Strategy and Marketing
What is your company's strategy?
We are going to make the Pöllöt brand familiar via social media and by focusing on intense PR work like sponsoring and blogging. We think that these channels are the best for getting a high visibility-cost ratio. In the future, our goal is to have the world's largest selection of wooden sunglasses.
Pictures and videos are in the core of our strategy. Soon, we will introduce the Pöllöt Ambassador concept, in which people can apply for their own pair of Pöllöt sunglasses for their trip abroad. In return we will receive 50-80 pictures and videos of Pöllöt around the world, and we will also include an option for the Ambassadors to write travel blogs if they wish. We believe that this can build our brand equity and make the brand more international.
Besides this, we trust in word-of-mouth marketing, because we have a special and interesting product. We are going to translate our webpages to English, Swedish, and Russian soon, and at that time we will start our shipping worldwide.
What do you think are your competitive advantages?
- Our wooden sunglasses are more ecological compared to plastic sunglasses
- No direct competition either in our home country or the Nordic countries in our niche market
- The price of our sunglasses is the same as or lower than our worldwide competitors'
Sales and Markets
When you first penetrated the market with Pöllöt, what was your most important sales channel?
Facebook. The presales were done via our Facebook page, which had a link to our webpage that had an e-form which we used to sell 40 pairs. In a way, it was almost like selling "a pig in a poke", because we didn't actually have the glasses when we started selling them. With the money earned we then ordered more sunglasses.
What is currently your most important sales channel?
Our web store and our retail partners.
What did you view as challenges during the first few months of sales in Finland?
- Our narrow selection of different models
- We opened our web store during the wrong season, and the store was not as good as it could have been in the beginning. We have learned and improved a lot since.
- People normally want to try the glasses out before buying them
- We didn't have any retailers at first, and it caused some problems in sales
Were there any actual barriers to enter the market?
We didn't face any barriers when we entered.
Are there any key features you are planning to add to the product?
We are going to add corrective lenses and introduce the so-called "image glasses", a unique frame design, where the frames can be customized to have different kinds of shapes or even writing, for example initials. In the future, we would like to produce our glasses from Finnish wood.
Human Resources and Intellectual Property
What relevant domain experience do you have for running the business?
Konsta: I have studied Mechanical Wood Industry at the Aalto University School of Science for two years and Marketing at the University of Helsinki for one and a half years. I am interested in web store sales and marketing.
Atte: I have studied Forest Economics and Marketing for two and a half years at the University of Helsinki. I am also very interested in web store sales because of its easiness.
In 2012, we had a domain and business called joulukuusiovelle.com, which affected our decision to start a web store also with Pöllöt.
How do you plan to scale the company's team in the next 12 months?
We would like to hire one employee to concentrate on the logistics and customer service and one employee to focus on daily updates for our social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Blog). These employees would make it possible for us to concentrate on buying new products, marketing and sales in different events, and brainstorming and innovating. We want to free our brain capacity for the kinds of things that we are passionate about.
What key intellectual property does the company have?
At the moment, our domain names pollot.fi and pöllöt.fi.
Financing
How much equity has the company raised and how much debt does it have?
We don't have any debt, but both of us have invested and equal amount of money in the company. So ownership is also 50/50.
What future financing will be necessary and for what purpose?
In the future, expansion will probably require a bank loan. This will be a current issue in the fall of 2014, when we are going to think about the next summer's models and colors.
What are the per unit economics?
(The owners didn't want to answer this question.)
What are the factors that are potentially limiting faster growth?
- At the moment, we don't have enough capital for fast growth
- Finland's geographical location is a limiting factor
- More or less a seasonal business
A great big thank you to both for the answers!
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