ETD: 859 How do I promote a cosmetic business; Pigeonholed;
Trojan horses
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu Feb 10 13:43:02 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0859 February 10, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] How do I promote a cosmetic business
[3] Pigeonholed
[4] Trojan horses
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
We have some great material from our list members, including an appeal for
help. So, let's get to thinking and giving back some of your experience.
Phyllis Lanin has a new cosmetic business and needs help promoting
it. There's an interesting history behind the products and how she got
into it. Your expertise will be helpful. Maybe we can start a "how-to"
special report for all of us.
Freda Humble shares a great story on how she got out of that pigeon
hole. It's something that all of us need to do at some point or other -
sit back and evaluate where we are and where we are going.
Poor Joe Dweck has been spending his waking hours trying to recover from a
virus/trojan horse. He does offer us some helpful tips. If you ever
experienced a virus/trojan horse, you know what he is going through. I
also gave him some ideas on what we use. How about you?
Tell us about your business, which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. This is a courtesy to our members who
contribute to our forum, and not merely a way to advertise for
free. Anything to do with the retail world, i.e., supplier, retailer,
consulting, etc. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And
we have a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first
proposed this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we
often don't know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and
what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] How do I promote a cosmetic business
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How would you go about promoting a new business selling unique cosmetics?
I was introduced to these products from a friend who knew that most
cosmetics cause an allergic reaction with me. I am in my 50s and have nice
skin. I was very impressed how the products made my skin glow and feel
healthy. I was hooked. We had a difficult time buying the products,
so, we decided to become the US distributor.
A little product history. The products were born out of need. Prominent
dermatologists and plastic surgeons were looking for products to help
patients with problematic skin. The result was a silky, lightweight
foundation powder which, they learned, was so versatile and effective that
any women looking for a premium, healthy, long-lasting makeup could use it.
These products are now being sold to doctors, aestheticians, and salons
throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as in Australia
and Denmark. We are looking at expanding the market to anybody who seeks
products made with the purest of ingredients, that work to make your skin
beautiful.
Now we have the somewhat daunting task of promoting the products and
selling them, mainly online. We will have a store front soon and our
online store is being built now.
Any help from list members will be greatly appreciated. Should we use
e-mail marketing? Google ads? Links? What works best?
Sincerely,
Phyllis Lanin
Sophisticated Me, LLC
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[3] Pigeonholed
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I agree with you completely! The bigger the variety of services and/or
products that you offer, it becomes harder to answer "What do you do?" Our
company provides equipment for grocery stores, restaurants, c-stores,
bakeries, etc. We sell, new and used commercial fixtures, and install,
service, repair and/or refurbish them as well. Many of our customers only
think of us as a service company and don't think of us for new equipment,
while others loved the job we did to lay out, set up, and install their
entire store before they opened, but may not think of us for their
accessory items. After many dollars were spent building up our inventory,
and remodeling our showroom, it was very disappointing to see that some of
our most loyal refrigeration customers had purchased all brand new cutting
equipment from a competitor. Most of our customers don't actually have to
come to our showroom, so they didn't realize the different lines we have in
stock.
Although in the past, we have sent mailings to announce new lines, we had
not done so on a regular basis. We began to invite our customers every
time they called into our "newly remodeled showroom" to see the variety of
lines that we now carry. I sent a color flyer, with pictures, to announce
new stock. We called most of our customers to ask for their fax number
and, of course, permission to send them announcements and/or advertisements
via fax. We updated our customer list to include fax numbers in the correct
fields, so that we could use our software to fax sales fliers to targeted
customers. We have plans to upgrade our phone system within the next 6-8
weeks, one benefit being the continuous loop mini-commercial about the
variety of our products and services. We had relied so much on referrals
and our word-of-mouth advertising that we neglected to do much marketing at
all. We've recently increased our yellow page exposure and our website
will be ready soon.
I'm excited about the steps we've made so far, but I'll be very interested
in measuring the results over the next few months. To be honest, Etailers
Digest has been a great help in directing my efforts, keeping me on track,
and moving me out of my comfort zone.
Thanks!
Freda Humble,
Complete Store Fixtures, Chicago, IL
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
I'm so glad E-Tailers could help. We try to make this a resource for all
things retail.
Sounds like you are doing everything right. Years ago we had a client with
a high-end ladies store in the backwoods of NJ (yes there are back woods
here). She was used to NYC marketing and used some of those tactics,
including starting a fax distribution list. The first month she had 1,000
names! No special prices - just announcements of when specials are in the
works.
I would be interested in knowing how well your website does. Yours sounds
like a difficult business to promote, namely because of the limited
market. What are your plans for the site and for marketing?
Good luck.
George
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[4] Trojan horses
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I am spending almost every waking hour trying to debug my office computer
that was infected by the "silly" virus. The thing is extremely pervasive,
it accesses the Internet through Internet Explorer by itself and downloads
credit card applications, porn sites, Anti-virus offers and tons of trojan
horse viruses. The thing takes over the CPU of the computer to such an
extent that you can't do any normal work. I had to disconnect the computer
from the Internet to run the Anti-virus software (10 times !). Even the
tech at the helpdesk had been infected.
Here's what you can do to protect your computer and your business;
o Get the latest downloads from Microsoft.com for windows and Internet
Explorer. (you might have to check in your business if you can accommodate
the latest versions)
o Download Mozilla Firefox and use it as your browser. It is far safer than
Internet Explorer and is not subject to the popups and spyware that the
Microsoft product is.
Good Luck,
joe dweck
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
Isn't technology great? Where else can you spend so much time on
non-productive activities? I guess you could relate this to a flood in
your warehouse, with the main difference being that you are insured with
the flood.
I have heard good things about Firefox. And, of course, I have used Eudora
for years, which is a Mozilla derivative. When everybody had (has)
problems with Outlook, I coast along with the best e-mail product on the
market.
Microsoft is the main target of so many hackers, simply because there are
more of their products on the market and it is easier to
attack. Guaranteed, when another product becomes the leading player, they
will be attacked also. In the meantime, your advice should be well-heeded.
We use a couple of products that seem to help fend off these unwanted
intrusions. We use McAfee Security Center (http://mcafee.com/)for our
firewall and virus protection. We use eTrust Pest Patrol
(http://etrust.com) to head off those nasties. We also use Ace Utilities
(http://www.acelogix.com/) for a general disk cleanup program. It is the
best we ever saw for cleaning the registry and removing junk files. The
first time we ran it we found thousands of junk files and hundreds of
invalid or obsolete registry entries. We just started using Diskeeper 9.0
for managing our disk. We use Windows XP which has a defrag option, but
Diskeeper does much better and faster.
Good luck.
George
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