With Jill Bong of Chicken Armor
Jill Bong is an entrepreneur, homesteader, and inventor of Chicken Armor – a different chicken saddle. She is also the author of over a dozen books on homesteading and self-reliant living. In this episode, we learn about
* Why Jill and her husband created their product despite established competition in the space
* Differentiating the product from competitors
* The design drivers – few components, washable, easy to manufacture, and low cost
* The process of working with material suppliers
* Keeping startup costs low – “We almost had no choice, we had to work with a shoestring budget, or almost no budget in this case”
* Why it’s rare to come up with your final product on your first try and the iterative part of product design process
* Taking a year (multiple seasons) to test the product
* Jill’s experience getting laughed out of a gardening forum – and landing her first user who was also a business owner with a similar experience
* Selling Chicken Armor on eBay to validate the market
* Handling customer objections and their perception of quality through money back guarantees and up-front education
* Why Jill and her husband abandoned pursuit of a patent
* Why they haven’t scaled up to large scale manufacturing and distribution or branched out into other designs and target markets
* When sales actually picked up and Jill’s solution to marketing and outreach (especially for unique products)
* The product sales as a result of mentions in large broad publications versus small targeted outlets
* Their most successful marketing tactic – pitching to the editors of publications and appealing to their audience worked better than influential bloggers and magazine ads
* Some of the other passive income streams that Jill has started
* How to know when you should continue validating your market, and when to quit
Links and resources mentioned in this episode
* Website
* chickenarmor.com
* byjillb.com
* Social Media
* Twitter: @chickenarmor
* Facebook: facebook.com/chickenarmor
* Instagram:
* Pinterest: pinterest.com/chickenarmor
* Google Plus: +Chickenarmorsaddles
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