Pandora's Treasures Baskets

[pandora]

Hi Katie here I am a mum to Connor who is 10 months old and have just started a new business venture following redundancy whilst on maternity leave.

We've created a website, if you get chance to have a look around and give us feedback it would be really appreciated

http://www.pandorastreasures.co.uk

and I am currently focusing on PR and marketing but as with everything it is expensive so I would appreciate any cost effective marketing and PR ideas I have very little money for this purpose. So ideas would be really appreciated :)

Nice to meet you all I am local to west yorkshire and will be attending the busy baby event in a couple of weeks so please come and say hello if your there.

Katie

[nappyknow-how]

Hi Katie
What a lovely idea!
The NCT newsletters offer cheap advertising and would be ideally targeted at your potential market. It's worth getting google analytics to review traffic through your site too....
I haven't had a chance to have a good look at your site yet but I'll pop back for a browse later when I haven't got two little ones throwing weetabix about!
Best wishes Sarah

[pandora]

Thanks for your response Sarah I've done analytics the NCT is a good idea I will look into that - I will await your views on my webste after you have finished your fun with the weetabix lol:D

[caroline36]

I love treasure baskets and would love to have a couple at toddler group however I couldn't find a price for the baskets. Apologies if its me being dim, but if I missed it other people could to.

All the best with your new venture.

You could try going to toddler groups offering free trails, in an effort to sell & up your profile. The pre school learning alliance do this occasionally with treasure baskets & it always goes down well with all age groups from 0 to the 4 year olds:).

[caroline36]

I found the prices.

My feedback would be to put the prices with the intial pictures as well as under the more thread. The prices are really good.

[pandora]

Thanks Caroline I will look into the suggestions you have made - it's great to get new ideas, much appreciated.

I have already supplied a local authority with one of the large baskets for their EYFS training days and they were v happy with it. I have also sold to individual parents and childminders who were all very happy with their baskets, especially the price which was a primary focus for us as we needed to ensure that they were competitive and couldn't be replicated by individuals creating their own.

Any more PR/marketing ideas appreciated :D

[llanarth]

Hi Katie

Have you thought of dropshipping? That's where your products are listed on someone elses website, they get an order for your product and take payment though their website, then send you the delivery address, you send out the order direct to the customer, and then at the end of the month (or whenever agreed) you invoice for the number of orders you've dropshipped for them in the past month. They get a cut (around 20% of the purchase price (excluding P&P)).

Best way to go about it is to directly email webshops that you think might be interested in stocking your items, and offering them on a dropship basis (there are also web forums dedicated to matching dropshippers and suppliers).

Other than childminders (do individual childminding networks have magazines/events you could target?), a likely audience for your product would be either the eco-parents who refuse to have plastic in their house, or the home educators (or a combination of the two!) and I expect you'd be able to advertise online, or in specialist print magazines relatively cheaply for these audiences (a cheap way to get good PR at minimum cost is to offer one of these small magazines a competition prize/giveaway - for the price of one of your baskets, you'd get a short editorial about your product that everyone buying the magazine would read (because who doesn't like the chance to get a freebie!))

Hope this helps!

Frances