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Stick To Your Knitting And Test Your Market

Written by: Julie Mitchell

Article Overview: Any new business has to be related to your own personal core competencies. I had graphic design experience and am someone who is very creative. Look at what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing before starting a business.

Stick To Your Knitting And Test Your Market

How Parcel Was Started - Parcel has two divisions – a graphic design studio and a gift studio. It’s the gift studio that really takes us outside the conventional promotional merchandise. It’s more innovative, there’s a lot less “Made In China” products, and we develop our own unique items. The gift studio allows us to leverage our graphic design and creative capabilities. Parcel was incorporated in 2002. I had developed a few unique product and gift ideas and there was nobody out there with this service. If you wanted a mouse pad, pen, or baseball cap with your logo that was no problem but what about actually using promotional products that were reflective of your brand?

In the early days I worked for other companies as a freelance consultant. I worked with their creative teams managing their programs. Parcel was in its early stages. I wanted to make sure there was an audience for our products and took small steps to see how the market would respond. I discovered that there was a real opportunity, stopped doing consulting work and focused on building the studio.


Advice For Startups - Stick To Your Knitting - Any new business has to be related to your own personal core competencies. I had graphic design experience and am someone who is very creative. Look at what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing before starting a business.

Secure a Client and Proceed with Confidence - I tell people to take one key client with them when they create their company. Have one contract in the works before you dive into entrepreneurship. For example, if you are working at a large company and want to start an event planning service, get your company to be your client before you leave to start your business. I used to work for The Body Shop and my first freelance project was for the Body Shop. I had the contact lined up before I left the company. Everyone has that opportunity. You can get that first client relationship because you already have it.

Test Your Market - Our growth was very slow at the beginning. I was cautious and it’s important to test things out before you dive right in. Make sure that the idea you have is viable and there is an audience for it. I tested my market informally through talking to a lot of people and formally through a small marketing program which had a positive response.

Make Sure You Have Enough Money - Before starting I made sure that I was financially able to become an entrepreneur. Realize that you might not be able to sustain the same standard of living. I realized that even if my salary was cut in half from what it was working for someone else, I would be fine – I could do it. I didn’t have a massive house payment that relied on my salary. Look at the worst case scenario and accept that you’re not going to instantly get rich.

Get Support - Understand where you can get support. A website like www.evancarmichael.com or something like EO are great sources of information. Always look out for more resources. When the chips are down who can help you? EO has been amazing for me – I’ve been a member for almost 2 years.


Mistakes To Avoid - Plan For Your Growth - When I set up my office I found myself in a location that did not allow me to grow. I had space challenges early on. Don’t lock yourself into a long contract in a tiny space if your goal in a year from now is to be tripling or be doing ten times the amount of business.

Use Effective Marketing - I tried a lot of different things at the start to market Parcel. If I had to do it over again I would recognize how to get to our target market before randomly trying and testing things. I spent a lot of money on initiatives that did not work. We get new business through referrals and when decision makers who use us move to a new opportunity at another company. We’ve recognized that that’s how we get new business and stopped putting ads in a random publication that doesn’t provide an immediate sense of what we do. We’ve found that for referrals it’s important to take it slowly. It’s all about relationships. We are now targeting people who are newly hired in positions who typically use our services, usually Marketing Directors, and send them one of our custom gifts as a welcome present. We are also engaging in product seeding where we identify clients that we want to do business with and send them a customized gift. We’re very touch-point focused and avoid doing anything that is mass marketing. We’ve had ads appear in national magazines and spent $10,000 on those programs. They aren’t nearly as effective as a good referral and relationship strategy.

If I Were To Start A New Business… - As I mentioned earlier, I believe that your business must reflect your core competencies so I would stick with something related to my industry. A challenge with my business is that it’s not scalable. My business is customization which is hard to scale and grow. I’d like to build a product or business model which allows for greater and more rapid expansion.

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