Section 1: Understanding your customer and the market
01 – Introduction
10 Sections | 1 Quiz 03 – Being remarkable
10 Sections 04 – Researching your customer
9 Sections 05 – Understanding why vegans buy
9 Sections Section 2: Your vegan marketing toolbox
06 – Your vegan marketing toolbox
5 Sections 07 – Creating your vegan brand
9 Sections 08 – Your website
8 Sections 09 – Google
9 Sections 10 – Email marketing
7 Sections 11 – Creating and using ‘content’
7 Sections 12 – Social media: paid
9 Sections 13 – Social media: free
10 Sections 14 – LinkedIn
8 Sections 15 – Networking, events and fairs
10 Sections 16 – Offline marketing
9 Sections 18 – PR and getting your business in the news
12 Sections 19 – Working with influencers
7 Sections Section 3: Creating and carrying out your marketing plan
20 – Creating your marketing plan
7 Sections 21 – Creating your marketing funnel
11 Sections 22 – Creating your marketing mix
7 Sections 23 – Setting your timeline and tasks
6 Sections 
Recap, resources and support
I feel like I’ve done a really job of this, so you can definitely use me as a case study! My business is more of a service than a product, and I figured out early on in the game that my target customer should be me 15 years ago, who hated exercise with a vengeance and wasn’t yet vegan. When you offer any kind of coaching, it’s a good strategy.
And it’s worked! Most of my customers aren’t vegan (yet), and I do consistantly get the feedback from clients that they struggled to keep up with other fitness programs but love mine, and can’t wait to come back even if my workouts did leave them sore for a few days. And I can see why, when I was at the beginning stages of my fitness journey, I definitely valued advice more from people who had to work hard to get fit than I did from people who have been fit for their whole life.
David, I know my product is remarkable. I also know what makes my books remarkable. It’s the first of its kind, complete, vegan trilogy. Exciting and thrilling, fast-paced, ‘can’t put it down’ books. They answer the key problem of having most other books present embedded casual speciesism/ animal cruelty or anti vegan sentiments in them. Those things can put vegans off reading wherever they are in their journey. The liberation Trilogy has none of that, but rather a vegan undertone and message. It is suitable for vegans AND pre vegans to read, and can even be used as “silent” outreach tool with non suspecting readers.
My questions is – with regards to ‘How can I charge my customers in a different way that will suit them better?’ – I sometimes tell people – don’t pay me, donate to an animal sanctuary instead (“Pay it forward”). It doesn’t happen often, and usually only with people from New Zealand (I don’t sell the books via my website, rather direct people to the retailers – but sometimes people around me want to purchase from me directly). It’s not very economical, but it makes my books feel more compassionate. What is your view on that?
Thanks,
Maya
Hey Maya (and apologies, I missed this first time around!).
Yes, this payment idea can really be leveraged. Instead of just leaving people to donate to an animal sanctuary, you would instead link up with a specific charity or sanctuary and give people the option for the payment to go there instead.
Take a Look at UK clothing company Viva La Vegan. They have specific clothing ranges where the profit from those ranges go to specific vegan causes. For example this link up with Beneath The Woods sanctuary:
https://viva-la-vegan.com/product/womens-sweatshirt-no-little-piggies-to-market/
They then do joint promotions with that charity, so the animal sanctuary promotes the team-up to their mailing list giving Viva La Vegan more visibility amongst potential customers and in return it’s a fund-raising exercise to the sanctuary at no cost to them. So I would start by approaching the sanctuaries direct and talk about linking up in a similar way, run joint promotions getting them to publicise the books on their websites too.
David, I’m still having a lot of trouble finding a business that I want to do that is “remarkable”. The main reason for this is that in reality, I lead a very very simple and minimal life. I dont need hardly anything, and I can hardly see myself elevating myself to sell something that I wouldnt use myself.
I have for some years now created a vegan newsletter called ‘wise vystopia’ which is all my own creative work. But I have had just a little interest, other than mostly from people who just wanted to support me and didnt really read it, even though I am proud of my work and feel that my product is quite unique. Problem is, I guess, that most people dont pay for reading these days. It’s a tough market. How would you suggest I approach all these problems? How can I find a business or product that I am genuinely passionate about?
Hey Mark, and great that you’re now starting to think about this.
Asking for people to pay to read seems like it’s getting harder, but just as many books are being published, newspapers are still being written and the niche magazine sector is still going strong. What has changed is WHAT people expect to pay for and we already have lots of tools to fill our passive time for free.
If you take a look at Vegan Business Tribe, we ran VBT for free for the first 8 months so that we could build an audience and then find out what that audience would be willing to pay for. We thought it was going to be ‘content’ – so we created lots of weekly articles and videos and then came back to our community and said: ‘you’ve been consuming all this content for free, how much would you pay for it?’. And the resounding answer was ‘we love your content, and we’d pay exactly nothing!’
Initially, we were flabbergasted by this because we put so much effort into our content and it was genuinely good! But we kept talking to our audience and asked them, well what WOULD you pay for? And the answer was ‘We love your content, but that is what BROUGHT us here. What we actually want is a solution to our problem. We want a community, we want to be able to meet other vegan business owners, we want to be able to ask you questions’ and so that’s what became the paid tier of Vegan Business Tribe.
No-one will pay money unless it solves a problem for them. And you don’t know what that problem is until you build an audience that you can get to know intimately and then work out what problems they have that you can solve. Too often, we go out there and try and build a business that sells the thing we want to make (and I’ve done that many times!!) when what you need to do is bring together a group of people and then find out what it is that they want to buy. And the kicker is, it’s probably very closely related to the thing you want to sell.
Listen to Episode 22 of the podcast where I talk about this in a lot of detail, related to our own journey with Vegan Business Tribe, I think you’ll find it really useful in where you are right now!
https://veganbusinesstribe.com/022-how-we-launched-vegan-business-tribe-and-what-you-can-learn-from-it/
D 🌱💚
This is gold!! Thank you! Loved reading through the questions/comments below, and your answers to them David. I am kind of where Anastasia was – yes, health coaching is still relatively new here in SA, and being a vegan health coach will be a novelty, but I struggle to come up with what would give me that edge. I gravitate towards creating a movement/having a mission (based on my own health journey) but I also would like to look into adding live blood analysis to my packages, as a starting point and physically being able to show where they are on a cellular level. I feel like I am still floating in outer space, whereas clarity and focus can only be found right down on Earth, on the beach, in the individual grains of sand (that’s how far removed I feel hahaha). Any words of wisdom would be so welcome, and I will also throw this into the group sessions.
Hello VBT.. Spent a good half a day on this yesterday and whilst I do have a few unique things about MAWish, I am really struggling to see where we are remarkable and I know that I so important. Any help would be so appreciated and perhaps it is one to take to a VBT clinic or networking event? I have worked through the sheet roughly as below.. sometimes coming from a different eye, you can spot some remarkability!
Defining what makes MAWish remarkable
1) what problems can my product solve
MAWish range has been designed to boost the nutritional value of everyday recipes, both sweet and savoury. Each blend has been formulated to aid a specific challenge e.g:
Liquid Energy – Sustained natural energy
Liquid Gold – Anti-inflammatory and immunity. To help prevent injury or illness but also give your body a boost when you are under the weather
Liquid Balance – A highly nutritious blend made with Maca – may help improve your mood as well as reduce the symptoms of menopause.
2) Selling
MAWish offers products in tubes, refill bags for tubes or pouches depending on the customer. IN terms of charging, our website offers subscriptions at a reduced price per product, or we offer wholesale pricing for bulk purchasing
3) Mission
Educate people that food is a functional tool that can be used to nourish the body
Cultivate an awareness around where our food comes from
Deliver maximum nutritional value with minimal environmental impact
Promise never to use any artificial flavours, fillers or sweeteners or make false claims
4) proving to customers I understand them
I am an AfN registered Nutritionist with experience working with clients from a whole range of backgrounds. I am also a Nutritionist for Lambeth’s Tier two weight management programme and offer healthy living advice to families above a healthy weight.
5) Unique Product
The blends primary use is as a latte (coffee alternative).
With many hot beverages in café’s being laden with sugar, MAWish blends are completely sugar free and made with organic ingredients that will benefit and work with the body not against it. I have used my knowledge to create the blends in ratios that maximise the bioavailability of the active ingredients, meaning our body can absorb them better.
The one thing clients always say is ‘I don’t know how to improve my diet’, and being so versatile, the MAWish range really offers customers the change to bring back creativity in the kitchen and add to a variety of dishes to boost the nutritional value.
Hey Caroline, and that’s really good work you’ve done there. We need to be able to step back from our own businesses and see it from a different view to really find out what’s unique about what we do, and often it’s not what WE think it is.
A couple of thoughts for you:
All the points you have listed above are GREAT but in no way remarkable. Would I go home and tell Lisa all about this company I’d just found that offered a subscription service or that wanted to educate customers about nutrition? No, because they are all really good things but nothing which makes it the highlight of my day.
A lot of companies who are remarkable are so not necessarily because of their product. They are backed up by a great product but it’s their founder’s story, or their mission, or their brand, or a campaign that is the thing that gets them shared.
You mention that the product’s primary use is as a coffee alternative, but oddly that doesn’t come across on the website? I wonder if in the effort to get across EVERYTHING the blend can be used for, you’re missing leading with the thing it’s actually BEST used for and will resonate the most with customers. Yes it’s a versatile product, but you have about 3 seconds of my attention to get over what the product is. When I gave up caffeine many years ago, I really struggled to find an alternative to the hot drinks I’d been having for more than 30 years and I would have tried something like this.
This is the strong kind of message that you can build everything else around. For example: caffeine isn’t good for you, it contributes to anxiety, heart issues and other health issues but we’re addicted. MAWish gives you an alternative to that and we’re on a mission to break your coffee addiction! (your primary message). We can all relate to that, sign me up to the protest march!!
And it also happens to be full of all this really good stuff (secondary message), we deliver it in this really ethical way too (tertiary message), and it’s also really versatile for other uses in the kitchen (quaternary message).
As you keep going over the next couple of chapters you’ll learn more about talking to your customers and finding out why they buy your product and how to come up with a message that connects with them – so keep going. This is all really important stuff, but it doesn’t come easy or straight away. You CAN build a business without being remarkable but it will always be an uphill struggle. Instead of people sharing your message you will have to pay for social media ads. Instead of magazines wanting to write about you, you will need to buy adverts and advertorial features.
David
Thanks so much for the strong advice David, super helpful and I will get back in the marketing mindset this week! This will really help shape things and as you say, I may need to rethink my primary messaging!
I guess this may be easier for me as a student as I am not thinking about the whole business model and how I will earn from it but, I think I have had a brain wave…………………. but is it remarkable??? I am currently working on my interview for VIDW and planning promotional material with Jess from square peg, but when it quiets down a little I would love to bounce some ideas off you and Lisa.
Get booked onto a business clinic Sadie, we’d love to have you on one and then you don’t just get us to bounce ideas off but other members too!!
I’ve spent a couple of days working on what I think makes my business remarkable. While I’m still honing it all, I do have some fairly solid ideas. I’m not sure how this question and answer thing works. Would it be useful or appropriate to share these ideas here on this forum? Or should I just keep them in my notebook and use them as my basis for moving forward with the class?
Hey John, and apologies – I missed this comment the first time around!
Ideas always benefit from the disinfectant of daylight in my experience!! I know a few members have organised brainstorming Zoom sessions through the Slack community to throw around ideas and get feedback. When you feel you have a ‘shape’ it might be worth pulling a few people together (either from our community or people whose opinions you value and trust from your own) and do the same.
I’ll be part of your business clinic on June 2. It might be a good time for me to bring that up then.
By the way, I’m giving a lot of deep thought to this class. Besides feeling like I can now express that which makes my business remarkable, I have also spent a fair number of hours analyzing five of my clients, and using that information to create three client archetypes that I will use to pursue as I progress in the class.
This is the difference between getting serious about your business and coming at it with real purpose – rather than just running it as if it was a hobby or you were someone elses’ employee! Can’t wait to see what you’ve got!
Really struggling to find the remarkability of my online course. I mean obviously, I think my online vegan cooking courses are excellent, top-notch, solving problems haha. But to find a remarkable factor that is better than other top-notch plant-based course providers hmmmm. I am barely getting off the starting block.
In person it is different. As a retreat chef or running plant-based cooking retreats people always bought my books after eating the food. I consistently got re-booked as the goto chef because everyone adored the food. I rarely catered for vegan retreats, but they still wanted me. The food spoke volumes, people like my energy, I adored connecting with guests. Just very passionate about serving vibrant vegan food so it sort of rippled out and was contagious.
Running courses online, however, is a whole different world.
Nothing I come up with is remarkable or original. Well, maybe one thing BUT I am not sure I even want that to be my niche. The only thing that is different is going SUPER-nichey, like if I focus on mindfulness in the kitchen, meditation in the kitchen, having a harmonious, calm space in the kitchen. It suits my energy but is not my main focus (even though I do it myself and teach it on retreats) because I think most people don’t care about it. I went vegan 27 years ago, overnight, because I had a profound spiritual awakening and felt the interconnectivity of all sentient life, the unity consciousness of all things. It inspired me to go vegan overnight, to develop delicious soulful recipes that everyone loves. This is really the only remarkable thing that is different to other vegan cooking courses providers. To me though, it’s no big deal. I also think it might be meaningless and off-putting to many people. The yoga and mindful communities might like it though if I wanted to tap into a niche market (somehow, if that’s possible).
I am not even sure which audience I want to reach. Just people who want to make easy, delicious, and satisfying plant-based food. Those people. A real stumbling block. No idea how to bridge that gap with everyday folk.
Apart from that, I am super excited about studying your marketing course. Thank you hugely! I am like ‘yes, yes, yes’ until it comes to looking at my own product.
Hey Anastasia, you’ve just prompted a brilliant debate in the Vegan Business Tribe office with myself and Lisa that we should have recorded and sent over to you!
I love that you’re starting to think about this, because it is really important. Businesses DON’T have to be remarkable, they can be just like 500 others and still do ‘ok’, but promoting that business will always be an uphill struggle. You will have to pay for promotion instead of people inviting you onto their show, you will have to buy adverts instead of magazines wanting to write about you, and you will have to be the one telling people all about it instead of other people sharing your message on your behalf.
You will find yourself in direct competition with EVERYONE else currently offering vegan cooking courses, and the new ones that are launched every day.
You are right, mindfulness (and how cooking holistically links with wellbeing, meditation and energies) will be meaningless and off-putting to many people – which is why all of a sudden I got really excited when I read your response. Because to other people, it will be absolutely CRUCIAL to them, it will be the course they have been waiting for. I mean, how many people do you think a vegan marketing course will put off?! Most people I hope, but they are not the people we know we’re going to really connect with. For others, it’s the VERY thing that solves their exact problem, it could have been tailor-made for them. And to them, no other marketing course could ever compete.
Lisa and I have had our own journey in the kitchen. It’s something we’ve had to learn ourselves through putting together a number of different sources to teach us how what we eat (and HOW we eat) affects both our health, spirit and wellbeing. It’s a journey we’ve had to go through on our own and you should have seen Lisa light up when she heard about the idea of learning cooking alongside well-being and being taught about how the two fit together holistically.
Products that don’t put anyone off excite no one either. No one will absolutely love something that is made for the masses, it just becomes a commodity. That’s why niche companies tend to do so much better, they are making products a certain group of people LOVE and simply can’t live without, rather than something a large group of people can take or leave.
I’ve mentioned before that Lisa and I follow The Happy Pear. They are extremely successful in both their food products and also their online courses, they have racked up over 20M views on YouTube. They have just run their Happy Mind challenge:
https://www.happypearcourses.com/the-happy-mind-challenge that shows they are starting to think in the same direction.
More and more people are examining their relationships with food and how that ties in with wellbeing – mentally, spiritually and physically. And it’s interesting that The Happy Pear don’t lead with veganism and plant-based although they are a strong vegan brand. They just say that if you are invested in making a happier, healthy you, then you need to cut out these things (long list of animal products) because they are really bad for your body.
I think the same is true for your spirit: Eat from the garden, not the graveyard. How can you foster positive energies if you are putting something that was killed in distress into your body?
So, could you take a community of people through this journey together? Could you show people how wellbeing comes from a truly holistic approach of mind, body, spirit and FOOD!?
It’s also really important that you don’t spend lots of time, energy and money building something you haven’t yet proved. Later in the course we talk about testing and creating a minimum viable product: how can you get something out to people really quickly and without spending any money to test out an idea and see if there’s an audience for it BEFORE putting time, energy and money into creating something which is unproven?
Can you gather a group of people together and run an online session with them talking about mindfulness in the kitchen to see if it’s something people really connect with? Start with a one-off test session. Make it two way, let them ask questions. Don’t put time and effort into building anything until you’ve seen if people DO actually connect with it. And also see if they connect with each other because COMMUNITY is a huge part of building anything successful online. Ask at the end if this is something people would like to know more about, would they want to come on a journey with you and each other to be taught about how food, the kitchen and mindfulness all come together?
And the answer MAY be a resounding no! And that’s good too. We’ve done similar exercises with Vegan Business Tribe where we thought we knew what people wanted, so tested it and found out we were completely wrong. But the feedback we got from that then told us what people actually did want (or monthly pre-recorded member’s Q&A became our weekly live business clinics for example).
Keep turning all this over in your mind, as it’s the start of building really strong foundations for your business moving forward. And I’m really glad it’s making you think!
David
Excellent. Thanks for the great comment and food for thought.
Just expressing earlier it allowed something to shift. I’ll keep holding the space open for the right thing to land.
It’s funny, when I taught the in-person workshops I always used a mindful approach… so it’s sparking all sorts off in my brain now. These are brilliant things to contemplate. I felt so frustrated, but now the possibilities are exciting. There is definitely something calling and I’m probably am being called back to my original story and inspiration in a way.
I would have loved to have been in on that convo in the Vegan Business Tribe office this morning!
Anastasia
I’ve just checked out the Happy Pear link… those guys really are awesome and in a league of their own. In fits of laughter here knowing that they have gone down the mindful path. Oh!!!! I wasn’t expecting that.
I think I might mean something super nichey though. Really good reminder to find what else is out there.
We’re a classic case in that when we started, making vegan cheese was remarkable – not the case now! I’m stumped by this exercise and will be getting input from our staff at our team meeting next week to see what emerges.
Hey Alice, and that is a really important hurdle to recognise. If I do a quick search on The Vegan Kind Supermarket (which is based here in the UK) for vegan cheese, I’ve got a choice of over 300 products I can buy. 279 of those are soya free, 235 are nut-free:
https://www.thevegankindsupermarket.com/search?shopify_products%5Bquery%5D=cheese
Your cheese being vegan is great – but it’s no longer a point of difference. If it’s the ONLY thing that you are relying on to make you remarkable, then you are always going to leave yourself open to someone doing it bigger, better or cheaper. You will be fighting for every sale against your competitors – some who will come up with bigger budgets.
But remember, as the examples in the course, often it’s not the product itself which is the remarkable aspect. Having a first-mover advantage is important, but sometimes it’s your MISSION that makes you remarkable; sometimes it’s your STORY and your people which makes customers share you with their friends.
What do YOU have that makes those 279 other cheeses not even be considered competition to you any more? And that may not be a quick or easy discovery.
Make sure you report back after your team session!
David
Also sitting here thinking that absolutely nothing I’m doing is remarkable haha! Time to sit down and put my remarkable thinking cap on!
That really is the whole reason behind this section, and why it’s at the start. If you can truly find something that makes people unable to resist remarking on you and telling others about you, then everything else you do from here on in becomes so much easier.
My customers find my business and product remarkable, we sell out every day and have a big line, over 42K followers on Instagram.
The product: organic sourdough baked fresh, still warm when you pick it up, you can see the whole process going on in the bakery when you’re in store – the baker doesn’t leave at 8am, the bread is just coming out and we bake all day for maximum freshness. Zero-food-waste. Compostable packaging – bread and baked goods at the supermarket are always plastic-wrapped. The only vegan bakery for over 100km.
But when I try to get on vegan podcast shows, or featured in a vegan publication, they are not interested in us! Victoria Moran told me we’re not extreme enough! If we start getting arrested at vigils and all that, who will run the bakery when we’re banged up?
Veg News ignore all my press releases about how we plant a tree for every coffee we sell by partnering with Trees for the Future, yet they go nuts for Starbucks talking about maybe going plant-based in the next ten years! How do we appeal to vegan media? They only want to talk about KFC and Macdonalds. They are not interested in artisan farm-to-table high quality unique offerings like us!
Hi Natasha, and well done on building such a great business. However, being a SUCCESSFUL business does not necessarily make a business REMARKABLE. It’s frustrating because we all know our own companies are amazing, we have our customers telling us how great our products are and we pour our heart and soul into them… but then when we try and get wider recognition no-one seems interested. And THAT’s how we find out if we just have just found a deal of success, or if we are truly remarkable.
It’s not always an easy thing to get to grips with. I’ve known some great companies that haven’t got the recognition they deserved because they haven’t framed a story or created an angle that got people to remember and share their story above everything else they did that day. Tree planting is very noble but in no way innovative any more. I’ve met anyone from soap companies to vegan web hosting that plant trees from the funds of every sale – and many people see large businesses paying for tree-planting to offset their activity as a ‘lazy’ way to try and buy some ethical credibility.
What if instead of planting trees, your team volunteered for a local animal shelter for a day a month? Take a look at how The Foodshare Project partners with Beneath The Woods Sanctuary to make sure that food that would have gone to waste feeds the residents.
Or what other part of your story can you lead with which is truly remarkable? A good product isn’t remarkable. Amazing service isn’t remarkable. Lots of customers isn’t remarkable. They are just good, and ‘good’ doesn’t get your company shared.
Whatever we think, McDonalds bringing out a vegan product IS remarkable right now and that’s why it gets covered. It’s the equivalent of Dracula saying he’s going plant-based. It’s won’t, however, be remarkable in 12 / 24 months when every fast food chain has their own vegan menu.
You will especially find Chapter 18 on PR and getting your business in the news helpful. But again, the more work you do on finding (or creating) the remarkable angle to your business, the easier getting the news to engage will be!
Don’t be disheartened in any way. What you have described means that you’ve already got the business to back up your claims and you’re building from a really strong place. Your brand and visuals are great and professional. You’ve got all the ‘seeds’ there – but what’s going to make me want to tell my partner your story over dinner? So that is the challenge for you whilst going through this course, working out the angle which means that Veg News will be calling you for an interview, instead of your emails going unanswered. It’s not always the case that your company isn’t remarkable, it’s that you haven’t worked out exactly how to show that yet.
Please keep us updated with your progress on this!
David ?
Thanks David – lots of vegan food for thought here! I’ll keep you posted…
UPDATE: we reflected on how “unremarkable” we are and after visiting a local animal sanctuary who are suffering financially from the lack of tours and fundraising activities this year, we are going to add dog treats “for the animals in every way” to our bakery’s offerings.
We got a custom cookie cutter made with our logo on and are about to begin testing recipes. 100% of profits from all sales of these doggie treats will be donated to local animal sanctuaries.
Doesn’t the universe work in mysterious ways?
We just got hit with a bunch of messages from a Vancouver collective of vegan businesses who want to know if we will participate in a fundraiser for “Giving Tuesday”, to raise money for a local animal sanctuary (https://happyherd.org/).
Now we have all these businesses co-promoting us, the sanctuary were most surprised to hear of our doggie treat charity menu item. They’ve already been in touch to get our logo for their media platforms.
We feeling a little more remarkable already!
I think you may have missed Natasha’s update below, (the message was to herself not you) it’s worth a read.
Hey Dan and thank you for keeping an eye out on the comments! I think we actually spoke with Natasha on Zoom around the same time this was posted and we talked about her doggy treats in person – but I should have also put a note here to sign-post others too!
Natasha and Ed are in an interesting position of running a vegan business in a place where there are no vegans – but all claim to be animal lovers! So not only is it supporting the sanctuary but it’s also letting them open up conversations with their local customers about cruelty-free. They already have a personal story to tell, but they are creating their own vegan story also that sets them apart from just being a vegan bakery. Which although awesome, unfortunately isn’t that unique any more.
My next challenge to Natasha and Ed, if they are reading, is to start leveraging their brand, skills, following and personalities online beyond the confines of their bakery and small community. They have already got the brand (take a look at http://edsbred.com/) and we’re still looking forward to a Bake with Ed session!
David ?
I’m struggling with this. Its just brought home to me how unremarkable my business actually is. I thought I had a decent business model with a fairly strong USP till I started doing this chapter!
My question is this – how can I be remarkable when nothing I do fits into defining what makes my business remarkable? The only thing is I’m possibly solving a problem but that’s a stretch.
Now, I know this might seem like an odd thing to say – but I’m really glad this chapter challenged you! The problem we’ve all got is that our businesses are REMARKABLE to us (and sometimes our family and friends) but out in the big wide world, just being vegan isn’t enough to make people stop and take notice any more. Especially so with the large houses (I know you are in textiles yourself) also now moving their focus to wool-yarn alternatives to create some quite innovative weaves for people to work with.
Your challenge is finding what that one thing is that makes you remarkable – which makes people stop and take photos, share you on social media because they have never seen anything like you. This is when your business markets itself.
I’ve seen some really cool things being done with knitwear. Not a vegan example, but think about SMEG fridges. They released a fridge that had a Union Jack design on the front, it was a statement fridge. No-one bought it, consumers ended up buying one of their more traditional models, but that one design became iconic and got a lot of press coverage because it really stood out. What one product can you make that becomes your statement product that everyone will share, even if they then go on to buy one of your more traditional offerings?
If you don’t feel you can make your product remarkable, then can it be your story, your brand or your mission? It can take a lot of work, but hopefully you can see what a difference it makes to vegan businesses if they can find something unique beyond just being vegan.
D ?
I’ve thought long and hard….it is my product., but it is how I sell it. After talking to the husbandito he did remark that nothing I am doing really reflects my personality – he did comment its all a bit boring and po-faced. He is hard to please as he is the complete antithesis of who my market probably is. In summary:
That’s a really important conversation that you’ve had with hubby Samantha!
I am going to challenge you further though. You say your product is remarkable. How? Why? If I put your product in a line up with other things people can buy which will fix the same problem for them (you make knitwear – so e.g. a cold head!) what makes yours so remarkable?
What would make me tell my partner all about it over dinner that evening because I know they would be amazed?
THAT’s the level of remarkability you’re aiming for.
D ?
I don’t know your business, but you said one of the remarkable things is slowness…. how is that remarkable? Is it because everyone else uses machines? How long do you spend? Because you care so much. My friend hand made/crocheted my children sea creatures using vegan wool and they are so intricately made and perfect…it must have taken 100 hours, and they arrived in time for Christmas…..we know she loves them.
They are absolutely remarkable. I have a friend who is a wedding dress maker. I nearly bought my dress with her (I didn’t really even want a dress because I was pregnant and I didn’t buy because I live abroad and would need a fitting too close to the wedding – regretted it) but she is remarkable because she is like you say, timeless, homemade, hand stitched and 100% bespoke.
I wasn’t going for a traditional dress, I was going for classic, timeless, fit a changing belly, kind sweet person to measure my waist line, personal.
She showed me on Instagram little outfits she made for her own baby, and my sister was pregnant with twins, it was lockdown…..I’d have paid premium….but she was on maternity. Normally with baby grows I’d go for cheap/cheerful/novelty but I needed more and she prompted the perfect gift.