Update on sales progress and the purchase of some 'heavy' machinery!

Labels: equipment, fishbowl2, marcela, sales

BBC Olive has always been my favourite food magazine. They have gone even higher in my esteem now- one of my products is featured in it- that's two features of my products in two consecutive months! The article is called 'Buy Like a Pro' and it follows an article on Mexican food, written by Thomasina Miers.

Now, after having the endorsement from the magazine for two of my five products, how can I best use this to help sales? I've laminated the articles and placed them on the table right next to the products I've offered for customers to taste at the shop in Brighton where I've done a tasting session today. We sold out of most things.

But now I've left the shop, everyone happy with sales, what happens next? I've left the laminated copies of the articles in the shop, but I think I need a fantastic sales strategy to 'sell like a pro'. Tastings are well and good for selling on the day, but mega expensive if I look at the amount of people who we reach.

How often is it a good idea to do tastings? How to follow up in order to increase and then maintain a high level of sales, reaching the maximum potenti sales in each retailer?

Labels: fishbowl2, marcela, sales, sales techniques, selling

...read the Olé for Mole feature about one of our products in the March issue of BBC Olive Magazine!

A few months ago, I got an Innovation Support Grant (ISG) from the Food and Drink iNet. The purpose of the grant was to help me improve my marketing and PR. Here are some things we did with the ISG grant:
-we engaged a web designer to develop our website www.ricomexicankitchen.co.uk (with sections still under construction, but almost there);
-we improved our packaging and included suggestions on how to use the products we make;
-we worked with a PR agency to hopefully help us get some editorial coverage in magazines and newspapers...and yes, we are in Editor’s feature, page 8 of my favourite magazine, BBC Olive.

This is a small mention but I hope we can build from here.

The best thing about this grant was its emphasis on working with experts so we learned the tools required so we could sustain the work they had funded. And yes, I learned lots about copywriting for the website and packaging. I also learned that if you want to be in magazines, this is a labour of love and perseverance: you need to contact each magazine, phone the right person, agree to send them samples, then the samples get lost, you follow up, and start again.
Imagine what I felt when I opened the magazine in the shop... and yes, there it was, the article “Olé for Mole” feature and a photo of our Mole (pronounced Moleh, a wonderfully rich Mexican cooking sauce). I got on the train and I wanted to show everyone the feature- but I resisted the temptation.

Now we are going to appear in some glossy magazines, the question is: How can we turn these articles into real, tangible outcomes, e.g. sales? Well, as it happened, I was visiting our newest stockist- Partridges of Sloane Square in London. He said he would stock salsas, but not the Mole sauce because people wouldn’t know what to do with it. I showed him the Olive magazine and he suggested I laminate it and place the article by the chiller. Perfect. However, I won’t be able to do this everywhere, so the question comes again- how do we use these articles and turn them into sales?

Please contact me through twitter if you have any suggestions... and watch this space!

Labels: fishbowl2, marcela, marketing, press features, sales conversion

New companies which start on a shoestring share a common problem: too much to do, not enough people to do the tasks. It’s a fine line between finding what you are best at and delegating the non-genius work.

In my quest to break even, I have delegated the book keeping to my newly appointed book keeper who is also doing some admin work for me. Other than that, I am putting in the hours to manufacture everything myself to save on costs, but then I have the big picture and strategic stuff, that I have been trying to juggle. The production has been fine, and I love it, but I haven’t had much time for the strategic stuff which I enjoy too.

The orders are really increasing and though I have enjoyed working 15 hour days, (especially because it means that the business is growing!), this is just not realistic or healthy. This is the time I need to bring in reinforcements for production. I know a catering company with some spare capacity and they can help me with production, once per week to start with and then we’ll take it from there. Although this means less profit in the short term, this is more likely to lead to orders delivered on time, and then I will have time to move the business forward.
The difficulty lies in striking a fine balance...If anyone has any thoughts on how to achieve this, please get in touch on Twitter.

Update on tackling the paper mountain and breaking even.

Labels: break even, fishbowl2, marcela, paperwork, video

Labels: fishbowl2, marcela, update

I think that marketing is a really important key to open up the sales door for my yummy sauces. I regularly do food tasting sessions at the shops where they sell my products.

It's time, however, to up my game and analyse return for investment on all the marketing activities - they all cost money. Now this is another tricky task for a novice like me: do I know how to measure the effectiveness of a marketing event, and the get figures to quantify? Er, I think you know the answer.

Take last Saturday, for example. I had discussed with Selfridges the idea of having a Mariachi band at the Food Halls. It turned into reality on Sat 31st Jan, and we had such a good time. Clearly a good thing. These are some benefits from this tasting session:

• The event was nicely publicised on the Selfridges website for three weeks and was advertised on their newsletter too.
• People tried the sauces, enjoyed the music, took photos and videos, bought.
• They took photos and videos and that will hopefully remind them of the brand. Creating awareness=sales??
• Two videos taken were particularly interesting: -one was for a blog for the daddydonkey website, they sell Mexican food off a van in London, have had some rave reviews, and have lots of followers; -another video taken by this man, the Mariachi band and I (!) sang a Mexican birthday song for his young daughter, and again, will be posted on their blog.

This is where I reach my limits as I don't know how to quantify whether the event was good R.O.I. How do I measure this? It's not straightforward. On the day, we saw 300+ people, and I will get sales figures next week.

This is what we spent:

• The Mariachi band fees.
• The time of 3 adults, including me, my lovely hubby and volunteer Rosie- thank you, Rosie!
• We paid for 4 return train fares from Derby. The tickets were cheap as we used a family railway card (The kids came with us, which could've been a good plan but they were a real pain as they were tired from a busy week, but that's another matter!).
• Samples, tortilla chips.
• Subsistance costs: meal, drinks etc.

To summarise, I think that the event was worthwhile: we sold, created awareness, and have been/will be on other websites. However, this is only my gut feeling, and I need to take the guesswork out of investing on marketing to focus my very limited resources wisely. Do contact me through the twitter link if you have any ideas or comments on this...

Labels: fishbowl2, marcela, marketing, return on investment, ROI