[edw519]

The target audience for Rewire Attire, the high end fashion marketplace, was women with enough money ...

Whenever I read "target audience" and "with enough money" in the same sentence, I run the other way.

My experience with prospects "with enough money":

  - there are far less of them than everyone else
  - many of them didn't earn it themselves, so...
  - they really don't really understand the concept of "value"
  - they don't understand investing vs. consuming
  - they think they are actually the source of their own gifts, so...
  - they think they're better than others, so...
  - they will treat you like shit, not like a trusted business partner
  - they will second guess you
  - they will override you
  - they'll blame you for the bad things
  - they'll take credit for the good things
  - they won't pay you on time
  - they will protest their bills
  - they'll make you hate them and wonder why you're doing this

Save yourself the agony and just build something for the masses, where no one can become big enough to make that much difference.

Edit: Like OP, I'm referring to B2C, not enterprise.

Edit 2: Normally when I see a bunch of bizarre replies to a post of mine that begins with "My experience...", I just close my browser and go back to work. But I guess I'm in a strange mood, so in order to avoid cluttering up this thread (and in the spirit of good clean fun without malice), here goes:

diego, you say "One data point is not generalizable..." and then introduce your own data point. It was never my intent to "generalize", just to share my experience.

chc, I'd prefer to read about what you did over of what you hear. If I'm going to listen to someone else's antecdote, I'd rather do it over beers.

PaulHoule, nice story, but what's the point?

larrys, My list does not directly contradict the success of just about all luxury brands that have been successful. They would probably agree. They've just chosen to thrive in such an environment. I don't.

Samuel_Michon. I believe you. Thanks for sharing your experience.

fredsted, it pretty much does not differ from everybody else? I'd rather have 100 difficult customers with 1% of my ass than 1 difficult customer with 100% of my ass. That's all.

(Sorry if the tone seems negative. I'd love to learn how to better communicate in writing on-line without being misunderstood... It's a work in progress.)

[PaulHoule]

High end consumers are often jerks, but so are some people who sell to them.

I know a woman who makes hand-knit sweaters for about $250. She makes them out of acrylic yarn, which shocks me. If I'm going to spend a lot for clothes I'm going to want a nice material, like wool. Particularly when you consider the cost of the labor, the extra cost of the wool is nothing.

She told me she did sell a wool sweater to somebody who went home and washed in hot, it shrank, and then heard no ends of complaints about it, so she resolved to never sell wool sweaters unless they are specially commissioned.

Some luxury retailers provide a great experience, like the ones around Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Other ones make it really clear they hate you. I know of one retailer in the UK where if you buy something with a credit card you'll get fraudulent charges from the UK just a day or two after your order.

Nasty.

[geon]

> Particularly when you consider the cost of the labor, the extra cost of the wool is nothing.

> she did sell a wool sweater to somebody who went home and washed in hot, it shrank, and then heard no ends of complaints about it

If she still can sell all the sweaters she knit, her customers clearly don't care about the material. Using a matrial that doesn't shrink increases the percieved quality of her product and gives her less trouble.

Seems reasonable to me.

[larrys]

"She told me she did sell a wool sweater to somebody who went home and washed in hot, it shrank, and then heard no ends of complaints about it, so she resolved to never sell wool sweaters unless they are specially commissioned."

n=1 there then, right? Perhaps she was a bit to hasty based on that single data point?

One of the things luxury brands do is bake into their costs margin to account for customers like this. Or to account for unreasonable people.

[PaulHoule]

I think I'm also unusually snobbish about materials.

If you go to a crafts store they usually have a big section of wall devoted to acrylic yarn. You might find one or two kinds of wool yarn and maybe a blend, but it's pretty clear that grandmothers who knit stuff for their grandkids value 20 hours of their time less than the $10 or so difference in the price of the materials.

[Domenic_S]

Look at it the other way: maybe acrylic yarn serves a pain point. Maybe grandmothers spent 20 hours knitting a beautiful little hat or coat or something, only to have it ruined in the wash by a young, sleep-deprived parent, inexperienced in caring for quality hand-crafted goods.

Grandma figures out she can just use acrylic and now her work doesn't get ruined by washing & drying, and as a bonus the moths don't eat it because who has a cedar chest anymore?

[stan_rogers]

Acrylics don't cause itching (unless you let them get filthy, at which point the filth may cause itching) and can be cleansed of the latest plague the kids brings home from school/day care. Wool, not so much. And it sure sounds like the value of the gift is in the work rather than the materials to me.

[larrys]

To the point of wool vs. acrylic with respect to knitting:

http://www.knittinghelp.com/forum/showthread.php?t=86186

[pseut]

Or they price discriminate, by selling the wool sweater at a high markup to customers who self identify as especially interested in handmade wool sweaters while advertising the cheaper acrylic sweater to everyone else.

[larrys]

I'll give you an example of this.

We offer a service which we charge $10 for. When we first started offering the service we didn't really commit to a time period for completion but generally did it as fast as possible, perhaps it took maybe 4 to 8 hours but sometimes it might be done in an hour or two.

We then changed the pricing as follows:

12 to 24 hours service ($10) 8 to 12 hours service $12 2 to 8 hour service $15

Many people pay the extra fee happily. Instant revenue.

We have something else which is higher priced, say $120. We offer expedited service on that as well charging $25 for "rush". Same thing. Many people choose to pay the rush fee for the better service.

I guess the only thing that is really different from what we do with this and what Fedex does is the fact that it doesn't cost us anymore to offer the service faster at all. We are just allowing people to self identify and feel better by having some kind of guarantee. (Although we don't really guarantee anything we just guarantee we will attempt to get it done faster if we don't they pay at the rate that they would have paid for the "default" service.

(Disclaimer: Figures approximate but accurate enough for the point I am making).

[Evbn]

Exactly. Wool for a textilephiles, gold cables for the audiophiles.. selling to snobs is good business.

[Evbn]

Your example is someone who doesn't sell something you in particular want unless you ask for it, at which point she will, and that makes her a "jerk"?

[diego]

One data point is not generalizable. I was very successful building enterprise products, and I never figured out how to build anything for the masses.

I disagree strongly with your conclusion. If anything, save yourself some agony by building something for a market that you know well, and are interested in.

[chc]

This is what I hear from everyone besides Ed that I've ever heard on the subject: It's easier to make money with a product that appeals to a few rich people than with one that depends on large numbers of average people buying in.

[nostrademons]

Usually what I've seen is that successful products are often ones that let average people become richer. ViaWeb, DropBox, AirBnB, AdSense, AdWords, EBay, Etsy, Kickstarter, Google Apps - these are all B2B2C products that let ordinary people make some small amount of money doing things that are quite within their grasp.

[Evbn]

Goes all the way back to Levi's selling supplies to gold rushed.

[majani]

It's easier, but what I've noticed with many companies that follow that model is that a handful of clients(maybe even just one) end up controlling most of the revenue. That sort of buyer power is not good for any company's long-term prospects.

[notahacker]

In fairness, these elements of customer behaviour are actually in the favour of someone starting a designer clothes business targeting the rich:

   - many of them didn't earn it themselves, so...
   - they really don't really understand the concept of "value"
   - they don't understand investing vs. consuming

(that's also why "designer" markets don't appeal to me as a startup space either)

A bigger issues with targeting rich spendthrift consumers is that most people considering a startup don't know any and don't understand them. I expect that irrespective of any issues with sharing their body size, wealthy women who buy fitted designer clothes really enjoy the experience of visiting high end stores to touch the material and be complimented on the fit by a helpful attendant, are prepared to pay the resulting premiums and wouldn't replace the experience with a super-efficient website even if they already do all their grocery shopping and flight-booking online. (But then that's a hypothesis too as none of my female friends qualify as rich yet)

[PaulHoule]

The main pain in the ass I see in that is you need to travel to one of a few big cities to find a store that sells certain brands.

Personally I live the Howard Hughes lifestyle and don't travel a lot and being able to get fancy stuff without going anywhere.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

For many people in that target market, that's probably a feature; use your shopping trip as an excuse for a vacation in NYC.

[xiaoma]

>I'd love to learn how to better communicate in writing on-line without being misunderstood... It's a work in progress.

Try actually replying to people! Repeatedly editing your posts to add "presponses" subverts the format of a forum.

[larrys]

Your list directly contradicts the success of just about all luxury brands that have been successful.

Could you therefore clarify what you mean by 'prospects "with enough money"'

[frogpelt]

I'm going to guess (purely a guess) that before your experience with rich people you already held some sort of grudge against rich people in general.

I say this because most of your complaints (besides the first complaint, obviously) either apply to consumers in general or are based on nothing more than your opinion. And it appears to be a poisoned opinion.

If I have a net worth of $10B or -$100K, paying $250 or more for a pair of jeans is going to make me far more critical of sub par performance from the vendor.

Do you think rich people go raise a fuss at Walmart when they get poor service or a poor quality product? Of course not. There's no expectation of a great experience at Walmart. Paying extra for a high end experience makes critics out of everyone. And if you start the experience with a vendetta against people who have more money than you it's not going to turn out well.

[Evbn]

On the contrary, people accustomed to fine things often forget how "roughing it" works.

[Samuel_Michon]

All your points except number 1 and 2, I’ve experienced far more often with small clients (self employed, or a small business), not with larger companies or independently wealthy individuals.

It’s the ‘I Built This!’ mentality.

[illuminate]

You don't need to actually have "built this" to act as if you did, naturally.

[Samuel_Michon]

Sure, but they are the people who feel that they don't need to pay taxes and that anyone doing work for them are lucky not to be unemployed and can easily be exploited.

[illuminate]

You don't need to be a Randian ideal self-starter to pretend that you are and use those same entitlements to abuse your workers.

[larrys]

"larrys, My list does not directly contradict the success of just about all luxury brands that have been successful. They would probably agree."

But your first sentence said 'My experience with prospects "with enough money"' where is the evidence (even anecdotal) to indicate that luxury brands would agree?

While luxury brands certainly have customers that fit all the points that you make I find it very hard to believe (from my anecdotal experience) that what you are saying is ubiquitous among luxury brands and that they would agree.

[jamesaguilar]

Use the reply button to reply to people.

> Edit: Like OP, I'm referring to B2C, not enterprise.

?

> - they will treat you like shit, not like a trusted business partner > - they will override you > - they'll take credit for the good things > - they won't pay you on time

None of these are relevant to a pay-then-goods b2c scenario. And somehow plenty of companies have managed to make money off of rich people, so maybe you were doing it wrong?

[throwaway1980]

> I'd love to learn how to better communicate in writing on-line

Replying to people instead of editing your post helps.

[Iaks]

This might be late, or a topic no one wants to bring up, but I am supremely pleased to hear your voice in these parts again. Thank you for contributing.

[emmelaich]

Yep; I was immediately reminded of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com

[fredsted]

Number 7 and below: how does that differ from everybody else?