form a large inventory cost, which is almost fatal. For those of us who were just starting out, how to solve this problem became the most important question for us at the time. “Ngan explained the dilemma at the time, which is a problem that almost all small sellers will encounter in the early days of their business. Without sufficient inventory reserves, it is impossible to guarantee on-time delivery, and with large inventory reserves, it will be very good during the peak sales season. But if you encounter off-season sales, too much inventory will form a great burden, storage costs, management costs, etc. are all headaches.
“So we were thinking about whether we can temporarily store the goods in your warehouse and send them to us when we need them. Even if we need to pay a certain fee, it should be lower than our current cost. So we hold We asked you guys about trying it out, and fortunately, you complied with our request without charging us any extra fee, which moved us very much.” To Ngan’s surprise, not only did she get rid of her inventory in this way The pressure of the backlog, and gave her an extra surprise. Because she can purchase larger quantities of hot-selling products with greater confidence. This allows her to have enough stock to supply her customers even when a large number of stores are sold out of this product. This takes her brand to the next level in terms of customer retention.
That’s all there is to it. This is how Ngan was able to increase company profits by 120% in just three months. There may be many details that she is inconvenient to explain, but every step she takes is still worthy of reference for every novice seller. Let’s summarize the aspects involved:
- A keen sense of smell for the product.
- Pay attention to the quality of products. It is one of the key factors in maintaining customer loyalty.
- Appropriate use of private label customization, increase product profit and enhance brand recognition.
- One-stop service allows you to spend more time on mental work and thinking.
- Good communication with suppliers can get you many favorable conditions and avoid many risks
If you find this case instructive, please forward it to your friend community, etc. We would also like to hear your opinions, if you think there is anything else to add, please leave your opinion in the comments section. If you think any point of view in the article is wrong, you are also welcome to contact us for discussion.
