Great reasons to create your physical product in 2021

Great reasons to create your physical product in 2021

INTRO (00:00:08):

Welcome to the Bring Your Product Ideas to Life podcast. Practical advice and inspiration to help you create and sell your own physical products. Here is your host Vicki Weinberg.

Vicki Weinberg (00:00:22):

Hi. I hope you're well. While I'm recording this in December, but at the time you'd listen to this, it will be January. So happy new year and happy 2021. So this is going to be a shorter than usual Episode before we get back into the usual schedule next week, because I'm sure lots of us are still getting back into the swing of things after hopefully taking some time off and hopefully you've managed to, to rest, spend time with family or whoever you need to do to revive, you know, and I expect that I will still be in that place to have just trying to catch up after, hopefully take in a few weeks off all the way I'm recording this in early December. So who knows what things will be like, buy them. So the day I just wanted to talk to you about why I still believe despite everything that's happened in 2020, that creating products is still a viable option in 2021.

Vicki Weinberg (00:01:09):

If you've ever heard me talk anywhere before, and hopefully you have, hopefully you've listened to a few of these episodes. You'll know that I think creating and selling products is a really good income stream. And if you listen back to episode one, so the very first one I ever put out back in March, 2020, that episode is all about 10 great reasons to sell physical products. And so I go into all my reasons there. So I'm not going to repeat everything here, but it will link to that Episode in the show notes. And so I just want to start, I guess, buy some in 2020 up from my experience, and then talk a little bit about 2021. And specifically when we're talking about creating and selling products. So 2020 has been a strange, yeah, I think it's fair to say.

Vicki Weinberg (00:01:51):

And a hard year in so many ways and so many different ways for so many different people say, if we just talking about retail and about products, then obviously a high streets and physical stores have suffered a lot, lots of places of closed. I see that walk in down my own. High-street just on the news today, they were talking about Debenhams stores, closing down and talk shop, been in the home of Arcadia group, been in trouble. So it's not a great time for, for retail. Well, high street retail that is because more people than ever now, you shop online. And in a recent episode, I spoke about how many visitors Amazon get every month and it's a lot. And I try to look up statistics for how many more people are shopping online compared to this time in 2019, or even this time in 2020.

Vicki Weinberg (00:02:41):

And I've got a lot of the results depending and none we are the same, but every were seem to agree. There's this increase. So more people are shopping online now than there were at a year ago or two years ago. And I mean, I guess that's completely, you know, probably obvious. You'll probably thinking of what you said in the us as we could have guessed that. Yeah. I mean, so many retail stores are closed or had to shut down during

lockdown is of course more people have started buying online. And that also means on the other side of it is that more people are now selling products online. So there were some physical stores and

they'll set on the line that didn't used to. So places that perhaps only had a physical shop and I was selling what Why via our website.

Vicki Weinberg (00:03:21):

And so if I Instagram via Facebook or maybe on some of the marketplaces, lots of markets and fairs have moved online. So for example, I've been seeing recently a lot of advertisement for various virtual Christmas fairs. And I read that nine, let me get this right. 99,708 new sellers who have joined Amazon UK in 2020. So remember this faulty marketplaces, and I'm just talking about one of them and 175,858 joined amazon.com. Now this is crazy, especially when I think its crazy because I also read that in 2017, the total number of sellers on Amazon is 280,000.

Vicki Weinberg (00:04:05):

So if you think that's re years at the 250,000, I don't know what it would have been today. But if you think in the last Your, it just in 2000 twenties were in one year, another are almost a hundred, a thousand people that it's like almost a third of the whole number of sellers. There were no in 2017. I think that's a big increase bear in mind that I am recording this on just checking a date and the 2nd of December. Umm, and if you check those statistics today, then I suspect that it would probably be even more than the numbers I've just created. And I will link to the source I use for that data in my show notes, in case you I'm interested and you wanted to go and take a look for yourself because no doubt it's increased.

Vicki Weinberg (00:04:45):

And it also shows you how many new sellers there are on all of the other Amazon marketplaces as well, which I also think as useful because it depends on where you're listening to this or what your plans are. Perhaps Amazon is something you're interested in or if it is, do I go back and listen to the episode I did a few weeks ago about selling on Amazon and you might find that kind of information. USEFUL say it was coming back too, sort of retail and products. So a lot first year or this year, actually we still see 1,020 as a record. This my aim business, tiny chipmunk, which is my Bambi baby products business actually did. OK. When we went into lockdown in the UK, which was at the end of March and my sales actually picked up, I think April and may with some of the best months I'd ever done, particularly on Amazon.

Vicki Weinberg (00:05:29):

And I think this was probably helped by the fact that I sell baby products. And obviously baby's just keep being born even during pandemics. And also Amazon restricted to products that sellers could send into FBA, which is fulfilled by Amazon and baby products with one of the categories are excepted. So he had a bit of luck there in that I could still send my products in to Amazon to fulfill for me. And while, luckily for me at the beginning of this year, I'd actually changed my fulfillment model. And I've had, do you have a fair party Wearhouse? It does some of my distribution. So they actually could have carried on for getting all this for me, even ones that go on Amazon as they do now, when Amazon doesn't have the stock for a particular product or a particular variation, you know, some of my bowls and plates that come in lots of different colors,

some of them are in the Amazon warehouse and some of them aren't, but, and they all still get it for free or day.

Vicki Weinberg (00:06:20):

But I think that being able to have that prime badge and to be able to get products well, I was going to say a slightly quicker, I don't know if you are finding, but at the moment I'm finding the Amazon isn't actually as quick as it used to be. And possibly my own distribution is as quick, but then there is the perception. Amazon prime is perhaps a little bit in a little faster. I definitely think that that was one of the reasons why I continued to do well even at the beginning of this year and I fully appreciate it. And I think I've said this a few times that I was lucky, a lot of this is pure luck. If I've been selling in a different category, if you know, I've had a different kind of product that, you know, this we did, it was just willing to be in the case, if it was pure luck, if it wasn't anything on my dead.

Vicki Weinberg (00:07:02):

And I know that some people had been equally unlucky. So for example, I had a client selling suitcases and obviously people aren't traveling as much now. So therefore people aren't buying seek suitcases. So their sales are obviously really suffered as a result. And then what else happened this year? So there was an influx of new products I'm talking about. Aberdeen is specifically again now, but also, you know, you would of seen a lot of these products or other market places to, you know, play such as Etsy or on the high streets. So I'm thinking about things like Masque and the antibacterial SYEP umm, and on the subject of Amazon I'm in case, you know, this is something you're interested in. I can tell you that lots of products now have the restrictions or require approval, which makes it even harder to sell them, but also even harder to sell products that sound like they might need people who, for example, because they happened to be in the healthcare category.

Vicki Weinberg (00:07:56):

So I think some of the many new sellers at this year started to have a necessity because if you can't sell your products in person anymore, so it may be always sold it in a physical store or maybe you always took your products to market places. Then obviously you needed to find other channels. I also think some new people started selling products this year to change their business model. For example, I have clients who couldn't run and face to face workshops or classes anymore. And so we pivoted that business to include products that they can sell. So, and I'm just mentioning that to show you that while it's been a tough year, I think it really has been a tough year. I still think there are plenty of opportunities to create products that sell.

Vicki Weinberg (00:08:38):

So in 2020 alone, I've helped a lot of businesses. Possibly I should have counted them, but I haven't, but I have a lot of businesses start selling online or start selling on new marketplaces. And lots of them are doing really, really well. Cause I think as long as you keep in mind that the most important thing is that you'll meet in a need. I still believe that you can do really well selling physical products. And I think there's a perception

that there's less money to spend, which I think is possibly, you know, a tree for some and not for others. But I do you think that people are thinking extra careful about what we spend our money on and where we spend our money? I think supporting small businesses is something that more of us would like to do because it's more businesses have suffered a lot.

Vicki Weinberg (00:09:25):

I mean, if you are listening to this, presumably you are a small business and you know, you've, you've got products that you're selling. Are you thinking about it? So I do still think that if you have a great product and you've gone from the steps and you've validated, or your ID took feedback from your customers on board, so your content, you have a great product. You've worked out your margins, your margins, you're competent. It is going to sell. You're confident, you're selling it in the best place. So we know we have a marketplace. It is the best there. I still feel that in 2000 ever to 2021 phrase to us, you can still do really well. So that in products. And I think that the products that get created this year, some of them might be a bit different to what we've seen before. So for example, this year, as I mentioned earlier, there are lots of sellers selling a face mask, which was in something in 2019.

Vicki Weinberg (00:10:10):

I imagine any, that many, not any, but I imagine many people were selling 'em now of course they are extremely popular. So yes, I think the products that we create might be different now. And I also believe there might be more products coming on board from sellers who had traditionally offered services. And once we sort of pivot may be add another income stream And product is obviously at a brilliant way to do this. And I think that where you sell products might be different either way. I still think that physical products are a great income stream and whether that is your entire business or whatever, you have a service business and your offering products as well. I still believe that in 2021, people are going to be creating products and people are going to be buying products.

Vicki Weinberg (00:10:57):

So why not? You, if you've always dreamt of creating your own products and selling your own products, but perhaps you for a while, I don't know because you know, it had been a tough year and our people are still buying and due. They want, why do you know what I'm saying? As long as your product relevant and you know, and you validate your idea, then why not? Why not you and why not? Now, if not now when that's the mantra that I quite liked. So if you want any help of this then, okay, there's just this couple of ways that I can help you say, if you go through the back catalog of this podcast, if you haven't listened to already, and even if you have listened to it, where do you, you might wanna listen to them. So a lots of episodes that we have lots of practical advice that will help you. I also have a blog that you can look at, which is blog dot Vicki Weinberg dot com and a product creation checklist.

Vicki Weinberg (00:11:44):

Talk to you for all of the stages that you need to go through. And so you can literally work for you for

everything and take them off as you go. If you want a little bit more help, I'm going to be relaunching in my product creation course, fairly sane. And this takes you through every stage of the product creation process in real detail. So we are going to be real detail on every single thing. And you also get the opportunity to join a Facebook group that goes along with that. So if there is any, you know, thing, you, you are still not sure about, or even for going through the course, you are not alone. You can contact me at any point and I can help you through these. I'm also going to be launching a new small group program where we will go through the same course. Content is the coarse perhaps slightly updated.

Vicki Weinberg (00:12:25):

But if, you know, if the new year in real-time with the opportunity to ask questions and things like that. And so these will be, this will be a virtual, a program that we done over zoom. And then we have a small group of people and myself, and I'll be talking you through each module. We I can give you feedback on the work that you've done so far. And yeah, the idea of it is that we work through it together. So you've got real time support. So I'm going to link to some more information to both of these options in the show notes. And you can also go to Vickiweinberg.com for details. thank you so much for your time. And as I say, normal service will resume next week, we have another fantastic interview from another product creator that as always, I hope helps and inspires you say where ever you are listening and have a lovely week take care and speak soon.