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by eventhough
3720 days ago
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I'm getting married in May in Sonoma. I will have somewhere around 150 guests which is sizable. I've already booked pretty much every service needed for the wedding: venue, caterer, photographer, videographer, DJ, wedding planner, florist, hairdresser, makeup artist etc. Feedback: 1. I'm the groom. The truth is, weddings are really for brides. Yes, we're both getting married, but it's all about the bride. My fiancée is a typical SF professional. I can tell you right now she would be skeptical about a "bidding" process. Believe it or not, the wedding planning process for her is fun. It's a lot of work, but "curating" her own wedding is enjoyable. Although I can totally understand why from a groom's perspective we just want to 99designs the problem away. :) 2. I'm not sure how you will convince the better vendors to join your program. It sounds like this is a great platform for up and coming wedding vendors, but once they get good - they won't need your service anymore. They'll have clout on Yelp or theknot or weddingwire. And people that are looking for good vendors will go seek them out. 3. Putting down a credit card is a scary thing - most of the contract stuff comes way later. Many of our vendors went through honeybook.com. What's to stop them from just going outside of your system and giving the bride and groom a better deal? How do you ensure you will have lock-in? 4. Maybe you'll charge money for the bidding process? Or try to place ads? This is a great space to disrupt...I hope a product like this becomes popular at some point because weddings can be really tough to plan. |
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Some thoughts on your comments: 1. I don't necessarily think that our solution is for everyone. We're looking to find our little niche in the market where a couple is ok with forgo-ing some of the work involved with the planning process in the hope to save time and potentially money. It's not for everyone, the same way airbnb wasn't for everyone when it first came out. If we can unlock a small market, we think we can grow it. Time will tell!
2. Very similar issue here with vendors as well. We're looking at a niche vendor group at first. Ideally it's top notch vendors who need help getting the word out. Also will help if they are tech savvy and willing to respond quickly electronically.
3. We really like honeybook.com, we may consider using them until payments are fully built out. In terms of lock in, we're looking to get the clients to really work on the iteration back and forth with the vendors (in many silos) at the same time. The goal will be that they see the technology/payment/insurance/etc all integral to the process. It's ideally similar to the feeling you feel when you book an apartment with airbnb, sure.. you could just message the host through airbnb and try to pay them directly, but with the services they offer, it wouldn't make sense. We're still at an early stage, so yea.. it's a danger in the beginning.
4. We're brainstorming the many different monetization points possible. We may just lower the barriers as much as possible initially to find customers, then look to monetize more heavily when we have actual data.
Thanks for the thoughts here. Would love for you to check out wedwell.co and give the wedding brief a try (even just as a test). It's evolving over the next few days with feedback we've received here, but please do give it a try!