After barely 5 months, my wife and Jessica’s little startup ThinkPartyThoughts, an online boutique partyware store, is now available at Sundays, Bangsar Village II!
Sundays is owned by the Ms Read family who owns Ms Read (well known plus size clothes boutique), Plan B and Ben’s Independent Grocer. Helen Read’s daughter bought their products and was interested in putting their products at Sundays. It’s a big breakthrough for my wife and Jessica as their little startup is just a few months old. Sales have picked up quite a bit. The ladies worked 24/7 to get their products out!
My Thoughts
This handcraft business is quite interesting to me. It’s a tedious job. My wife and Jessica spent a lot of their them putting things together. I help them out sometimes by doing no-brainer jobs like gluing things together. I usually give up within an hour. I could be spending an hour making products worth RM100 (just a rough estimate). However, my time cost for my legal services is about RM700 an hour. Thus, the work didn’t really interest me.
Of course, I have no control over ThinkPartyThoughts’ business but it doesn’t stop me from wondering how can one scale this business to a multi million dollar business. My wife has a book that says handicraft business doesn’t make millions but I beg to differ. So long there is a demand, millions can be made.
I think the most effective way to do so is to outsource the production of the handicraft. It could be to housewives or even our local kampung folks. We could pay them for each piece that they product (e.g 1 – 5 cents per piece). With an endless (rather substantially) supply of ready to sell products, one can have increase their distribution chain.
It goes without saying that distribution chain must be wide. Other than local retailers, I think focus should be given to the foreign purchasers who want to purchase high quality handicraft at a lower price. ThinkPartyThoughts products are in essence “western” products thus it appeals to Westerners too.
Other than that, ThinkPartyThoughts can pivot by offering to their distribution network by selling products of other aspiring handicraft entrepreneurs. The former can charge a commission for each product sold.
Well, easier said than done. Nevertheless, I think following this method the business can flourish faster and easier.
ThinkPartyThoughts has really quite name cards!
Lastly, ThinkPartyThoughts will be at the Markets@JayaOne on 18 May 2013! Details are below!
Time: 11am – 6pm
Venue: Jaya One, Section 13, No.72A,
Jalan Universiti,
46200, Petaling Jaya,
Selangor