Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Homepage Hocus Pocus

The website was the single most important thing. All along I knew this, and the resulting procrastination was severe. First impressions count. Because my business was to be solely on line, the biggest influence on visitors would be how I looked on-monitor. Of course, you have to have good copy—nothing substitutes for that. But your home page says so much, not necessarily in words but in style.

Studying my competitors’ websites meticulously, I hated each and every one of them the entire time for having a share of the market that couldn’t yet see me even if they tried. What was surprising about the homepages of the most popular mineral makeup websites—the ones showing up consistently in the left-hand column of Google searches—was the proliferation of bells and whistles: ads, blinking discount offers, seals of approval from official entities of one kind or another, imprints of logo designers, website creators, and hosting companies.

But was it this that made them popular? Instead, I settled on the look of sites in other areas in the Beauty category – the sleeker sites of small companies selling clothing, skin care, and giftware.

I still surf my competitors’ sites, at least weekly, in part to satisfy myself that I made the right decisions, or what I think were the right decisions. Today I continue to get glowing reviews about how beautiful my site is. These are not from friends and relatives, and at some point you just gotta believe. Weigh in, anyone!

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Social Media. Wazzat? Part Two

Some time ago I found a website called Squidoo, a place where anyone can write a mini-webpage on any topic. Mine is entitled “All Things Mineral Makeup” (www.squidoo.com/alicecosmetics), and the hyperlinks in it have sent more clicks to my Alice Cosmetics website than some of the pay-per-click ads I’ve done. Squidoo, it turns out, is a social networking site. Some of its peers are LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and many, many more, each with its own format and concept. These sites typically include member profiles that give potential customers (or friends, or those with similar hobbies, etc.) a peek at who you are, what you like, what you are all about. And blogs are an integral part of this internet-relationship-building.

Social networking, I learned, is a new way to communicate with your target audience, a way of “having a conversation” with those who, increasingly, appreciate knowing you in a more personal way. As I learned in a webinar I attended recently, “the most credible source of information about a company is now ‘a person like me,’ which has risen dramatically to surpass doctors and academic experts for the first time.” This according to the Annual Edelman Trust Barometer, published by Edelman, the leading independent global PR firm.

The bonus? Hyperlinks on blogs and social networking sites also mean precious “backlinks” to your website, one of the things Google loves to see when it ranks your website.

Social network marketing can be a lot of work, but I’m a convert. Try it and let me know what you think.

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Social Media. Wazzat? Part One

I will never write a blog, I said to myself. Why would anyone want to hear my rambling thoughts about anything? Then I found out, and in doing so was introduced to the whole new world of internet marketing called social media, sometimes social networking, or, most appropriate for my purposes, social network marketing.

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Logo Agony

I’m a designer’s worst nightmare. With a background in graphic design, marketing, and corporate communications, I had particular and robust ideas about what I wanted. Okay, I’ll admit to being a recovering perfectionist as well, and doubtless that contributed to the lengthiness of the process. The actual passage of time was perhaps not unusual, but the many fits and starts and the angst surrounding them are unforgettable.

Entrepreneurs setting out to start a new company, in my opinion, would be wise to set aside a hefty budget for graphic identity. I did not. I wanted world-class design, however, and that is where Logoworks came in. Headquartered in Utah, Logoworks caters to small businesses. It designs logos, business cards, and websites inexpensively by using top-notch designers who never have to actually speak with clients. Instead, all communication takes place via formatted e-mail and account coordinators who do have to speak with clients.

What gave me pause was the distance (Cape Cod is more than a walk to the beach from Utah) and, more important, the consequent lack of day-to-day rubbing of elbows. In the end, I came away thinking the Logoworks formula is actually superior to working with one local designer, who would have had competing priorities. At each step of the way, it is spelled out how the process will work and how long turnaround times will be for each revision round.

The package I purchased from Logoworks included unlimited revision rounds for logo design. And it’s a good thing. Because when it came to satisfaction with the early concepts, I was less than enamored. Granted, my list of “theme” words was far-reaching: sophisticated, no-nonsense, innovative, light-hearted, new, fresh, natural, beautiful, intelligent. I also specified that the logo must not even hint of anything related to women’s cosmetics – no lipstick cases, no brushes, no frills. A tall task, indeed.

At the end of an arduous process, with many visions and revisions, I loved my logo and I love it still. It worked with business cards and packaging and printed materials and website and more. But, please, you be the judge. Does it do what I wanted?

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What’s in a Name?

I don’t remember exactly when the name Alice emerged as the winner. I know I put friends through tedious brainstorming. I know at one point I decided it should be a proper name rather than a “beauty” phrase, and I recall deciding to use “cosmetics” rather than “mineral makeup” because I didn’t want to limit myself, even though using the phrase “mineral makeup” would have worked better vis à vis the search engines. Thousands of women search for mineral makeup each day on the internet, and the numbers are growing . . . pray the numbers keep growing!

My funny and indomitable mother was named Gertrude Alice Keebler. Of course she hated that. So she set about changing her identity and became Kay (for Keebler, her last name). I’ve always admired her for that – to be a young woman in the 1930’s and make such an assertion stick was no minor accomplishment.

Though happily known as Kay by friends and family all her life, she did concede a bit to officialdom by signing checks and other legal documents as G. Alice Keebler, then after marriage, G. Alice Gray. When choosing her headstone, her heirs felt a moment’s indecision, but in the end, we opted for what we knew she would want, G. Alice Gray.

So what about Alice? A perfectly nice though under-used name. An accessible, welcoming name. A name that took second place to an initial! Alice it was.

Of course there is that other Alice—the one created by Lewis Carroll in 1865 and the one I studied as a graduate student in Oxford once upon a time. Clearly books for adults as well as children, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are classics along with their beloved namesake. Carroll’s Alice is always curious, always adventurous, always undaunted.

Not a bad thing to hitch our wagon to her star, linking our search for beauty as we age gracefully with her enchanted travels through the looking glass.

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Product Development

Sampling gorgeous eye shadow colors, what could be more fun for a makeup addict? Looking back, I have to laugh. I remember telling friends that my red eyes were caused by allergies.

But pulling together a coherent line of private label cosmetics and accessories proved to be a monumentally detailed and challenging task, one that took many hours of sampling, testing, budgeting, rebudgeting, and keeping an eye on the big picture. Foundation, eye colors, concealers. Brushes and bronzers and blush, oh my!

For months I sampled cleansers, toners and moisturizers and the jars and bottles to hold them. At one point, I settled on a lovely bottle with gold trim for my toner, only to realize that the minimum order was 5,000 units—a tad beyond even my Scenario C budget. There were many learning experiences in this process, and like, perhaps, many small business owners and their product offerings, I had not done anything quite like it before.

At some point I realized I needed to set some boundaries around exactly what it was I was going to sell. Taking the entire skin care component out of the picture and saving it for some future rollout was a decision that eased the budget and the psyche.

Another learning experience but much greater setback was yet to come. Once I had settled on all the colors of mineral makeup for my line, I ordered quarter pounds of a half dozen of them to start experimenting with filling sample jars and trying out sifters and types of labeling. When the wrong formula arrived, my wholesaler was surly and uncooperative, and I did not want to run into that situation again. I learned from that that I needed to put my faith in more than just one main supplier, and I had to start the process of testing and sampling all over again.

Today, my line of mineral makeup consists of 53 shades in all. I order the colors from three separate suppliers, the accessories from two, the jars and lids and sifters from several, and the labels and the custom brushes from two others. Ultimately it all fell into place, but not without blood, sweat, and allergy eyes.

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Studying Feasibility

While it was easy enough to sample the products of mineral makeup companies simply by placing orders, it was a bit trickier to get information about how well these small businesses were doing. With notable exceptions, business owners aren’t typically anxious to share their secrets with potential competitors.

By calling or writing to a dozen or so for advice, though, I did manage to conclude that mineral makeup in general was indeed a hot commodity. One company owner claimed the product was “flying off the shelves” of those who were marketing it. And everywhere, it seemed, I kept hearing the phrase “women who try it never go back to regular makeup.”

Another indication of the appeal of selling mineral makeup as a small business, as opposed to a big-name player, was the sheer number of companies doing so. On eBay alone, nearly 200 store fronts at any given time offer mineral makeup, either by selling the dominant companies’ products at reduced prices or by marketing their own brands, and many of these storefronts have off-eBay companion websites. There are thousands of searches for mineral makeup on eBay every day.

While I was still gathering information and samples for my mineral makeup enterprise, I sold on eBay to get some experience selling on-line. There is a wealth of information and knowledge to be gained from selling on eBay, from how to purchase various products at wholesale to shipping charges and methods, and I would strongly recommend eBay selling to anyone considering online retail sales as a business.

The owner of one of the small companies I approached was particularly forthcoming about the field of mineral makeup. In a brief conversation, she filled me in on some of the challenges and controversies I would be facing, from how to handle the minerals to which ingredients to avoid and why. Her advice was priceless, and shortly thereafter I began to test colors and formulas.

Meanwhile, more than a thousand folks have visited my website! I am all aflutter.

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Meet Alice Cosmetics

Alice Cosmetics was born when it came time to pick a product. I was halfway through an intensive internet marketing program. The program strongly recommended finding reliable dropshippers and raking in profits by developing multiple streams of income. Also, find something you are passionate about, they advised—don’t select some electronic gadget that doesn’t interest you. (Turns out the lion’s share of those reliable dropshippers offered electronic gadgets.)

While I found a number of cosmetics companies that would dropship, I knew that to succeed I’d need to have something that reflected my personality, that looked like it was very much not dropshipped, and that appealed to some specific niche market. An admitted makeup junkie, I had become fascinated by “mineral makeup” (pure, ground minerals applied to the face with a brush). The large and still dominant player in the field had been doing many late-night QVC advertising spots. I loved the way it looked and felt on my skin and the fact that it was water-repellant, all natural, and long-lasting.

I soon found dozens of small companies selling mineral makeup on the internet, offering alternatives by changing ingredients or underpricing. One thing connecting them all in my humble opinion: amateurish websites. Given my background in writing and editing, the misspelled words alone would be enough to send me packing. Surely I was not alone.

Fast-forward to today, and my better-than-amateurish website (you can be the judge of that) has just gone up. But it was in those early days that I stumbled upon the bare bones of what would become a product, a market, and a brand. Stay tuned for what came next, and wish me luck.

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