On Thursday I headed to the City of Sails for two days of meetings, cold calling and basically getting nüdel under the noses of some of Auckland's coolest retail stores. I have to say it was a definite success. Just meeting people face to face makes such a big difference when trying to sell your wares - emails and phone calls (even if they go well) are too easy for people to forget/disregard whether they mean to or not. Meeting in person they can see you're a real human with passion for your product, they can hear the fervor in your voice and see the twinkle in your eye. That, or they just want to get this excitable person out of their store and stop their customers from feeling awkward so they'll say yes to anything...
I pounded the pavement for most of Thursday and Friday and got very positive feedback, infact everybody liked nüdel, with only one shop that didn't see it working in their store. I some times wonder whether they just don't grasp my marketing to women idea, but after pushing it and they say "women just don't walk out of here with much guy's stuff at all" then I guess it's not my product, it's their customers. Can't win 'em all! I came away with a nice cross section of retail outlets to stock nüdel - IN.D.F which is a new 'appointment only fashion studio', Jet Store,
Marvel Menswear and lastly Aduki, which I'm really excited about.
One thing that became rapidly apparent as I roamed the inner city streets; with these limited runs of 250 units, I can't really go ahead and take on a whole bunch of stores because I simply won't be able to supply them all. I guess that's the draw back with a boutique type product and this early on in the game. When I can afford to, I'll have to get them made in larger quantities while still maintaining the 250 units with one particular artist's print.
It was great to see Auckland again (I lived there for about 4 years not long ago), see some great comedy, catch up with mates, visit the CoCo PR family and meet some awesome fashiony entrepreneurs who really inspired me.
