You create beautiful designs for friends and family, but now you want to start a business and make money. Who will buy your gift baskets?
A magical beginning
The decision to start a gift basket business is easy. It’s an enterprise that combines your love of creating something beautiful by hand with earning revenue that funds your lifestyle.
Deciding how to market your gift baskets and developing a plan that uncovers the people and companies willing to buy is not so easy. In fact, that’s the part where many designers fail. They end up closing their businesses and selling the inventory for pennies if it sells at all.
The dream starts here
Before you begin making gift baskets, you have to think beyond the designing part.
1. Who will buy?
2. Where are buyers located?
3. What’s their marital status?
4. Do they own or rent their home?
5. What types of jobs do they have?
These basic questions lead to other questions, and notice that no question is answered with a yes or no response. You must be able to uncover your customer model so you don’t spin your wheels trying to sell to people who are not interested.
This was my initial dilemma. I displayed my gift baskets at an outdoor event and learned that while people were interested, they were not going to be my main buyers.
One woman did buy from me a week after seeing the display. When delivering the gift basket, I talked with her about her profession and the job’s location. That led me to corporate sales which were more lucrative than selling to individuals.
That one conversation narrowed my focus and helped me understand my true buyers, which I document in detail in the industry’s best-selling book, How to Start a Home-Based Gift Basket Business. The gift basket course I teach, Start Your Own Gift Basket Business, also reveals how to find your perfect target market.
Know your buyers
It’s important to start making gift baskets on a solid foundation. If you make them as a hobby, you’re not trying to build a business, and that’s fine. However, if earning six-figure revenue is your goal, it’s critical that you know who will buy before you make the first basket.
Also, recognize that this business isn’t one that will earn you a six-figure payday overnight. You need to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head for months, and sometimes years, while you build this business.
Any get-rich-quick articles you’ve read or stories you’ve heard are unfounded, because if gift baskets were that easy, the field would be too crowded for you to enter.
Make smart decisions in the planning stages about making and selling gift baskets so you don’t waste time and money chasing a dream that will never come true.
