Just keep the Ticker running

Annelie Strauss is now the happy owner of the first set of Erwin Vessel hand crafted African spoons. She was the quickest respondent to the introductory offer. This takes my total capital up to R76.75. It seems strange how so many people really liked the spoons, but the liking did not translate into actual sales. This makes me wonder about the value of market research. Clearly market research is a critical part of setting up a business, and no business plan will be complete or realistic without it. Still my experience with the spoons suggests that market research tells you only so much. Interest does not necessarily translate into sales. The research is but a useful tool to measure potential for a product and never a fool proof method for determining the actual success of the business. What I would suggest you look at when conducting this type of research is the following: Research related products and your main competition. Look at the size of the market into which you want to release your product, it is no use you have a unique product that nobody want to use, or see the need for. What are the average turnovers of businesses in your target market. In short, look for facts, quantitative facts, if and only if these facts suggest a profitable investment, should you be considering opinions. When asking for opinions, try and question unbiased outsiders.

Although there are many untapped markets, and a large number innovative ideas, you still need to calculate your exposure. Yes, you want to take risks. No, you can't just through money at ideas until one of them makes it big, rather take that cash and make your way to a slot machine, the odds are better.

Our initial success with the fudge made Tanya and I decide to take it one step further, we are going to run a tuck shop in a high school hostel for 30 minutes in their study break, once a week. This will obviously take some time to gain momentum and form a habit in the learners, but we have relatively low exposure and we will not be spending too many hours on this endeavor. Each of us invested R14.45 initially, and at first we will only stock fudge, later we plan to add chips and coke to the inventory. So for now we each stand to make R25 from our stock.

Strange things are happening to me lately. I no longer see small change in the same light, infact I pick up coins if I see them on the pavement. The onther thing that caught my attention is that even in this early stage of the game I have the burning desire to diversify my investments, which is a strange idea if your total cash in hand is R62.25.

May be I'll find something interesting in the next few days.