Frontflip
A fast and easy to use backend for consignment stores
Still waiting on Shopify to approve Frontflip to the App Store. I been feeling good as the Shopify forum has a few posts on asking for a consignment inventory management tool that integrates with Shopify.
I think this will be the first place I will attack for getting the first users, other then follow backs on the people I had conversations with earlier.
Waiting for approval to the store has been I bit difficult and taken away momentum
After weeks of talking to customers and building the product in the background, I have finally launched. The goal now is to get the first few users.
Luckily I talked to a handful of consignment store owners already, that I will able to follow up with and see what they think, then hopefully pitch them the product.
We wanted to make sure we understood the problem we were tackling. So I emailed 100+ consignments stores and ended up having a call or email thread with 20+ of them.
I learned alot from this, like people want to help you when you want to help them. I also learned very specific issues that gave me ideas and a foundation to build the product from.
-
2
Did you mention the proposed solution to them? If so, how did you go about getting honest feedback?
-
2
Yes, I asked them at the very end. The proposed solution was very broad, so after I asked them a few questions I was able to better understand that person specific problem and pitched the product back based on there answers.
These are the questions I asked:
Script 1:
- Whats the hardest part about managing your consignment store?
- Tell me about the last time that had happened?
- What was hard about that?
- Why was that hard?
- How do you solve that right now?
- Why don't you love that solution?
- How often do you experience that problem
- How much are you spending to solve that problem?
- Where do you find information online about solving this problem?
Script 2:
- Whats the hardest part about growing your consignment store?
- Tell me about the last time that had happened?
- What was hard about that?
- Why was that hard?
- How do you solve that right now?
- Why don't you love that solution?
- How often do you experience that problem
- How much are you spending to solve that problem?
- Where do you find information online about solving this problem?
The questions are based on the customer dev labs videos and see super helpful, you should check them out if your having trouble:
https://customerdevlabs.com/2013/11/05/how-i-interview-customers/
-
-
1
20% sounds pretty good. Can you share the email you sent them?
-
1
Hey it was a bit under 20%, and all the emails were rebump and I usually didn’t get a response tell the 2nd or 3rd follow-up.
This is the email:
Hey ____ ,I found _____ while looking for the consignment businesses in _____
I am working on a project called Frontflip that aims to improve the way consignment businesses are managed and grown.
I'm not looking to sell anything, but since you have much expertise running a consignment business, I'd love to get your advice on our product so we don't build the wrong thing.
If you're available, I'd love to chat for just 10min - Sun or Mon Morning?
Thanks for any help
Menan
-
1
That's really interesting that you got so many a positive responses after 3 or 4 messages. Followup is something that I, and I think lots of people out there, always fall down on.
How did you handle the followup? Did you follow up with shorter messages proposing different timeslots, or make a different pitch?
-
1
No say just asking if they saw the previous message. Most people are just to lazy or forget to reply but are willing to help!
-
-
-
Comment