We all blame marketing!
Posted by: Qaiss in Marketing & Media, New Concepts & Idea's, StartupsAs i promised that my next post will be about marketing and a personnel encounter with it. I love marketing it self, the studies and weird ideas behind it, but at the end it costed me and my partners a 20,000kd loss. Gift Express is one of my personnel inventions, its a service that delivers gifts from point A to B. I explain in an example: tomorrow is your wife/girlfriend birthday and you bought her a beautiful gift and wanted to surprise her in some sort of way. You would call Gift Express, we would come pick the Gift, wrap it with the appropriate color( we had standard packs, either blue or pink for men or women respectively) So we pick your gift, wrap it and only send it depending on the time and location you desire, it maybe at her work place at 11:00 am or in marina mall in-front of all the people eager to watch something new! We had other small service but this was the major one, it revolved around surprising you in public, and when the Gift Express delivery guy passed, every person in the room would guess and feel anxious if that gift is for him or her. Thats what my main target, to make customers feel specail! The service was availabe for one full year, then went down the drain:( its not availabe any more, and have lost about 6000kd in marketing. I was in Bazzar, layalina…all over. We still did not reach our customers correctly and lost big time..its not marketing believe me its more than that. Will explain more depending on your responses: by showing you some marketing digits i have collected. Â
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May 12th, 2007 at 2:42 am
oh! i think it was really really SMART ! Ive always wondered if i could DHl localy !;p
any chance u re-activate the service?
May 12th, 2007 at 3:08 am
I really love the idea!
Why did it go down the drain?
May 12th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Its ‘rizg o tawfeg min allah’
or like some ppl call it ‘luck’.
Has nothing to do with how much money u have or how hard u work……there are countless examples in Kuwait.
Anyway….its the first i hear of it and i think its a great idea….and if i knew it was around i would definetly use the service!
Better luck next time buddy ;>
May 12th, 2007 at 6:39 am
did u ever survey people to see if they would actually use the service? if so, did you ask and see how much they were willing to pay?
Many reasons could have led to this sad ending
did u advertise at the right times? before mothers day? before valentines day(even though this is not islamicly-correct)?
i for one never heard of the service, maybe you advertised in the wrong places !!!
marketing is really tricky, thank god that’s not my major :p
May 12th, 2007 at 9:31 am
You should defiantly give it another Go…
May 12th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Dalal: thank you, dont think anytime soon, working on other projects now..
ananyah: alot of resons will explain in later postd, major reson was pricing and a extreme need of a women s touch:P
Delicately Realistic: anna agolich shay about luch: its 80% your effort and 20 % luck, will explain why in later post
Laialy_q8: wala we did, and we got great responses, but we had high salaries and rent, we had cars, drivers and rent..timing of the business was incorrect
Blue Dress: hehe enshalah will look into it
May 12th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I pose the same questions as Laialy Q8. Were you able to appropriately survey the market? Off the top of my head though, it seems that the basic concept relies on the idea that people want to be surprised with gifts. I do agree with that, it’s just the person giving the gift usually LIKES to be there to hand it. People want to be thanked. Let’s think of why people usually give gifts in Kuwait:
1) Giving birth to a new baby
2) Birthdays
3) Mother’s Day
Basically in most cases gifts are given it’s usually women giving gifts to other women depending on the occasion. (I think that men here don’t give each other gifts for their birthdays usually.) In the three occasions mentioned above there is no need for surprise. When someone gives birth to a new baby, if you’re close enough to give them a gift you’re close enough to be OBLIGED to visit them at the hospital or attend the reception so there’s no point in paying for a service to deliver something you can deliver yourself. With birthdays, in most cases there’s a gathering to celebrate so again there’s no need for a surprise in which you would pay for a delivery. On Mother’s Day the least you should do is visit your mom if you don’t already live at home so again, no need for delivery.
Marketing isn’t everything. The actual concept, considering you’re in a small country like Kuwait, where distance wise it’s very easy for you to go and give the gift yourself, is not very marketable. Why would you pay for a gift AND delivery? Why isn’t the gift itself enough as a surprise to make the person feel special? I’m not saying no one would want this service. I’m just saying that my hunch is that the market for it is too small for it to be worth pursuing as a business.
May 12th, 2007 at 10:11 am
1001 Nights: thanks for your detailed comment, you do have great idea’s pointed out, but our service revolved not only around new born,mothersday…it was for any gift with non particular occaision and the second service that i wanted to introduce was the online gift site, where you log on, pay for the gift and we would deliver it. We even negoitated with baithoon for deivery services from all his branches. And as you said, it was a small market that we targeted, and to target such small niche markets, it takes a lot of time and effort because they these customr are hard to find.
May 12th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Most of the time when you buy a gift you have the option to have the gift wrapped for free by the store. Since it is a loved one the gift is going for you will most probably be seeing that person again and thats when you can give them the gift.
The reason the product failed isn’t because of bad marketing I think but because the service isn’t something people need. People can have their gifts wrapped from the store they bought the gift and they can deliver the gifts themselves since Kuwait is small.
May 12th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
ok, was that the ad you used in the magazines ? and who/ what agency did it ? the add doesnt communicate the message you want it to commincate. the ad agency who have done this ad should’ve at least created a situation which people could relate too, not to place 2 cartoonish like box characters on a stamp and send it out ?. depending on the proposition of your campaign.
this is one of my favourite DHL ads, its called “Determined” and in their three layouts they create situations that you cant do anything about, but still DHL finds a way to dilever.
http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/dhl_determined_1?size=_original
In this ad, the roads are to croweded the DHL dilevery guy went through the sewers to dilever the package faster.
May 12th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Mark: i totaly understand your point of view, but thats the beauty about consumer, were are not alike,,, some loved the idea to surprise there loved ones, by sending them gifts at there work place and making a fuss/embarisment about it. And many business had no previous need, but new business owner redifine such need and create a new market. And yes Kuwait is small, but at the same time, Hot and Crowded, so many would enjoy the pleasure of some one taking that task from them in exchange for a fee.
May 12th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
أعتقد ان الخدمة ما كانت واضØØ©
Ùˆ كونها Ùكرة جديدة صعب المسألة..
أتكلم من وجهة نظر زبون يشو٠الاعلان..
May 12th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I remember hearing either about a similar service. I went to the website, and it didn’t have much detail so I lost interest. Dunno if it is Gift Express or another one.
May 12th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I agree with Mark, 1001 Nights, and Layaly ….. its not a matter of spending money on marketing as much as doing the initial market research. Most people I know start a business bcz its a new idea or something they are missing in the market, but forget that everyone else is not the same. The research couldve helped you in cutting your costs also by understanding the demand for such service! By research I dont mean asking your friends and family, because most of them dont want to be rude or discouraging so could be a mujamala! I think even if you ask people in the blog, you will get a better response bcz there is no need to be nice and lie.
May 12th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Yeah such consumers really hard to find. To be honest unless the margin per consumer is HUGE it’s not worth it. Because since the market is small you’re not going to be making money off of volume so you gotta be able to charge loads for delivery per consumer. But you live you learn.
Also, regarding what Q said, I remember in school our marketing prof warned us about making assessments based on our own tastes and choices. He told us that we were priveledged university kids and most people weren’t as educated or as wealthy so we had to make sure we didn’t base everything on how we felt.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your experience here. It takes a big man to admit to BOTH success and failures.
May 12th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
whats that smell ?
do i smell a stinky idea hehehe
qaiss buddy remember ” Barriers of Entry “
May 13th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Never heard about it in Kuwait, though I ain’t that much of a magazine reader in which you targeted your potential customers, most of those magazines are teens magazines with no big financial means to support such trends.
The idea is simple, yet it is achievable by many other ways. You mentioned that were aiming toward packaging the gift & allying on the surprise element. Still the packaging isn’t an easy task at all. A potential customer would seek your service for only those special ones, hence the packaging must be spectacular going feet to feet withe the gift content itself. I won’t spend months of figuring out the ultimate gift that shall deliver the message that I have done lots of thinking and I care enough to go the distance to solve out every anniversary’s gift puzzle. I will definitely seek a wrapping that complements the gift, a wrapping that peaks directly to the receiver’s soul. You are absolutely correct with your need for a feminine touch in addition to a multitude and numerous wrapping ideas.
As for the delivery, but what might possibly intrigues me into using such a service when it is cheaply available with Ghazal Express, the timing is intact and purpose is met, tried it a couple of time and it worked just fine. Buy the gift, prepare it and call them to schedule a pick up point and time and finally get it delivered to the requested destination. I’m not sure about the public places deliveries but with a reasonable negotiation you shall reach your goal.
High prices that might attract the phony superficial perosnas with a service that might add a touch to the materialistic egos. But the market isn’t ready and idea has fallen short with an incomplete image.
Tough luck, but falling is part of rising up.
Best wishes.
May 13th, 2007 at 1:30 am
بومريوم , EniGma, Q , 1001 Nights, Freak, Touche’: Marketing here was not the main cause of the problem, but customer started noticing the services and we got calls everyday hearing about it and wanting to know more, and sales picked up at the end of fourth month, but went down agian, after closing i still have ppl calling me requesting such a service, and the service was not well defined, as Touche said..when starting up a business espacaily wiered idea like these you have to have a clear vision and target to focus on. “Freak” yah yah..whats new! “Q” you’ve got a point about research, but to do such extensive reseach here is realy tedious, tiring, exuahsting work. Thank you all for you great points, and participation:)
May 13th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Kuwaitoons: i thought you have filtered out most of my ads, smarty pants
May 13th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Qaiss, that time i wasnt in kuwait “smarty thong”