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Guest: Ruth Stone, founder of Boxhead Crafts.
Host: Kevin Mako, founder of Product Startup and the leading expert in hardware startup consulting. A hardware entrepreneur since 1999, Kevin has advised more than 1,500 founders and built and scaled MAKO Invent through its acquisition by TriMech in 2024.
Testing Demand With a Focused First Production Run
Ruth Stone shares how inspiration from a popular game led to Boxhead Crafts and an initial production run of 100 units. She discusses testing the market, building a creative product for children, and the strategic questions that arise when a concept is inspired by an existing cultural property.
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Filip Valica: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the product startup podcast, a podcast that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors, product designers, and other industry professionals. This podcast is run by
Filip Valica: Mako Design + Invent and hosted by Filip Valica. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial idea to putting your product on the shelf. We're taking you step by step to build a functional product and scale your product business. Now onto the show.
Filip Valica: The Product Startup, Episode 37. In today's episode, we learned from Ruth Stone of Boxhead Crafts. Boxhead Crafts is the world's only manufacturer of blank boxheads for kids to design
Filip Valica: and decorate, and we look at what it takes to launch a product inspired by the popular computer game, Minecraft.
Filip Valica: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the product startup podcast, where we talk about turning ideas into successful products step by step. I'm Filip Valica, and thanks for joining me today.
Filip Valica: In the last episode, we spoke with Gavin Crisman, the co-founder of Green and Blue, about their range of award-winning products for wildlife so make sure to check out episode 36 if you want to hear
Filip Valica: more about how they manufacture ceramics locally and work with architects and construction companies to spread the adoption of their products and make a larger positive environmental impact so if you're
Filip Valica: just getting started with a podcast make sure to check out episode 10 i have an idea now what i get into validating product ideas, basically how we can confirm their audience exists and test
Filip Valica: to see if the product will sell. We also look into valuating an idea, why our idea is worth much, and how execution and reducing risk really adds the value. Finally, we wrap up and talk
Filip Valica: about creating prototypes on any budget using what you have and learning how to make simple, conceptual, functional prototypes yourself. So again, make sure to check out episode 10 if you're
Filip Valica: new to the podcast and you have an idea and you really just want to get started. Let's get started with today's show. Hi Ruth. Thanks for joining me on the show today. My pleasure. One of the reasons that you're on the show is because I thought your product was
Filip Valica: very interesting. You created a product based on another very popular product that's out there and normally people say that you shouldn't build your house on someone else's land, but you've been
Ruth Stone: able to be really successful at that. Can you share a little bit how you started boxing? head and why you've decided to go down that path? Well, I mean, it's called Boxhead Crafts, and if you're not already familiar with the
Ruth Stone: other product or the other franchise to which it relates, it does relate loosely to Minecraft, although I think it does have other applications, as number of parents have told me. But the main reason I decided to go down that route is because I was looking for the product
Ruth Stone: and nobody else was making it. I have two kids. My eldest is a Minecraft fanatic. and whenever it was a dress-up day at school, World Book Day, go-to-school as a Hero Day, he wanted to dress up as a Minecraft character.
Ruth Stone: So I thought, well, there must be, you know, someone producing boxheads out there that you could colour in for yourself because I was obviously up until midnight trying to do these things for him,
Filip Valica: and they were substandard by his high standards. And so that's when I thought, well, I'll have a go and get a batch made and see if there's any bite in the market. So you created something for him.
Ruth Stone: Did you notice that there was a demand from his other classmates or other people? Or did you just assume that because your son was into it, that there'd be other children his age that would want to get into it? It was more assumption than research, that's for sure.
Ruth Stone: And it was just a small punt. I mean, my first batch I produced in the UK, and I don't know what production costs are like over there in the States. But actually, they're quite high in the UK. So my first batch was of 100.
Filip Valica: And I thought, for that, I'll just sort of dip my touch.
Ruth Stone: turn the water as it were and see if there was any interest, although interestingly, the majority of those sold to mums in America. Hmm, that's interesting.
Ruth Stone: Yeah, but it was largely done on gut because obviously the Minecraft phenomenon is amazing globally.
Ruth Stone: And when I was sort of developing the product, Microsoft hadn't bought Minecraft and I was trying to liaise with Mojang, who developed the game in the first place.
Ruth Stone: and all their official statements very much said, you know, that they actually invested their money, not in merchandise, but in the game. And again, if you play it or, you know, and it plays it,
Filip Valica: there's always new variations, new challenges, new functions within the game. And so I sort of hit a dead end there. So I just thought I'd fly solo and see how it would go from there. And you're able to scale this pretty well, though.
Filip Valica: So can you talk a little bit about manufacturing in the UK, creating the boxes is basically a packaging exercise, so it's pretty much something that everybody that's listening can probably relate to at some form because they're going to need to package their
Ruth Stone: own product. Can you talk a little bit about the differences in packaging and maybe some of the intricacies in selecting the right material and those types of technical things? Well, actually,
Ruth Stone: even though essentially all I'm producing is a cube with five faces, the sixth obviously has to be empty because they've got to put their head in somewhere. It's not as simple as it sounds.
Ruth Stone: And in the very early stages, I was going to specialist box manufacturers and explaining to them that I wanted a matte, sturdy, cardboard box,
Ruth Stone: a cube-shaped with specific dimensions with a grid drawn on top. And every single one I went to was unable to either understand the brief or fulfill the brief. Wow.
Ruth Stone: Before I even got into talking quantities with any of them, they were trying to shoehorn me into buying products they were already making that they would adapt rather than one from scratch.
Ruth Stone: So instead of going down the manufacturing route, I actually had to enter the market using the design route. And I found a designer online after lots of Googling and searching, who actually understood the brief and was able to make my first few prototypes.
Ruth Stone: and I played around with the dimensions and the quality of the card before I committed to my first batch with them of 100.
Ruth Stone: But because obviously that's a low print run, as you know, the smaller the quantity, the greater the cost per unit. Absolutely. And it's UK manufacturing, it's quite high. So I actually,
Ruth Stone: my first 100 were lost leading products. And I knew that they would be because I didn't think the marketplace would pay a premium price for a blank box,
Ruth Stone: even though Minecraft-created merchandise does go for well above other franchises, you know, like your Disney's and what have you. Sure.
Filip Valica: And I think it's partly because Mojang historically have had a very limited merchandising and licensing strategy.
Ruth Stone: And I don't know whether that will change under the Microsoft realm, you know, but certainly at the time I was still developing the point. product, that was very much the case. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Ruth Stone: And so after all this trial and error, you initially created those 100 units and you sold a lot of them to the States. So you created a website to advertise some of this? Or what was your strategy in releasing this to the market?
Ruth Stone: My route to market was online sales. So I had a three-pronged approach initially. I went with Amazon, but just in the UK. I went with eBay, but just in the UK. And I went with Etsy globally.
Ruth Stone: and actually of the three, Etsy has done the most for me in terms of reach. I didn't set up a website initially because it was still very much a trial. So instead, I was doing things on Twitter on Instagram,
Ruth Stone: which was great for search engine optimization and things like that. And actually the images have been very, very powerful in terms of, you know, if you were to search like a blank Minecraft boxhead,
Ruth Stone: you know, the majority of the images in the top 10 would come from, me added to which obviously links to my Facebook page, my Etsy shop, and obviously now I do have a website.
Ruth Stone: But most of my sales initially came through Etsy.
Filip Valica: And what happened with the American mums, because they were all ladies,
Filip Valica: is that they bought in bulk for parties and took the majority of my 100 boxes, you know, and I sold to Massachusetts, to California and to Texas, where I believe you're based. That's right.
Filip Valica: So, yeah, so quite a broad reach within America as well. That's smart using some of the existing audiences that are built into eBay and Etsy.
Ruth Stone: A lot of the times, like you said, people will rush to create their own website, but there's so much benefit in using someone else's platform that has the traffic that usually will convert at a lot higher rate. You know, Etsy and eBay, people are on there to buy. Exactly.
Ruth Stone: And especially with Etsy, I've noticed a lot of products on Etsy that are starting to push the envelope of what handmade means, or at least what it means to me, but this seemed to be doing really well. Yeah.
Ruth Stone: I don't know whether you have it in the States. We have a website called Not on the High Street, which when it first started was somewhat similar to Etsy, but not quite so crafty, but then nowhere near mass production either.
Ruth Stone: But it's just swamped and it's not as searchable because it was one that I considered approaching.
Filip Valica: Etsy's great because there are so many other people doing Minecraft-related products, unofficially, party bags, and even a lot of the free stuff that comes out of Etsy.
Ruth Stone: So with that and the fact that I've got the Minecraft search terms and other websites like Pinterest where I'll pin my own images along with images of other Etsy suppliers that do complementary, then it works very, very well.
Ruth Stone: One of the most successful things I think that you did was focus on Instagram and putting a lot of the visual images that people were looking for out there so they could lead back to your site.
Ruth Stone: Did you do anything else that was really effective to help drive that traffic? A mixture of things. I mean, it wasn't all online. Obviously, we had Instagram, and I do find the images on Twitter are very, very powerful as well, using images and clips on Twitter.
Ruth Stone: Plus, we've got a few things on the YouTube channel. So I think it's a combination of things, just getting your likes and your follow. those.
Ruth Stone: And I've only just started doing some PR around the product, obviously, in the UK. So we're
Filip Valica: going to feature in a couple of magazines, national magazines,
Filip Valica: early in the year as competition prizes and a few bloggers have been writing about us. And we've got so far positive write-ups and
Ruth Stone: positive responses to the product. And that's the best thing about it. When people see it, if they Minecraft, they instantly get what it's about. It doesn't need explanation.
Ruth Stone: And, you know, the kids all want one. It's just whether or not mum and dad are prepared to part with the cash. Right. No, definitely makes sense. As you move through some of this marketing and you were getting more publicity,
Ruth Stone: I imagine you were getting a little bit more sales. Did you have to scale the manufacturer that you're using or did you stick with the same manufacturer and they just started cutting you better breaks on the pricing? Well, at the moment, we've still got the first delivery because there's a few
Ruth Stone: thousand in the office, or that was the original delivery, there's less at the moment. So we're just seeing how they go, because obviously we've gone from 100 to, you know, 300 times the amount.
Ruth Stone: Sure. We had a nice little peak around Christmas time, but they're the individual sales. And I think the focus moving forward will be doing the party packs. I don't know what the
Ruth Stone: average spend in America is, but over here, they say the average spend on a party is something about 270 pounds for a kid's party. I don't know what that equates to American dollars.
Ruth Stone: And actually,
Ruth Stone: what we offer,
Ruth Stone: which is 55 British pounds as a party pack, is considerably cheaper than
Filip Valica: getting an entertainer in. And also they serve as quite nice party favours as well. It's something that kids take home, rather than an experience type party where, you know, they might have a few
Filip Valica: pictures and a few memories, but nothing physical to take back home. So I think that's going to be the focus moving forward and looking at much as we aligned ourselves with the party favours sort of thing online with Etsy, aligning ourselves with the people who specialize in
Filip Valica: parties and entertainments over here and possibly over in America and pushing maybe for PR in America too. Yeah, you touched on a lot of helpful tips there. So first of all, creating the party
Filip Valica: packs. I know from my experience selling on Amazon, the margins just aren't there in selling the individual units sometimes, especially since it takes pretty much the same amount of time to process an order for quantity 1 versus 15. Absolutely.
Filip Valica: And you were mentioning the cost of parties as well.
Ruth Stone: That's a really good angle to pursue because if you look at it on the surface, you know, some of the people might be thinking, well, I could just kind of create a box on my own. Why would I want to go to market with a product that someone can replicate so easily,
Ruth Stone: but then looking at it from the top down where the market will bear a cost of $300, dollars per party and now you're coming in at way more competitive, you're coming in at less than half that cost. Yes.
Ruth Stone: It's a great marketing tactic, I suppose, because you're offering them an alternative to some of these other things that they're doing. You're not trying to compete with the Do It Yourself crowd. You're competing with the people that take their kids to other places and activities and things like that. Yeah.
Ruth Stone: Well, obviously the Minecraft theme party is a big thing anyway, so this just ties in well. And one of the things we have on the packaging when we were designing it is, you know, It gets the kids off the consoles to craft and play.
Ruth Stone: And obviously,
Ruth Stone: I think every parent worries about how much screen time their child has, be it a TV, a tablet or a console, you know, whatever gaming they're doing or playing they're doing or watching they're doing.
Ruth Stone: And that's what's great about it, particularly for boys, typically between six and eight, who ordinarily would rather play around with a computer than sit down in colour. When they see the boxheads, genuinely, you know,
Filip Valica: can stay there. We did a festival in the summer over in the UK in Surrey, which was like an arts and crafts festival and a music festival.
Filip Valica: And unfortunately, British summer meant that the weather wasn't brilliant. So we had kids literally around our stall colouring in for the best part of the
Filip Valica: day, you know, two hours plus. And the average kids party lasts about two hours. And I would say that the boxhead is an activity that would comfortably last an hour. And it's, you know, it's,
Filip Valica: It's low octane and it's a totally different mental and physical focus than gaming,
Ruth Stone: which incites a slightly different attitude in children, speaking from experience with my own. Sure. No, I could appreciate the opportunity to unplug. A lot of our toys for our daughter are all low-tech, classic type toys, you know, wooden toys and things like that,
Ruth Stone: just because we want to keep away from that instant simulation as much as we can right now. Absolutely. Congratulations on creating something like that. that people will rediscover the crafts and making things and but it can apply it to something
Ruth Stone: that they already know while you were exploring your audience did you come across any unique findings or something that kind of surprised you as you were talking to some of the
Ruth Stone: parents or maybe even some of the kids where you had to modify your approach in marketing and sales no I mean it's such a simple product there's very little scope for modification really the only
Ruth Stone: The only decision I made was not to have the eyes cut out, and that's part of the crafting process, what I found, you are able to buy
Ruth Stone: pre-printed Minecraft boxheads, but they're absolutely massive. You know, not only do the kids' heads go in, and their shoulders do as well, and the eyes sit somewhere around their shin. They can't see where they're going.
Filip Valica: So that was a conscious decision in terms of the product development, and it also means, obviously, there are four, faces of the cube,
Filip Valica: which you can put a face on. So if someone wanted to do a complete skin,
Ruth Stone: then they could do all four sides around one Minecraft skin. But if they wanted to have multiple skins, they could and cut the eyes out.
Ruth Stone: And that's the only thing that's probably got comments, but not necessarily negative ones.
Ruth Stone: You know, overall, I mean, genuinely, very, very lucky that people have been so positive about the whole concept. But I think that's mainly because it's a very, very simple one. So there's limited scope for adaptions and modifications
Ruth Stone: to be fair. That's really great to hear because I have a pretty simple product in Amazon now and I feel that people will always find something to complain about or something that doesn't quite fit what they're looking for. How do you handle objections from customers? Because
Ruth Stone: like you said, it wasn't maybe what they were expecting. Well, again, I've been so lucky. I haven't had any negative feedback. It's all been positive, you know. So I suppose if I can't imagine what the negative feedback would be.
Ruth Stone: I mean, they're very, very sturdy boxes as well, which again was a conscious decision. I could have made them a lot cheaper if they were a lot flimsier. And my son, needless to say, has several in his bedroom. He uses them for storage, so not just for play.
Ruth Stone: And they're robust enough for an eight-year-old boy.
Ruth Stone: And they have to be for an eight-year-old boy, you know, to store his football cards or should I say soccer cards and what have you in, as well as obviously wearing and doing imaginative play.
Ruth Stone: But I suppose it's just the thing. You've got to follow your gut to an extent with these things. I mean, obviously, research and your sales performance, you know, either prove you're right or you're wrong.
Ruth Stone: But you can't please everybody, I suppose. So as I said before, because the product's so simple, I can't see how I could really adapt it or what anyone would have an issue. with. My only reservation when I first went to market is, you know, at the end of the day,
Ruth Stone: I was well aware that I was simply producing a box, you know, and there's a lot of, you know, people who perhaps haven't got huge amounts of money to spend on their children, they're just like, well, we can just get a box from anywhere.
Ruth Stone: But if your kids are as fussy as mine, if it's not a perfect cube, it simply won't do.
Ruth Stone: So, you know, I think that that would be the only thing, because actually in terms of the raw materials, it is a very simple thing. But as you
Filip Valica: know, as someone who's developed a product, actually getting to that point is not without obstacle and certainly not without investment.
Filip Valica: And so, you know, and I try and keep it, my price point isn't based around profitability as such. I mean, obviously that's a factor, but affordability as well.
Ruth Stone: and I think if I was to take a proper sort of spreadsheet approach to my investment, I would probably charge it more for them now. And that's my only issue, I suppose regret isn't the right word. But if I go down the wholesale route,
Ruth Stone: then I don't think the markup is going to be sufficient at this stage in the business for retailers to take them on because my markup is relatively small. So I am a retailer and would make very much.
Ruth Stone: very little as a wholesaler, apart from getting more share of market and seeing it as a marketing exercise. To maybe recap a little bit at what you said, it sounds like when you went through your
Filip Valica: initial pricing exercise, you priced it based on what you thought was fair for the product given what the consumer is getting and not necessarily a long-term play on maybe, you know,
Filip Valica: if you're going to be using some sort of a distribution network and there's going to be there needs to be a middleman or something that gets a cut from that. is that right absolutely absolutely that's that's very much the way i've gone and that's um i'm
Filip Valica: working on another product at the moment which is totally in a different uh market different is a
Ruth Stone: clothing one and this has been a very valuable learning curve in that regard and and i'm taking a lot more time in the thought process than i did with box heads it was just like oh i'll just
Ruth Stone: do this i'll just do that and i just experimented and went straight ahead i'm going to try and be a bit more business-like about this one and only proceed to market if it genuinely looks viable.
Filip Valica: But again, I believe I've found a niche. So if it develops any further, I'll obviously go back in touch and let you know all about it. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that I like that you mentioned was that you experimented with this. I think a lot of people
Ruth Stone: are so afraid to take that plunge because they're afraid of making a mistake. But really, it's about getting that data back to see if some of the decisions that you're making, how they turn out,
Ruth Stone: you wouldn't really have any of that if you didn't just kick off the product. Like you said,
Filip Valica: I agree. I think people need to dive into it head first and sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't. But I think it's an invaluable experience. Absolutely. And they say about all
Ruth Stone: entrepreneurs, whether they're in a product industry or a service industry or any other form of business, you know,
Ruth Stone: you hear the success stories, but most of them have quite a few failures sort of as their backstories, which is how they learned and how they got successful. I don't think many people are overnight successes genuinely. It's just we only hear
Ruth Stone: about them overnight. Right, absolutely. Are you worried at all about any competitors coming in? Because as you mentioned before the show, it's not something that you're able to get a patent on. And as we talked about now, it's something that's possible to replicate in
Ruth Stone: in a sense that it's not high-tech. Absolutely. I mean, you know, again, that was something I was well aware of from day one.
Ruth Stone: And there is nothing I can do about it but remain philosophical and also hopeful that no one can be bothered.
Ruth Stone: That's the best I can do, really, as far as that's concerned. Well, I imagine that you're spending a good bit of time on the marketing and is there anything unique with your customer service or in how you handle orders or something that's a little bit more difficult to replicate?
Ruth Stone: No, not really, because that would just add to the overall costs and, you know,
Filip Valica: and as I mentioned before, the profitability isn't, I would say, below average for a paper product, for a craft product.
Filip Valica: So I just try and ship them out nice and quickly, you know, same day dispatches as the order
Ruth Stone: comes out and obviously it depends where in the world they're going as to how long they get there and giving people the options of, you know,
Ruth Stone: a speed. media delivery should they need it.
Ruth Stone: But again, it's such a simple product. It's such an easy get. And I really don't think it's a one-off purchase as well. So very few people are likely
Ruth Stone: to come back. The only potential is if someone buys one for a child and then the child wants a party to include them. But I don't think it's something that people will repeat buy. And I think
Ruth Stone: that kind of strategy, the service strategy, is far more important to a customer base that you are nurturing, whereas my customer base, I need to grow in terms of numbers of people rather than
Ruth Stone: numbers of transactions. So it's a different model, really. Very fascinating. Thank you for bringing that up. And, you know, this isn't exactly the first time that you are in business. I think
Ruth Stone: it would be unfair to say that this was the first venture into entrepreneurship. Can you describe your background a little bit for people about, you know, how you got to where you are today with some of your other businesses? Oh, I've done a whole mix of things. I mean, I really started
Ruth Stone: when I was still at school. I mean, I don't know how it equates to the American school system, but when I was in sort of six-form doing what we call A-Levels, which is the precursor to
Ruth Stone: university degree, I used to run my own little raves, given my age away now, but it's the age Basset House music and I used to do little alcohol-free raves and they were in themselves
Ruth Stone: quite profitable little things and nobody else was doing them local to me at the time. When I went away to university,
Ruth Stone: I really, I love clothes and fashion, less so now I'm a mum. I don't have time to indulge those passions. So I had my own clothes store and we used to buy
Ruth Stone: a mixture of new sort of designer, London fashion, independent designer clothes and vintage clothes
Ruth Stone: as well and sell those in a little unit that we rented in a sort of a small shopping centre, not as grand as a mall or anything like that, which was great fun. And I did that contemporaneous to studying for my first degree.
Ruth Stone: When I graduated, there was a bit of a financial slump. So work was thin on the ground. So I sort of carried on the sort of clothing thing.
Filip Valica: And I sold clothes and I made jewellry as well, which I sold in outlets in Covent Garden in London and in Kensington in London as well.
Filip Valica: Trying to think what I did after that.
Ruth Stone: I also had an affiliate marketing website, which was aimed at the education sector.
Ruth Stone: And I set up my own PR business about 17 years ago. And I'll continue to do PR. You know, PR's kind of my staple,
Filip Valica: which funds my other sort of curiosities and indulgence.
Ruth Stone: around, you know, everything else that I do. So that's just a few of the things I've done, you know, and like I say, it's all experimentation and I don't consider any of them failures, although some were more financially viable than others ultimately.
Ruth Stone: But it's not just about the money. And I think if you've got that in you, obviously the money is very, very nice if you get it as well. But it's just the experience and the experimentation and the adventure you get. We're just trying out different things.
Ruth Stone: and you know being first to a market is is quite an exciting thing or doing something different
Filip Valica: within an established market you know so that's that's in summary what I've done in the past well and that's obviously helped you a lot with this business particularly it being focused
Filip Valica: more on the PR side of things than on the technical product development side of things at least on the surface it looks like the bigger hurdles are on the marketing sales side absolutely it's just getting known because whenever
Ruth Stone: people hear about the product, they genuinely love it, which is great. But, you know, you just got to make sure they hear about it. And then they're in a position where they want to buy it or recommend to others to buy it.
Ruth Stone: So that's very much the focus for next year. It seems like right now that you might be fulfilling your own orders. Is that right? Yes, I do at the moment because, you know, there's peaks and troughs, but it's manageable, unfortunately.
Ruth Stone: And I came off Amazon because it wasn't financially worth my while.
Ruth Stone: But if, you know, when I reached that point where I'm better known and perhaps the brand is known independently of obviously your sort of generic internet searches, then I think, you know, I would look at maybe
Ruth Stone: Amazon Prime or, you know, a direct dispatch service. But I've got a little way to go before I fully get there because, as you know, as an Amazon seller,
Ruth Stone: that's not cheap.
Filip Valica: No, no, the fees are really prohibitive, especially on the lower priced items that are heavier.
Ruth Stone: So I think it's a good idea to focus on the path that you've been going now. So before I let you off, can you give just one tip to everyone that's struggling with their idea that's looking to take kind of the next step forward with their product and they don't
Filip Valica: really, they just need some advice or they need a bit of momentum to, you know, a bit of momentum to get across the next hurdle. Well, I just think, you know, just talk to people, try things out, experiment,
Filip Valica: but obviously don't go silly with it. You know, you have these people that, you know, literally put their houses on the line to develop it. Just look at what you can do within a scale you can manage because nobody wants to lose their house over an idea that didn't turn out so well.
Filip Valica: But there are increasingly ways, unless your product itself is, you know, gold-plated to produce things relatively cheaply and a quantity where you can test a market. And obviously,
Filip Valica: once those quantities rise, your cost per unit go down and the risk and the exposure just goes down with it. But I would encourage anybody to experiment.
Filip Valica: But like I say, I'm doing another product at the moment and I am thinking more seriously about going in at a bigger quantity again. So I probably am going to do a bit more market research this time around.
Filip Valica: Ruth, thanks again for such great advice, and we hope to have you on the show again. But before that, where can people find you and find Boxheadcraft? Well, we're all over the place, but the website is boxheadcraft.com.
Filip Valica: But if you Google Boxheadcraft, you'll get links to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
Filip Valica: and the Etsy shop, of course. Perfect. Thanks again for coming on the show, Ruth. I really appreciate it. Thank you, too. It's been a pleasure. Here are three of my takeaways that we can apply to our businesses.
Filip Valica: Number one, selling where your customers are. Ruth was smart to try selling on Etsy, Amazon, and eBay first, since all of those platforms have built-in traffic. People are going to those stores to buy.
Filip Valica: Amazon, for example, converts 20 to 30 percent of the people looking at our listings into buyers. This is much easier than trying to send traffic to a brand new domain. As sellers, we pay dearly for that.
Filip Valica: which is why Ruth tested the other platforms to see what worked best for her pricing model. You can still do this and have a website to reference in your marketing materials. Just send people from your website to buy on the other platforms.
Filip Valica: There are even apps that will connect your Shopify store to Amazon so the customer never has to leave your site. Number two, focus on the core benefit of your customers. Boxhead Crafts doesn't just sell boxheads.
Filip Valica: They sell arts and crafts time away from technology. This is a big benefit for parents who want to minimize that screen time. She's also selling a party in a box. She makes it easy to get something set up. And three, pricing for direct sales versus wholesale.
Filip Valica: Ruth created this product as a test, and her pricing was set up to sell box heads directly.
Ruth Stone: Now that she's exploring wholesale orders, there's not much room left for the distributors and retailers' cuts. These margin vary a lot by industry, but I've seen a 10% distributor cut and 50% retailer markups.
Ruth Stone: depending on many factors like the overall price of the product and how quickly it sells. I like to keep my landed cost or my cost to get the product to me between one-third and one-quarter of the retail price.
Ruth Stone: So a product that will cost $5 to manufacture can sell for anywhere between $15 and $20, taking into costs like advertising and selling. This is a very rough guideline and I suggest adding all the costs yourself depending
Ruth Stone: on your industry. If you have any questions or comments, I've put all the links that we've covered on the show notes posted on the product startup.com slash 37.
Filip Valica: Join me next time as I speak with Farah Qureshi. She designs and makes jewelry in precious materials using ethical silver and gold in the UK. So tune in next week to hear that episode. I've set up a number for you to call with
Filip Valica: your question, feedback, or pitch. So call 681-321-1-15 and let me know what you think of the show or pitch the product startup audience about your product-based business.
Filip Valica: Please keep your pitch to 30 seconds or about the time that you'd have to talk to someone in an elevator and don't forget to include that problem that you're solving and the call to action what you need us, the listeners, to do. Thanks again for joining me today and I'll see you next week.
Filip Valica: Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent, the first firm in North America
Filip Valica: to provide global caliber end-to-end physical consumer product development to startups, inventors, and small product businesses. If you're looking for product development help on your invention, head over to Mako-design.com.
Filip Valica: That's M-A-K-O-Dign.com for a free consultation from one of Mako-Design for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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