Please help develop my business idea

[meme18plus]

Hello everybody,

First, I would like to tell a little bit about me. I am a foreigner student who has been in Finland for 4 years. Like many others, I chose Finland because of the free education and nice people. After the graduation, while many of my friends went back to their homeland or moved to other countries, I decided to stay in Finland to work though it's very difficult as I can speak only a little Finnish. I want to do something for Finland, not just come and go. I have done many different kinds of jobs, some of them I found on this forum!

Recently, my friend and I decided to pursue of dream of being entrepreneurs. As I mentioned, we don't speak Finnish very well so everything has become a mess. That's why I'm here asking for your help.

My business idea is to design t-shirts for adults and sell them online (we don't have enough capital to open a store). Our t-shirts features Internet memes (such as rage comics, Pedobear, Nyan cat, etc.) as well as mature jokes and quotes. Our products are for funny, non-serious, rebellious, hipster people. If you know such websites like 9GAG, 4chan, Reddit, etc., you would realize that our products are inspired by them. For example, here are some designs:





Everything went quite well at first. We made the t-shirts in second countries (China and Vietnam) and imported them here. We listed them on Huuto.net (f.ex. http://www.huuto.net/kohteet/meme-18-un ... 557?ref=gl) and received a few orders. Our friends supported us by buying some and they said that the t-shirts are very outstanding and the price is acceptable.

However, after 2 weeks, we realized that we didn't gain enough reputation and the amount of order sharply fell. We tried to open a Facebook page (http://facebook.com/meme18plus), a blog, etc. but Finnish language became our fatal limitation. How can we marketing when we cannot communicate with our customers? Luckily, our target customers are young people like students, so (we hope) they can speak and understand English. But the question is:

HOW CAN WE REACH TO THEM?

We dropped this big question into several small ones:

- Is there any website the same as 9GAG, 4chan in Finland so that we can advertise on them?
- What should be the most effective channels to marketing our products? We can't use schools, universities because our t-shirts are quite *naughty*
- If you have visited our Huuto listing, could you please tell us is it attractive enough? Is there something we should change?

We really need your ideas and comments, whoever you are. I know it's such a risk to start a business with so little capital, no experience, no knowledge about the language and customers, and especially in this kind of economy. But I know not only me, but there's a lot of people want to do something, change the situation, make our dreams come true...

Please help!

[rinso]

Apart from not selling enough I can see a number of problems. (although you might have solved them but omitted the information in your post)
- what is your business? do you have a oy or a tmi? Not having a business model is unwise because of taxes and liability.
- do you have a licence for the copyrights? if not it can cause a lot of trouble if somebody complains.
- what about your residence permit after your study? I have the impression you wouldn't get a RP based on this business model.
- it is a summer product, what other products do you have to survive the winter?

For your sales problem I think you have to go to the public, not merely sit in your internet shop and wait.
- Rent a market stall and try to sell your T-shirts there (not very promising at this moment)
- Try to find places that want to sell it for a small commission.
- Use flyers to promote your website.
- Make a Finnish friend part of your business to solve the language problem.

[meme18plus]

Hi Rinso, thanks so much for your comment.

- We haven't registered our business yet, because we think the size of our business is very tiny (just a few hundred t-shirts). We are students so we have no money except some savings from works... This is really a "pet project" at the moment. We don't really know how it goes. If we can manage to sell all the products, we hope that we can go to the bank and ask for some investment.
- We own the license for the design. The pictures used are Internet memes so there's no real creator (except some which we avoid to use).
- My friend has a student RP, and I have a working visa. I have a full-time job now but I want to start something my own.
- As I mentioned, we don't have enough capital to create a huge product range. Yeah, maybe the winter is one of the answers for the low sales...

Your ideas are very interesting. We have been discussing about something same as yours and here are what we got.

- We thought that market stall is not a very good idea now. Aside from the weather, we figured out that most of the market's visitors are mid-age and old people, while our target customers are youngsters who can speak at least a little English...
- We are finding contacts of the owners of some shops which target young customers (hipsters, skateboarder, rock fan...) but not very successful yet. Can you suggest some?
- Flyers is a wonderful idea. We will try this.
- We asked some Finnish friends to help, but they can only do some translation since they know nothing about doing business. Besides, we're so ashamed that we have nothing to pay them back...

[rinso]

- My friend has a student RP, and I have a working visa. I have a full-time job now but I want to start something my own.

Don't give up your day job. It's your lifeline for your RP. (and for your basic income)

- We thought that market stall is not a very good idea now. Aside from the weather, we figured out that most of the market's visitors are mid-age and old people, while our target customers are youngsters who can speak at least a little English...

It'll take some scouting. Often your target group will visit the market during lunch break or free hours if there is a school nearby.

- We are finding contacts of the owners of some shops which target young customers (hipsters, skateboarder, rock fan...) but not very successful yet. Can you suggest some?

Look for private owned shops, not chains. And go for shops other than clothes shops. Think gas stations, tourist places and so on.

- We asked some Finnish friends to help, but they can only do some translation since they know nothing about doing business. Besides, we're so ashamed that we have nothing to pay them back...

You need a Finnish speaker for most of your contacts. Find someone and make him a partner. He'll be better motivated.

[scottledeuce]

Hmm as somebody who is getting into an online business myself and designs sites I flicked through and found a few things that would discourage me from making a purchase.

Firstly it might be worth the $7/8 to buy yourselves your own domain name rather than the blog/etsy checkout system you have going on now. I know your only starting out but it would look far more professional if you hosted your own site and had at least an integrated paypal checkout there, also the dollar pricing makes me think "is this being shipped from the US and how much will that cost"

There also doesn't seem to be any option to select different sizes (maybe since you say your starting small you only have one but in any case I would like to know what that size is before I make any commitment.

On the plus side for what you are selling facebook is a nice compliment as you can work on maybe building a fan base there and that will allow you to push your products from time to time.

One question for you though, Can you tell me roughly what your cost base is as regards production and shipping of the shirts to you from Asia? I might be looking to get a similar number, maybe 300/400 shirts sometime soon and I'd be interested in hearing from somebody who has gone there before for example is there a basic printing setup cost and then you pay so much per shirt you want etc. If you want PM me about it that's fine.

Hope this is some help and good luck with the project

[meme18plus]

@Rinso: Thank you a lot, we will try to do as you advice and will inform you the result It feels so good to have someone willing to give suggestion. If you have any other ideas please let me know *and I know you do )

@ Scottledeuce: We own a domain but building a website with check out system requires a lot of time and resources. We don't want to take risk by offering a website with low security and poor interface. Also we are not big enough to build such a thing. So Etsy and Huuto seem to be the best solution right now.

And yes, Etsy and Huuto have a limitation that the buyers need to write the sizes they want in the message when they make the purchase. If you notice we include a size table in one picture on the showcase. On Etsy there is also a shipping cost table in the bottom.

About your question. I would be happy to share the information here. For the production we use about 1,500 EUR (100% cotton t-shirts, printing, tags etc) but this price may varies depends on the producer, and shipping from Asia to Finland costs us about 400 EUR excluding VAT tax (using FedEx, about 5 working days). We also think about buying a printing machine when we have enough money, but for small amount I think outsourcing would be the best choice because the price is not so expensive.

[Frink Spraud]

1. accept that setting up a business is always a risk. no risk usually means no money back for you.´you might lose your money. This is how businesses work, almost all successful business people have failed in their lives. Only difference is they never give up
2. accept that setting up a business costs money - go to a bank with a business plan and they will lend you money! That's how entrepreneurship works
Business plan:
1. look at other similar websites, steal all of their good ideas and combine them to make an excellent, easy-to-use, professional site
2. find out how much it costs to make a website, write down your needs and wants
3. get a finnish-speaking friend to proofread the site!
4. advertise on facebook - almost all young people in Finland use it and it's the best place to advertise. speak to them, ask them what they can do for you! they want to help you! i'm sure they will have lots of deals and packages to target your adverts to specific audiences. estimate cost
5. estimate printing costs overheads etc
6. go to the bank
Good luck!

[Työelämä]

Hello everybody,

First, I would like to tell a little bit about me. I am a foreigner student who has been in Finland for 4 years. Like many others, I chose Finland because of the free education and nice people. After the graduation, while many of my friends went back to their homeland or moved to other countries, I decided to stay in Finland to work though it's very difficult as I can speak only a little Finnish. I want to do something for Finland, not just come and go. I have done many different kinds of jobs, some of them I found on this forum!

Recently, my friend and I decided to pursue of dream of being entrepreneurs. As I mentioned, we don't speak Finnish very well so everything has become a mess. That's why I'm here asking for your help.

My business idea is to design t-shirts for adults and sell them online (we don't have enough capital to open a store). Our t-shirts features Internet memes (such as rage comics, Pedobear, Nyan cat, etc.) as well as mature jokes and quotes. Our products are for funny, non-serious, rebellious, hipster people. If you know such websites like 9GAG, 4chan, Reddit, etc., you would realize that our products are inspired by them. For example, here are some designs:





Everything went quite well at first. We made the t-shirts in second countries (China and Vietnam) and imported them here. We listed them on Huuto.net (f.ex. http://www.huuto.net/kohteet/meme-18-un ... 557?ref=gl) and received a few orders. Our friends supported us by buying some and they said that the t-shirts are very outstanding and the price is acceptable.

However, after 2 weeks, we realized that we didn't gain enough reputation and the amount of order sharply fell. We tried to open a Facebook page (http://facebook.com/meme18plus), a blog, etc. but Finnish language became our fatal limitation. How can we marketing when we cannot communicate with our customers? Luckily, our target customers are young people like students, so (we hope) they can speak and understand English. But the question is:

HOW CAN WE REACH TO THEM?

We dropped this big question into several small ones:

- Is there any website the same as 9GAG, 4chan in Finland so that we can advertise on them?
- What should be the most effective channels to marketing our products? We can't use schools, universities because our t-shirts are quite *naughty*
- If you have visited our Huuto listing, could you please tell us is it attractive enough? Is there something we should change?

We really need your ideas and comments, whoever you are. I know it's such a risk to start a business with so little capital, no experience, no knowledge about the language and customers, and especially in this kind of economy. But I know not only me, but there's a lot of people want to do something, change the situation, make our dreams come true...

Please help!

Do you need someone that can improve your design ideas and product line expansion to fit into all seasons and the market in Finland and some other markets ?

[meme18plus]

@ Frink Spraud: thank you for encouragement. Actually that is the thing I need the most these days, when there are always reasons to be pessimistic.

Go to the bank to ask for investment is on the top of my TO DO list. However, as I explained, I want to do small first with a few hundreds t-shirt. After seeing how it goes, examine different marketing methods, know what's good and what's bad, I would have enough confidence to meet the bank manager As you said, business is always a risk and everyone can fail. But I think that it's OK to fail now, but when I have the bank's money, I'm NOT ALLOWED to fail.

I have opened a Facebook page here: http://facebook.com/meme18plus but it's in English. Therefore, most the fans we gained are from international, just very few Finnish. And a majority of the actual buyers is also abroad. I really don't know how to target more Finnish customers. Should we maintain the international market (keep Etsy shop, all website contents and Facebook in English) or just focus on Finnish customers (keep Huuto shop, switch all website contents and Facebook onto Finnish).

Thank you again for your comment. It makes me feel very very good

@ Työelämä: we've been thinking about this. But recently our focus is in marketing. If the sales rises and we actually gain some profits, I think we will pay more attention to the design as well as production process. It's true that summer clothes like t-shirt are very difficult to sell in Finland.

[Työelämä]

You can approach the Prisma and the city market groups and negotiate for a shelve and stock your products there for a start -up.

[Mölkky-Fan]

You can approach the Prisma and the city market groups and negotiate for a shelve and stock your products there for a start -up.

They are very difficult to negotiate with, and secondly I am not sure that the adult content of the shirts would be appreciated. If you are looking at stores it might be better to concentrate on shops which cater for your market (students and young professionals I guess), such as software shops, independent clothes shops, student uni shops etc etc

If you really want to build up sales, what about those little free magazines which come around with sex products, magazine subscriptions and cheap mopos advertised? But then you would need Finnish language T shirts. I have no idea how much that would cost to be included or how successful they would be.

I know you can get a huge variety of slogan Tshirts on many web pages (Zazzle, CafePress etc), but I have not seen a Finnish site (but I must say I have not looked), and in Estonia there are many stores making them with rude/ funny slogans, even in the shopping centres.

The web page is not so expensive to set up, and you can use simple payment systems... but getting your web page to the top of search engines takes time and money.

I think your idea of starting small is good at this stage, in your spare time, and see what happens over the next year. you need to put a lot of effort in.

Be careful of the copyright...