I need some marketing help really badly.

[Steve knight]

Well maybe that’s not what I need or I do who knows? (G) what I am after is for someone to represent my planes in the various wood shows and demos and such. Maybe someone that goes to them and sells other stuff?
I should be doing this like C&W and such but I don’t have the time the money and I don’t much care to travel. Since it is only me who would make the planes while I was on the road? The only time I had a week off was when I was so sick I could not even walk 20 feet.
Not sure what I could pay for this with planes or a percentage or something.
I like selling by word of mouth but sometimes it’s not enough.

[Mark Singer]

Steve,
I saw Terry Gordon at a recent selling and demonstrating his planes. I think also a small add in FWW that repeats like those LN plane ads would help....small but in every issue. Your lanes are great! I talk to Woodworkers who never heard of them...so name recognition is essential....maybe some qoutes by woodworkers on how they perform so terrific...and they do!

[Charles McKinley]

Hi Steve,

Contact SCORE (Service Corps Of Retired Executives) in your area. They are sponsered by the Small Business Administration. They will be able to help you develope a marketing strategy that will keep you busy and profitable.

I will try to find their contact information for portland for you.

[Mike Wenzloff]

Hi Mark,

Steve did the FWW thing a lot--many do not even know. Many/most never really look at those small ads. And they are costly for the amount of sales.

To be sure, Steve, you are at a crux. Your desire is growing. Sales are evidently not keeping pace with where you want to be. I don't have any pithy advice. I do think the advice from Rob [evenfall] on the other board concerning talking with Joel is very good advice. Just as I think Chuck's SCORE recommendation is.

What Mark says is also true--a wider group of people need to recognize your name and product. Your idea of shows is a good one, I feel. How that is implemented is an issue. As well, you would need a large financial investment for the show space and the build material and time investment to not only keep up with current orders, but build what you anticipate selling at the shows.

As I think you've discovered, forum exposure has only been able to get you so far. As you know, I wish you the very best. You make a great product, from the wood to the iron--and your workmanship combining them--is tops.

Take care,

Mike

[Charles McKinley]

Small biz links

http://www.score.org/

There is a box at the bottom of the page to find Score near you. There are three that came up for Portland, OR.

http://sba.gov/regions/region10/services.html
This is a list of the Small Business Development Centers for OR.

I have had positive experiences with these organizations here in PA. I hope that they can really help you out Steve.

As long as you have been at this they should be able to take your data and organize it into a form that you can use to grow your business and develope and awesome marketing plan. I hope you can get a cover or at least a major article in one of the big magazines.

[Michael Gabbay]

Steve - I'm far from a marketing expert but I think getting exposure in the ww mags would be a great start. Maybe contact Popular WW and FWW to have them do reviews. My guess is the shows would not be a good return on investment in the beginning.

If you want some free marketing advice, I'd contact a local university with a business department. Talk with the Dean about using your company as a case study. When I was in school my senior year project for a business class was to study 2 or 3 companies and make recommendations to the company. You can get some pretty good advice especially from the grad students.

Mike

[tod evans]

steve, this is off the cuff so take it with a grain of salt.......call the folks at minimax and speak to them. they are at all the big shows and your planes wouldn`t conflict with their line at all. may be something both of you could profit from? .02 tod

[Dana Van Pelt]

Steve,
Maybe Mike and I can help. Mike is presenting Master Clinics for Delta at the Woodworking shows, we also have our American Sycamore Woodworking School booth at the shows. Our next show is in Indianapolis, January 20-22. Plus we will have our AS store here at the school that we could sell your planes. Drop me an e-mail if you want to talk business. aswr@ccrtc.com or call 1-877-845-2666
Dana Van Pelt
www.mywoodworkingschool.com

[Bruce Haugen]

I don't like "me too" responses, but I've got to underscore everyone's advice. The SCORE folks and SBDC staff are great resources. I served for 5 years on the state advisory board for the North Dakota Small Business Development Centers, and the work they put into make small business a success is truly phenomenal. They can help a great deal. Likewise for SCORE. You get advice from people who have spent a lifetime being successful in business, certainly a good qualification in itself.

Bruce

[Gary Herrmann]

Perhaps contact SMC members in the area of the shows. Give them a deep discount or a freebie plane if they'll spend two days doing demos. You could check on this by asking other SMCers to go by and see how its going. Just a random thought that came to me. Take it for what its worth.

[Larry Reimer]

Steve, I can't help you with marketing ideas, but I do wish to point out an area I think could use some attention. I was in the market for a really good smoother this past summer. Heard good things about your planes. Sent emails - no response. Tried the phone number - no repsone. I ended up with a Stanley #4 type 16 that I'm tuning to within an inch of it's life. But the no response thing kind of bothered me and I can't believe I'm the only one. I don't know it you're trying to do all that by yourself? Answer phones, answer emails, build planes, and everything else, but maybe it would be worthwhile to get help with the answering customers part of it. I sure hope to own a Knight Toolworks plane someday, but right now back to the Stanley.

[Steve knight]

Steve - I'm far from a marketing expert but I think getting exposure in the ww mags would be a great start. Maybe contact Popular WW and FWW to have them do reviews. My guess is the shows would not be a good return on investment in the beginning.

I have had 5 or 6 writeups so far. the first copule really helped and after that I bet I did not sell 8 planes from them including the one in fine woodworking.
but reviews just seem to happen.

[Keith Outten]

Steve,

You might consider a Manufaturers Forum here at SawMill Creek. A Private Forum at SMC would allow you to answer tech support questions, promote existing and new products and have access to over 6,000 real woodworkers. I doubt that if you sent out 30,000 catalogs you would get anywhere near this kind of exposure. Including the Guests that visit SMC we are seeing over eleven million hits per month and about 3,000 visits per day...not many commercial stores see that kind of traffic.

I know you have a quality product and expect our Members would frequent your Forum daily. Your experience and knowledge would almost guarentee lots of traffic and you can tend to your Forum daily as it fits your schedule.

Just a thought! Contact Aaron Koehl (webmaster@sawmillcreek.org) for details if you decide a Manufactureres Forum is of interest.

[Doug Shepard]

Dont know how you'd go about pulling this off, but if you could somehow get on one of the WW TV shows you'd probably generate quite a bit of business. I've seen quite a few episodes of NYWS or the Scott Phillips show (forget the show name) where they do a project that requires an outside expert for how-to advice. Maybe you could get one of them interested in doing an episode on making wooden planes using you as the subject matter expert ?? Just a thought.

[Andy Hoyt]

Exposure is key, so getting the product into the hands of potential owners has got to be at the top of the list, or near it anyway.

So how about providing a freebie to WW clubs that could auction them off or at least give 'em a good work out during a meeting. Seems like a club or two per month should be financially palatable in the beginning. You'd probably get some pretty quick impulse purchases the next day, or at least learn if the strategy holds water.

Or something along this line.

[Aaron Kline]

Make t-shirts with a picture of a plane and your web address.

[Larry Gelder]

PM me. I think I can help you.

[Pete Lamberty]

Andy had the same idea that I do. Maybe you or a representative could go to woodworking club meetings and demo your planes. You could talk about planes for a half hour and then allow the members to try them out. Obviously, distant meetings would require some kind of reps. Good luck Steve, let us know what you do and how it works out for you.

[Steve knight]

Andy had the same idea that I do. Maybe you or a representative could go to woodworking club meetings and demo your planes. You could talk about planes for a half hour and then allow the members to try them out. Obviously, distant meetings would require some kind of reps. Good luck Steve, let us know what you do and how it works out for you.
this is what I am thinking of. I still have emails and such to answer from all this. all week I have been too busy to think about it.

[Mark Singer]

Steve,
I would do a few shows....let people try your planes...like Lie Nielsen has been doing. I think they will be surprised how great they are to use. The prices are fair as well. I have a lot of very nice planes and consider yours among the very best....my favorites....people just have to try them!

[Dan Larson]

Steve,

I've been thinking about this thread for a while now. This may be a naive suggestion, but how about trying to get a catalog retailer to offer your planes? Garrett Wade or Tools for Working Wood might be a good fit. I realize that having a "middle man" will cut into your margins, but it certainly would increase your exposure and likely boost your volume. I don't know all of the details of the Lie-Nielsen story, but I'd imagine that his association with Garrett Wade was a key part of his success.

Dan

[Tom Hamilton]

Hi Steve:

You've received a bunch of good advice, so, with an echo, I will add, SCORE, serious marketing consultants, lenders and you will want to know what you can afford.

There is a time cost and a dollar cost to building your business. So my suggestion is to make sure that you have a good handle on your finances, and can present them clearly, before racing off to buy ads, TShirts, show space, catalog deals or anything else.

Do you have a P&L for the last 3 years, a balance sheet, and a projected cash flow for 06?

If not, it may be something to add to your arsenal of business building tools.

Second, how much time can you afford away from production to promote the biz?

Armed with these hard facts, you can plan more efficiently.

All the best in 06, Tom

[John Weber]

Steve,

I was searching around and came across your post. You might want to talk to one or two of the regional ww schools and put together a plane building class. I took LN's class and really enjoyed it. You could do a day, weekend, or even week long class. Include a "kit" in the tuition, and then build the plane during class. You might be able to reach a group of woodworker that don't do the web, etc... Just a thought.

John

[Jeff Morgan]

Well maybe that’s not what I need or I do who knows? (G) what I am after is for someone to represent my planes in the various wood shows and demos and such.
I would have to agree with several of the posters here - the trade show
circuit may not be the ideal outlet for your product. It is quite costly and
I am not convinced that the returns are there for smaller highly focused
companies like yours.

Andy mentioned the woodworkers clubs. In my view this does get you
closer to the people that have a passion for woodworking and are therefore
more likely to buy your products. I do not think that just giving a plane
to a member and having them present a demo will do much good. I would
propose a more structured approach as described in the following paragraphs.

First of all you need to design the presentation. An ad-hoc demo of the
planes would likely not get your message across and since you will
ultimately have many individuals making the presentation it will end up
sending an inconsistent message. The presentation should highlight the
features that make your plane unique. My personal opinion is that it
should also try to get them in the hands of the club members. The
presentation should last between 30 and 40 minutes and should contain
materials that can be given to the attendees.

Next you will need to find the people willing to give the presentations.
You really need to make sure the individual has the ability to present your
product well and has the motivation to contact and attend several clubs.
For example, most states will have numerous woodworking clubs (there are
probably 6 or 7 that I know of in Ohio where I live) but you do not want to
contact each club individually. Instead you want to find one individual that
is willing to contact each club, schedule a visit to one of their meetings,
and then make the presentation. Of course you would have to compensate
this individual in some way - perhaps by letting them keep the planes they
use for the demo.

I would start slow, targeting two geographical areas to see how well you
are received and what sales result from this effort. You will want to get
feedback from the presenters (and possibly from the attendees) and adjust
the demo based upon that feedback.

Just my thoughts.

-Jeff

[Scott Loven]

Have you tried these guys?
http://www.woodshopdemos.com/
http://www.onlinetoolreviews.com/
http://www.newwoodworker.com/index.html
Do you collect emails and send out a monthly news letter?
Have you tried paid advertising on sites that cater to plane users?