In yesterday’s post I made reference to Blue Q’s clever use of product packaging to sell a mundane product. I wanted to talk about that a little more today because I think it’s a very valuable tool for selling your wares.

Creating a product that no one else is selling is extremely difficult, I’d be willing to bet the vast majority of my readers aren’t doing this. So if you can’t be without competitors, marketing, branding and package design are your next best options for standing out and appearing to be unique. There are too many people selling soap, bags, candy, necklaces, t-shirts, etc. to simply start another brand with products that are pretty or smell nice or taste good. To be successful, your branding and marketing needs to have something buzzworthy or unique about it.

Below are some terrific examples of companies that are selling completely unremarkable products. Stuff you can pick up at any Rite Aid for less than $5.00. These companies have turned the mundane into something awesome with clever packaging and branding.

So Stinking Sweet has done an amazing job of turning soap into a brilliant holiday stocking stuffer. People might not rush out to stick a bar of Dial in a stocking, but shape the soap like coal, add a cute little gift tag and snap a picture of the soap in front of a spring of evergreen and you’ve got holiday season gag gift magic.

You can get a good old Whitman’s sampler for a few bucks, but that starts to look a little less fun when you can order A Christmas Story themed fudge from Candy Crate. The deliciousness of the candy is almost beside the point, the product packaging is what makes this novelty item pop culture gold.

Archie McPhee is the master of making mundane products fun with great package design. They’ve turned something as clinical and dull as a tongue scraper into a terrific gag gift for a bachelor party.

DippyLuLu cleverly turns a book of matches into a novelty gift with great package design. You can usually get matches for free at your neighborhood bar, but add clever presentation and suddenly the same item becomes a fun little hostess gift.

The Pirate Supply Store is another great example of selling mundane products with clever packaging. Pictured above, is their monkey leash. The leash is literally a length of rope with a label on it, selling for $9.00!

Takeaway for you:
If you can’t create exceptional products, find another way to be exceptional. Product presentation is just as important (and sometimes more important) than the product itself. If you’ve been struggling with a way to make your products stand out take a cue from the examples above. Think about ways to reframe your products in a way that appeals to your customers’ sense of humor, sources of aggravation, personal style, etc.

When you’re trying to establish a loveable and cohesive brand that people go crazy for, it’s important to have a really clear and consistent aesthetic. You want your branding to be consistent through your product photos, web design, and marketing materials.

A great way to start thinking about brand cohesion is by using inspiration boards. Inspiration boards can be helpful in a variety of ways, such as:
- Communicating your brand aesthetic to a web designer you hire
- Keeping yourself consistent with products you design
- Keeping your marketing collateral consistent with your brand’s image
- Collaborating with another designer on a finished product.

We frequently use inspiration boards when doing new designs for Ex-Boyfriend. It’s especially important for us because I often generate the design ideas but my partner actually does the design work. It’s impossible to just download the ideas from my mind’s eye to his and I can’t draw so much as a stick figure. Inspiration boards allow me to easily communicate to him the ideas that I have for executing a design concept.

Contents of your inspiration board can be anything. You can look at fonts, color palettes, magazine cut outs, song lyrics, stills from movies, photos, advertisements — just about any visual elements you feel represent the mood and look you want to achieve.

Once you have an inspiration board, you can share it with designers you hire or collaborate with or just keep it at your own desk or workspace to keep yourself on track.

Not sure what an inspiration board might look like?
Check out Polyvore.com. Polyvore is a community of inspiration board makers, so you can get ideas on how to build an inspiration board for your own brand or product designs.

I am totally fried from my crazy awesome weekend at Otakon — an anime/comic/pop culture festival with over 30,000 attendees. As always, these weekends not only bring us a loads of new sales and fans, they also bring lots of thoughts and ideas about business.

We had tons of people tell us our booth was their favorite one at the show. We has a regular old booth in a sea of hundreds of professional vendors who do this kind of thing every weekend. What made us stand out? We were giving away really cool free stuff people wanted (A.K.A ads for our business).

While other vendors were charging the attendees a buck or two for a vinyl sticker, we were giving ours away for free. And our stickers featured our most beloved and iconic character, Fuzz Aldrin. The stickers looked so cute, that people happily took them and put them on their guitar cases, car bumpers, laptops, etc. By the time Sunday rolled around, people were seeking out our booth and asking us for stickers, saying they’d seen them all over during the weekend.

Why not sell them and make a quick buck?
I have no doubt that some people would have given us a buck or two for our stickers, but we might have only sold 100 or so stickers that way. Giving them away for free means thousands of people are promoting our brand for us. The stickers only cost us a few cents each, so it was a small price to pay for what amounts to a ton of (almost) free advertising. Not to mention brand affinity.

How do you get people to seek out your marketing materials and enthusiastically share them with the world?

1. Have marketing materials they can use
If your marketing materials are functional, they are less likely to be thrown away. This is why things like buttons and stickers are good. People will hang onto stuff like that and display it to the world.

2. Have marketing materials that are cool
Having beautiful iconic design associated with your brand is highly important. If you’re not a designer, hire one. You can’t skimp in this area if you want people to promote your brand. Think Hello Kitty from Sanrio. She’s essentially a brand logo, but she’s so adorable that everyone wants her.

3. Have marketing materials that are iconic, memorable and most of all GOOGLEABLE
Having iconic unique branding goes hand in hand with having cool marketing materials. Really effective marketing materials are so memorable and iconic that people see it once and remember it. If they look it up online, they’ll find it right away.

If you’re trying to build a brand, you want your iconography to be easily identifiable and so ingrained in culture that your iconorgaphy is instantly associated with you. After all, the whole idea is to make everyone who sees your ads fall in love with your brand, seek it out and become a fan/customer.

4. Give away your marketing materials at every possible opportunity
Selling your marketing materials is short-sighted,. Unless you’re already such a household name that everyone knows your branding, you’re not in a position to charge for it. On the other hand, flooding the universe with your branding is a great way to make your brand a household name.

Give away your marketing materials at pop up retail events. Insert your marketing materials in every order you ship to customers. See if you can get other businesses to take your marketing materials. In Baltimore City, one of the most recognizable brands is Big Boyz Bail Bonds. They’ve accomplished this by giving free pink and yellow pens to every restaurant and bar in the city. You can’t eat or drink in Baltimore without seeing an ad for this business. The pens have a distinct look and they’re so ever-present that everyone in town knows about them. All this cost them was the price of the pens.

A final thought about cost
You may notice I rarely talk about marketing being free. This is because there’s really no such thing. There’s marketing that costs time and marketing that costs money, but all marketing is going to cost something. The type of viral marketing I describe in today’s post isn’t “free” but it can be inexpensive.

When you’re producing marketing materials like the ones I described in this article, your best bet is to buy in bulk. You’ll get a cheaper price per piece if you buy 10,000 pieces instead of 100. It will be a bigger up front cost, but in the long run it is significantly cheaper.

You also have to remember that if you’re doing it right, each piece of collateral that cost you only a few cents, is going to get thousands of views out in the world. You can’t buy cheaper advertising, so if cost savings is your goal, this is the route you want to go.

P.S. Want to get custom stickers for your business? We used PS Print for ours and we were super happy with the price and print quality!

Ever hear the expression “dress for the job you want”? What it means is, if you keep showing up to the office in cut off shorts and ratty t-shirts, people will think you look like you belong in the mail room and that’s where you’ll stay. If your business is, figuratively speaking, dressed like a ragamuffin, it’s always going to be one. If you want to run a million dollar business, then fake it til you make it. Below are 7 ways you can make your business look like a big deal:

1. List your Phone Number
Real businesses have phone service. If you want to look like one, include a contact number on your website, ideally some place easy to spot. It says “we’re a real company, with real staff waiting to take your calls.” Even if you can’t man your phone line 24/7, have a professional voice mail greeting that implies that customer calls are returned in a timely fashion. (And then actually return the calls in a timely fashion.)

There are dozens of services that provide phone numbers for small companies. You can even get a free number from Google Voice (though it does have Google Voice branding on it). If you are willing to spend a little, you can get a toll free number for less than 10 bucks a month.

Bonus: Having a phone number ups your website’s trust factor, an important component of conversion rate optimization. People want to give their money to businesses that seem trustworthy. Having a phone number listed makes your business seem more like it can be trusted to take a credit card number and deliver products.

2. Have a beautiful web design
Not just any old website will do, you need a website that looks really great. Having an attractive professional website makes your business seem successful. It makes journalists more willing to write about you. It makes wholesale buyers more interested in doing business with you. It makes consumers more willing to trust you.

If you’re thinking “web design is hard” or “a web designer is expensive”, consider all the money and opportunities you’ll lose by having a terrible website.

3. Have great product photos
Great looking product photos are an extremely important part of your company’s image. Don’t bother with indoor lighting and a cheap camera. You want your photos to look compelling. Like a great web design, great product photos impress all kinds of online visitors from customers to the press.

If you want to take your own product photos, do some research to see how other people have staged photos of similar products. This will give you ideas on how to stage your photo shoot. Then be sure to work with proper lighting, so photos don’t look murky or gray. Finally, do some retouching in a program like Photoshop, so your photos look perfect.

If you’re not up for all this work, consider hiring a professional photographer to shoot your items. There are even photographers that specialize in doing product photography and will shoot your products for a pretty affordable rate, usually charging per product photo.

4. Merchandising
Merchandising products on your website in a variety of ways is useful for several reasons. It makes your product catalog seem bigger and it makes shopping for products easier. I wrote a detailed piece for Design Sponge last year on ways to merchandise a shop. You’ll notice a lot of bigger companies merchandise their online stores using the same strategies.

5. Publicity
Getting a mention from a major media outlet is not only a great way to increase brand awareness and give your sales a boost, it also makes your company look important. These placements give you credibility with both retail customers and wholesale customers, so they’re a valuable boon to your business if you can get them. Once you’ve scored them, you can use them on your website, adding logos like “as seen on” to product pages and your home page.

Not sure how to get publicity? Check this out, I’ve written a very detailed how-to.

6. Engaged Social Media Followers
Want to convince media outlets, wholesale buyers, competitors or potential new retail customers you’ve got an army of rabid fans? Of course you do, and social media makes that easier than ever. By truly engaging your fans on sites like Twitter and Facebook (instead of just selling to them), you can get them to talk to you and about you, thus making your fans seem like they’re crazy for you.

Some tricks that help:
- Ask questions that prompt responses
- In your product packages, include a note that asks customers to share a photo of themselves using your product on Facebook
- Take photos of fans at live events using your products and tag them on Facebook/share them on Twitter and Flickr
- Shoot videos of live events and interview your customers. You can just ask a couple of quick questions such as “what did you buy from [insert brand name] today?” or “what did you enjoy best about today’s event?” Then post to Youtube and let fans know they’ve been featured.

7. Product Presentation
If you’re just shoving your products into a mailer with an invoice print out from Paypal, STOP IT! You’re leaving the customer with the impression that you’re simply a transactional seller and not a real brand to be remembered. You want every customer who gets your package to remember it, so make sure your packaging isn’t an afterthought. This includes creating a stylish branded invoice and adding other little details to make your brand seem like a big deal. This can include hang tags, branded products or little freebies like branded vinyl stickers. These same rules apply to samples that go to the media. If your shipment looks impressive, it’s going to make an impression on anyone who gets it.

Bonus Tip for Wannabe Big Shots: A lot of small businesses who sell online take Paypal. It’s super easy and inexpensive to implement. The problem is, it makes you look pretty small time. Having the ability to take credit cards makes you look like a bigger company. If you’re a Paypal junkie, consider their virtual terminal product. It’s a nice all-in-one solution. This isn’t your only option, of course. A little research on merchant accounts will help you find plenty of other vendors that enable you to take credit cards online. And you need not completely ditch Paypal. Accepting both cards and Paypal is a great way to look professional and satisfy customers who have a preference for one of those two payment methods.

Last week I started a discussion about how Etsy and other marketplace websites hinder customer relationships. For a couple of years now I’ve been trying to talk my readers into getting their own ecommerce websites, and not felt like I was getting through to people. I finally hit on a point last week that got some more people thinking. To reiterate, I said “when people ask your customers where they got products they purchased from you, they’re going to say Etsy, not your brand name.” If you want to build your own brand, this is a serious problem.

Last week I also talked about ways to emphasize your brand in the actual package customers receive, but today I want to talk about ways to actually get customers who found you on a marketplace site, to make their future purchases on your website.

Before we talk about this, let’s discuss the 3 things marketplace sites are good for.

1. Hobbyists
If you knit for fun and want to make a few extra bucks, sure sell on Ebay or Etsy. You aren’t trying to run a business and sites like this offer an easy way for hobbyists to make a few bucks.

2. Testing the waters
If you are thinking about starting a business, but not totally committed to the idea, marketplace sites are a great way to test drive the experience. You can see if there’s a demand for your product. You can see what it’s like serving customers, shipping orders, etc. These sites are a great place to try things out, before getting serious about a business.

3. Affiliates
Affiliate marketers are marketers that market products for other people. When the products sell, the affiliates get paid a commission. Traditionally, you would establish an affiliate program on a site like Shareasale, affiliates would join the program on their own, market your wares on their own, and get commissions as they referred sales.

Sites like Etsy, Ebay, Amazon, etc. can be thought of as glorified affiliates. Unlike traditional affiliates, you have to take a more active role in working with them. You pay them fees even if they don’t sell product. You have to list your stuff on their site. That said, they have a huge user community and by virtue of this, they are in a position to refer customers to you, and they do get paid a portion of your sales as a result.

Affiliates are great for customer acquisition, so if those marketplace sites are delivering sales, by all means, maintain a presence there. But don’t hand over your whole business to them. The thing they are doing for you is driving traffic to your shop. In exchange they are getting listing fees and sales commissions. That’s plenty. You don’t need to hand deliver them all of YOUR potential customers that you worked for with marketing, PR, etc. Why should they get a commission on those sales? They didn’t earn them.

So now that we’re clear on why you might want to use a marketplace site, let’s look at some ways to get customers who found you on a marketplace site, so become fans of your brand and users of your website.

1. Brand your products
I can’t state the importance of branded products enough. I’ve purchased more things on Etsy than I can remember. I can only name one actual shop I purchased from. Their name is XS Baggage. I bought a bag from them and their brand name is on a label sewn inside the bag. Every time I use the bag I open it up and see their brand name. That is why I remember them and not anyone else. Next time I need a new bag, I’m going to seek out XS Baggage, not Etsy.

Note that I say branded products, not packaging. Branded packaging is also important, but it is not the same as branding the product. The packaging gets thrown out. If you can find a way to permanently affix your brand name to the product, that is more effective. Some products are easier to brand than others. Earrings may be especially tough. You could get around it by designing a nice case or box to store the item in, like Wild Gems has done. The goal is to give the customer something they will keep that has your business name on it. You really want them to see your brand name every time they use your product.

2. Use Gift Cards and Coupons
Several small business owners reported success with using special offers in their product shipments to customers from marketplace sites. Brett from Scrubadoo says “One of the things we do to make sure our customers know that we appreciate their business is send them a hand written thank you note. We do this for everyone, no matter if they buy 1 item or 10… In those cards we include a gift certificate for free shipping at scrubadoo.com. We have had a decent amount of success with this strategy. In fact, in one of our “client feedback’s” on Amazon a client even mentioned how awesome it was to receive the note and gift certificate.”

Offering a customer a gift card or coupon code for your primary website is a great way to entice them to do repeat business with you directly, instead of a marketplace website.

3. Go Digital
Amber from XMittens says that when she gets orders from marketplace websites she sends “a personalized thank you email from my website’s email address that includes in the signature links to my regular website, to my email list sign up and to any recent press or a recent blog post. Many of my repeat customers originally found Xmittens on etsy and now shop at my ecommerce site instead!”

Following up a marketplace purchase with a branded email inviting the customer to connect with you via your blog, mailing list or social media accounts is a great way to get around the problem of marketplace sites disallowing direct links to your newsletter, blog, Facebook, etc.

Yesterday I promised to talk about putting your brand experience in a box. This is exactly what we try to do at Ex-Boyfriend. We do tons of things to try to build brand affinity and keep our brand interesting to customers, but here are some examples of how these efforts carry over to the packages our customers receive:

1. Memorable Brand Name
The entire premise of our brand, is that we’re creating products that act as conversation pieces. We are deliberately creating things our customers can wear that make people want to talk to them. Our brand name is part of this, it’s a name that’s funny enough to get people asking “What the heck is that about?” Just the other day the UPS guy told us the staff over at UPS was all chuckling about our brand name and trying to imagine what sort of business we are. All that from seeing our brand name on a shipping label. These are guys that see thousands of packages every day, and our brand name got their attention. That’s a sure sign our brand name is doing what we want it to do.

Of course having a kooky brand name isn’t enough, we want our customers to remember it. That’s why every single thing that comes in our packages has our brand name on it. Every finished product we sell or give away has our company name labeled on it. That way, every time a customer puts on our tees they see the name Ex-Boyfriend in the neck label.

2. Freebies in Every Box
We always include a free, unexpected extra in every package we ship. We include things like stickers, buttons, postcards with a blank back, magnets, pens, etc. These freebies are designed to look cool enough that our customers will want to keep them and use them. The idea is that it puts another thing in our customers’ hands with our branding and helps them remember who we are. It also makes receiving our packages a little more fun, because you never know what fun free extra will be inside. If it worked for Cracker Jack, it can work for us. People might not buy what you sell just to find out what fun freebie is inside, but it does make getting the shipment more memorable.

3. Invoices That Stick
A few months ago I got on my partner’s case about our invoices. I didn’t think they were exciting enough, we’re a fun brand and I wanted everything about our shipments to be fun, including our invoices. I knew I wanted to re-design them but was having trouble getting ideas. I actually tried to do an article here on Smaller Box showcasing other companys’ cool invoices, but when I put out a call for examples, I didn’t get a lot of great stuff back. I finally settled on just taking a stab at a re-design and here’s what we came up with: (click to see an example).

We came up with a design that infused our brand’s graphic theme, took on a more personalized tone, reminded people of our friendly customer service and invited our fans to keep in touch with by sending us a customer photo. We used a conversational tone and graphic elements to add interest to something people usually throw away and never look at twice.

I know a lot of readers are big on detailed handmade package design. While these packages are always nice to get, these ideas don’t scale well when you start shipping dozens of orders every day. When designing a package your customers will remember, always think about cost and scalability (both in terms of labor to prepare the package and the materials used to create it). Try to think of ways you can make your package special for your customers, while maintaining efficient and cost-effective shipping processes.

Last week I wrote about the difference between transactional and relationship-based business models. When Etsy mentioned this article in their round up, it drove some readers to Smaller Box who said they were focused on a relationship-based business model, despite having Etsy as their primary venue for an online presence. While you can make this your goal, marketplace websites work against this type of business model. Here’s why:

1. The relationship is with the marketplace
A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend who shops on Etsy but is not a crafter. She asked why we don’t run Ex-Boyfriend through Etsy. I said “You shop on Etsy a lot, right?” She nodded.

I continued, “Imagine you found the scarf you’re wearing on Etsy. If I said to you, ‘hey that’s a great scarf, where did you get that?’ what would you tell me?”

She looked confused and said “I’d tell you I got it on Etsy.”

And that’s why Ex-Boyfriend isn’t run through Etsy. I know when Ex-Boyfriend’s customers are asked where they got their tees, they’ll say Ex-Boyfriend. It’s the only possible answer. They won’t say Ebay, Etsy, Amazon or any other marketplace website. While we do sell some overstock items via Etsy, the hub of our business is through our website, and the main reason for this is that we want the customers to have a relationship with us, not a marketplace website.

I know as a consumer, I think the same way that my friend thinks. I buy stuff all the time on Etsy, Ebay, Amazon, etc. I couldn’t name a single individual seller who I actually bought from on those sites. The entire time I was seeing the marketplace’s logo, getting email from the marketplace website. Of course, that’s the branding that stuck with me.

If you want to build a relationship with customers, they need to know who the heck you are. If another brand name is stuck in front of their face during the transaction, how will they remember you instead of the marketplace?

2. The user experience is dictated by the marketplace
In my article about relationship-based business models, I talked about how these businesses place their emphasis on creating a unique brand experience. This starts the minute a customer steps into your virtual doors. The brand experience is communicated via the web design, product photos, website features (i.e. VIP customer clubs, virtual dressing room aps, etc.) and even on down to product packaging, customer emails, website copy, etc.

Sites like Etsy and Amazon do create a brand experience, but the experience is with Etsy or Amazon, not the people who sell products through them. Etsy looks like a modern indie website, if it had a storefront it would be in Williamsburg Brooklyn. That brand experience is conveyed through the site’s design, features, etc. If that’s not the brand experience you’re trying to create, and you sell there, you’re kind of out of luck.

Check out the different vibes cultivated at sites like Lochers vs Brooks Brothers. If the exact same products were for sale on Etsy or Amazon.com instead of those branded websites they might look like just a phone case or just a polo shirt. It’s the branding these companies have created that make their customers want their cases or shirts over the others. Those brands would be incapable of communicating their specialness if their products were featured on marketplace websites.

3. Marketplace websites inhibit lead-nurturing activities
In my article last week, I talked about how relationship-based business models focus on getting customers, not transactions. A marketplace website is designed to give you the opposite result. It might bring you sales, but since you don’t get to build a relationship with the customer and you can’t communicate the uniqueness of your brand, it’s very hard to turn one-time buyers or casual browsers into die-hard fans. Aside from the limitations already discussed, the technology is also a problem.

Marketplace websites don’t make it easy for your to direct the casual visitor to your blog, Facebook page or newsletter. There’s no single click access to any of these tools that would help you foster relationships with visitors. You certainly can’t employ banner ad re-marketing. Even if a customer makes a purchase, you can’t simply have them check a box to get on your mailing list. Repeated marketing communication with the person buying from you is almost discouraged. So how are you going to keep the conversation going with that person who was interested but didn’t buy today, or did buy today but may forget about you by next month?

What can you do about all of this?
People sell their products on marketplace websites for 2 reasons: either because those websites can send you customers since they have a large user base or because they’re easy/convenient to use. If you are serious about growing a real business, neither of these reasons is especially good. A profitable business can bring its own customers in the virtual doors, and after I talked about all the disadvantages of relying entirely on a marketplace for your online presence easy/convenient seems like a weak excuse compared to what you’re giving up for ease and convenience. So here are some options:

1. Get your own ecommerce website
Treat your business like a real business by investing some money in an ecommerce site. If you’re not ready to go whole-hog, consider ready-made solutions like Yahoo stores or Big Cartel. You will still need to invest in a web designer, but it’s still easier and cheaper than creating an entire ecommerce site from scratch.

2. Get your own website and leave the ecommerce where it is
If you aren’t ready to create your own online shop, you can at least create a website with a professional design and links to your blog, social media accounts, etc. Then you can direct customers to your marketplace store (Etsy, Artfire, Amazon, Ebay, etc.) to make their purchases. It’s not ideal, but at least the customers meet your brand before they meet the marketplace.

3. Have two online shops
If you can’t give up the traffic and sales that marketplace sites deliver, there’s no reason to leave them entirely. But treat them like an ad venue instead of the hub for your business. Create your own site and sink all your marketing efforts into that, then leave your Etsy/Amazon/Ebay shops where they are, so that visitors using those sites as marketplaces can still find you.

4. Create an experience in a box
If you are determined to stick to the marketplace entirely, you’ll need to work extra hard on product presentation. Make sure everything about the finished product that gets into customer hands reinforces you branding. You want to get your branding into your product packaging, inserts that go into the package (i.e. stickers, buttons, etc.) and the product itself. Make sure your logo is on the products, on your invoice, etc.

Your goal is to deliver a package that is so memorable and so branded, that the customer’s lasting memory about the transaction is your brand instead of the marketplace.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, I’ll show you some examples of how we try to do this with Ex-Boyfriend.

Over in the Craft MBA/Creative Empire world, fellow bloggers Megan Auman and Tara Gentile have been talking about the “why” of running a business. The discussion was brought on by a book that covers the importance of understanding why your business exists. In a round about way, this “why” question ties into the long-standing concept of having a company mission statement and a unique selling proposition (USP). The “why” question asks a few things:

• Why should customers love your business and buy your products?
• Why is your company different than every other company out there?
• Why does your company need to exist?

As this discussion developed, I heard entrepreneurs saying things like “my company exists because I want to work from home and be with my family” or “I enjoy teaching.” These are totally valid reasons why you should pursue your business, but they aren’t the answer to the questions above. The “why” that needs to be satisfied has to do with customer experience. Why are you different? Why is your brand/product better than your competitors? What do you do for your customers that no one else is doing?

Megan writes “people don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it”. I actually believe “people don’t buy because of what you do, they buy because of what you do for them.” Have you built a product or brand that, just by association, can make a straight-laced suburban dad feel like a bad ass? That’s what Harley Davidson has done. Have you built a brand that makes women feel like creative, organized, resourceful, super star homemakers and hostesses? That’s what Martha Stewart has done.

A guy doesn’t buy a Harley motorcycle because he wants a motorcycle. He buys it because he wants to feel young, edgy and a little bit dangerous. A woman doesn’t read Martha Stewart Living because she wants to know how to make Thanksgiving dinner. She buys it because she wants to feel like she is the best and most impressive hostess under the sun — with the tastiest food and the best looking spread on the dining room table. She wants people to marvel at the origami place card holders and wonder how she can be so creative and pull off a meal so elegant. These brands are not selling transit or recipes and hostess tips, they’re selling a lifestyle.

If you want a good USP, a good mission statement, a good brand — your why needs to address the emotional need your brand fills for your target demographic. Your customers probably don’t care all that much that you started your company because you want to work from home or that the work you do makes you happy. They care if you can make them feel like a great mom, a free thinker, a rebel, a stylish dresser, smarter than the next guy, etc. Marketing to an emotional need or a lifestyle is what helps your products and brand really resonate with your target market — it’s something just about every major successful brand does.

My Why:
Listening to the conversation about companies finding their why, got me thinking about our “why” at Ex-Boyfriend. It’s something I’ve always felt pretty secure in, but never written about before. It was best summed up by a customer who bought several of our products last weekend at Art Star. She said, holding up a bag featuring a driver riding on the back of a shark, “If you don’t know why this is awesome, get out of my office.”

Our company tagline is “clothing that starts conversations”, but more than that, it starts conversations for a specific subset of people. People who get why absurd humor is funny and want to connect with other people who get it. We aim to create products that are simultaneously artistic and clever, so that our audience, by extension, feels artistic and clever for displaying our work on their clothing and accessories and gets to connect with other people who get them. Finding a product that you get, and helps you connect with other people who get you is a powerful thing.  It’s what brings our customers coming back. We’re trying to make our fans part of an inside joke that their kind of people immediately get. It allows people to simultaneously feel a sense of belonging and exclusivity.

I know this is what we’re doing with Ex-Boyfriend because I see it in feedback from our fans and experience it when I wear our products. When I wear our tees strangers do talk to me — my kind of strangers, people who get my kind of humor and people I want to talk to. People who probably read the kinds of books I read, watch the kind of movies I watch, listen to the kind of music I enjoy. When people come up to me at a bar and say “That’s awesome!” and point to my shirt, it’s like a secret handshake was exchanged. Ex-Boyfriend is creating a cultural shorthand for our tribe of people, which is what every brand should aim for with its products, company culture, content, etc.

While our products and branding came from the kind of people we are as founders, it’s really not about just us, it’s about producing a brand and products our target demographic really feels an emotional connection with and sense of belonging with. Sure, we wanted a creative outlet, financial independence, etc. — all those things entrepreneurs value. But that’s not our why and it’s not what our customers are getting when they shop with us. They’re getting a need fulfilled.

What’s your why?

Most of us can agree that the online shopping experience starts with the package. If you want to impress customers, a beautiful package or fun little surprises enclosed can go a long way. A lot of the craft community is big on doing elaborate handmade packaging. While these packages are lovely, it is difficult to make this kind of packaging cost effective and scalable when order volume increases. Last week I talked to 4 retailers who’ve found streamlined and cost effective ways to ship a large volume of orders in style. Here’s what they had to say:

Marty at Elephant Surf Media ships using stickers and custom tape:
“U-Line is an awesome resource for all things packaging, including the boxes and custom tape.  As far as stickers and promotional stuff, google returns millions of options, it’s just a matter of finding the one that suits you best.

We do not market our packaging as a benefit to customers, mainly because no one buys something just because it arrives in a cool box.  We just want our customers to see how much detail and care we put into everything we do, and getting a cooler than normal package in the mail is just one way we do that.

The additional cost per package is not too big, really.  Besides, saving 50 cents on each package is not worth making our customers think we’re cheap asses with no style.”

Nick from Shirts That Go! ships using custom printed boxes:
“Our company is quite small and only a few years old.  We wanted to put our best foot forward with the packaging so that it had real impact for our customers. We wanted a card box because it is lightweight.  Our end customers are all kids and toddlers and these guys love getting mail.  We decided to put our designs on the packaging for a real wow factor.  We wanted for a gift from ShirtsThatGo to begin at the mailbox.”

To find a manufacturer, We mainly used the search engines.  I had to be really persistent with this.  I contacted at least 20 suppliers and they all told me that it was not feasible for a small company to afford full color packaging.  Most of them quickly pushed me over to other ideas like plain boxes with custom stickers etc.  I did not let up on this idea though and found a great company (USA based) that wanted to work with me and make me a happy customer of theirs.  They have been printing boxes for us for a few years now and they do a great job.

Currently a custom box adds about $2.00.  We include the custom boxes on orders of 3 or more shirts and we offer a way for folks to add the box at checkout on smaller orders.  Custom packaging has been part of our offering since day one so it has always been in our model.”

Megan from 1st Person History ships using simple kraft boxes with brown kraft ribbon and printed labels:
“The packaging for our 1st Person History Kits were not meant to be “innovative”, it was born out of necessity for boot-strapping our little start-up.  However, it turns out our customers love the packaging. We use simple kraft boxes with brown kraft ribbon and printed labels.  Inside the box, our kit is wrapped in kraft colored tissue paper and bound with brown paper ribbon, closed with a sticker with our logo. The box itself is wrapped in ribbon and the label on the box holds it in place. This way we seal the box without having to use any plastic.

Cost for our small scale operation was our number one concern. We began by simply searching for vendors with small minimum orders to see what different products were available. The criteria we used were 1) will everything fit in the box, 2) will the box fit in the USPS Priority shipping boxes, and 3) is it recyclable. Google search and ThomasNet.com were our lifeline to finding a variety of vendors and whittling them down to companies that could  provide us with low cost, low quantity orders.

Once we found the right box, we needed a way to make it look presentable without huge printing costs. With a kraft box, we achieved a very simple, earthly look that did not need a lot of embellishment. We wanted to stay away from plastic, so tissue paper and paper ribbon were what we were left with. It all came together beautifully with a cohesive, elegant look. We stuck with unbleached paper products, using kraft colored products when possible, and accented it all with a dark brown paper ribbon.

We used this package design from the beginning – with our very first order. Other than switching to a sturdier box, not a lot of re-design has taken place. A large number of our customers write to us just to comment on the packaging, and how they appreciate the care we take of the product; it’s reflected in the packaging. The price per unit for packaging is less than 2% of our cost, which we are happy with and see no need to improve on just yet.”

Final takeaways from our savvy entrepreneurs:

1. Be creative about your shipping ideas.

2. Order shipping supplies in bulk for best pricing.

3. Comparison shop, a lot! Dig into search results beyond page 1 to find the best vendors. If you know what your want your shipping materials to be, keep looking until you find a vendor/manufacturer who can give you what you want.

4. Presenting customers with a memorable package is an investment in your brand.

A few things have been circling around in my head this week. There’s the flap about DecormyEyes.com, an online eyewear vendor who used negative ratings to boost his SEO rankings. (This story sent Google into a tailspin as they vowed to change their algorithms to block unscrupulous businesses from gaming their search rankings.) There’s also the debate about Etsy’s new “circles” tool which enables consumers to shop on Etsy socially. (Circles lets you see what friends have liked and helps you find stuff to buy based on friends’ finds).

One commenter who shops and sells on Etsy said, “I hesitate to open a stand-alone shop because I feel like Etsy is so pervasive. It gets mentions on the Today Show and Martha Stewart regularly now. Plus, when I can find what I want there, I like shopping there better than individual websites, primarily due to the feedback feature.” This struck a chord with me for a few reasons:

1. Etsy is big and this new feature is just one more way for them to grow. Circles encourages more browsing on their site and hopefully more sales on Etsy. Etsy makes money no matter who sells so this is nothing but a win for them. As a vendor, this is a mixed bag. Yes people can find you, but traffic you worked to deliver to your own shop can also be lost to this tool.

2. Just because Etsy is big doesn’t mean it should have a monopoly and, in fact, it does not. There are thousands of retail sites online. Many of them are successfully selling tons of awesome handmade/indie/vintage wares without any help from Etsy. Etsy is big but they don’t own the internet and you need not throw up your hands in defeat and let them own your brand and your business.

3. We are in the process of doing away with our Etsy shop. We opened our Etsy shop when we first started because we wanted access to Etsy’s large user base. We spent not 1 penny marketing our Etsy shop and not one minute promoting it. Any sales that came from there came from Etsy’s search tool.

In 2 years we sold about 100 items. In the same amount of time we sold several thousand products through our own website. At this point our brand is growing and we don’t want it tied to anything but itself. When customers buy from us, we want them buying from us, not another site that acts as a middleman. We want to control the customer experience. We want an easy way to get them on our mailing list, get them to our blog, get them to our Facebook page, etc. We wanted it to be easy for customers to pick the size and color product they wanted. We also didn’t want to deal with all the manual effort involved with listing on Etsy and entering orders that came from Etsy. (We had to hand key all orders from Etsy into our order management software.)

For all those worried that people want to shop on Etsy instead of an individual designer site, this is proof that people will shop where the trust is. People shop on Etsy because they’re an established brand that has built trust. You too can become an established brand and build trust and you don’t need Etsy to make that happen.

4. Feedback is not only on Etsy. If you’re an ill-behaved merchant, customers will make it known. They can do it on Twitter, blogs, Yelp, etc. Reputation management is not a concern only for Etsy sellers. So with that in mind, be good or your misdeeds will get out.

On the other hand, I think there are some customers who abuse Etsy’s feedback feature and use it to behave badly and get away with it. This is one of the things that helped push my company off of Etsy. We had too many customers behaving as though buying from our shop was a charitable activity rather than a retail transaction. We had customers throw fits when custom made items were not shipped immediately (despite our clear indications about the time frame we needed to make the custom made items). We had customers scream as us for canceling orders they didn’t pay for.

There are crazies everywhere, and we sometimes get some tough customers on our own website, but not at the same rate that we saw on Etsy. People don’t typically think it’s okay to behave this way if they’re dealing with Amazon or Banana Republic, but they think it’s okay on Etsy.

They get this idea in part because they know they can leave their hate mail right on your own shop website if they don’t get their way and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t remove their rant, however unreasonable, and you can’t even respond to it.

The other reason I see people getting the idea that they can misbehave on Etsy is because a lot of Etsy shops act like they’re a charity. I see forum posts like “buy my stuff so I can afford diapers for my baby” and “If I don’t sell soon I will be foreclosed. BUY MY STUFF! 50% OFF EVERYTHING MUST GO!!! MAKE ME AN OFFER!” When people who sell on Etsy go around behaving this way, it gives the impression that it’s a site full of unprofessional starving artists who will take any scrap of business they can get, no matter how abusive the customer that comes with it. This all lowers the entire tone of the site in my opinion. It drives down prices, encourages bad behavior from customers and makes everyone selling on Etsy look bad.

What do you think? Are you excited about Circles as a buyer or seller? Does being on or off Etsy effect your concerns about reputation management? If you sell on Etsy, do you worry about the impact the Etsy brand has on the brand you’re trying to build?