Mad About Scent Business Start Up



Posted: Sunday, April 09, 2006

by
Mad About Scent

MAD ABOUT SCENT













Probably one of the hardest decisions we had to make was taking the giant leap forward and going all out to start our company, Mad About Scent.

We toyed with the idea of setting up in business for years but never seemed to ever do anything about it, until one day we just said, "Right, That's it, we're doing it"



Our passion had always been scents and smells. Anything fragrant was always appealing to us and it was this passion that would form the basis of our business. It had to be something that we knew about and equally something that we cared for.

We started putting a product range together and slowly our company started to look like it might be able to compete in the ever growing 'Natural Handmade Cosmetics' industry. Up to now, companies such as 'Lush' have been dominating the sector.

The trend for natural products has taken off with now more and more customers turning towards this sector.

The customers we attract seem to be people who want something different from the run of the mill cosmetics that you’d find at your local Shopping Mall.

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with these, in fact far from it. The point I make is that most of our customers just know their products and what is beneficiary to them. We always figured that if we could get over this first hurdle of making sure we could provide customers with products that they wanted and products that were right for them, then we had a ticket to ride and would be able to compete in the market place.



Another thing we had to do when starting out was to get as much exposure as we possibly could to enable prospective customers to know about us. We hoped we’d be able to do this all online in the first instance but this wasn’t possible. We knew we needed more than this so decided that we’d take Mad About Scent to the High Street, or maybe not!!! We never had the budget for a High St retail unit so we opted for the next best thing. A market stall. Yes a market stall. We secured a small pitch on a local Saturday market and introduced our product ranges to the public. Nobody was selling our product and we had quite a lot of interest from day 1. After a while we got more and more customers coming back to us and we started getting more and more popular. Let me make one thing clear though, we were not making bucket loads of money from doing this. The sole purpose of this venture was to drive customers toward our web site and promote it further. We were handing out details of our site with every sale we made and plugging it as much as possible. Our web traffic increased by the week and we also secured deliveries to locals who didn’t want to come to market that week. Our game plan was slowly coming together. This was the direction we wanted to be heading in. We’ve always dreamed of having a High Street unit, but we would also like the idea of running a thriving ecommerce web site with lower overheads. That alone helps keep costs down. For both ourselves and the customer.



To advise any prospective candidates in starting a business, we would say simply this: - Do your homework, do your homework and do your homework. So many people seem to want to jump into things without researching their product properly, only to later fall flat on their face. This can be avoided by simply doing all the research prior to even spending one penny. Learn from other people’s mistakes and not your own. It's a lot cheaper.



All in all, there are lots of things that will need to taken into consideration both prior and during your business venture. But nothing can take the satisfaction away from being your own boss and providing your customers with quality, worth while products that keep them coming back for more.



Mad About Scent is still very much an acorn at this stage, but an acorn that we are adamant will grow into a Huge Mighty Oak.



Thanks for reading



Mad About Scent Team



You can view our site at www.madaboutscent.co.uk



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