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App for selling shoes?

I want to make an app for just selling shoes,I want to sell shoes for comapnay like nike,adidas,etc.How should I start?I mean what should I have to do for taking this idea forward? thanks in advance:)

Answer 13636

IMHO, you should get your customers to know first. Who are they? How can you reach out to them? Why should they want to buy shoes via an app rather than at a reputable online shop? So, first step could be to conduct a brainstorming, gathering all potential customer target groups, e.g.

Don’t limit yourself in this step, no idea could be weird enough to not be noted down.

Step 2 would be, to narrow the identified customer segments down to, say, 6 most suited segments to start with. Note, you want to focus at a very narrow customer segment at the beginning, rather than acting like “everybody needs to buy shoes, so every consumer is my customer.” You need to identify your first mover customer segment. The kind of people, who love to try new technology and new shopping trends. When narrowing your customer segments, consider these seven aspects:

  1. Financial situation of customer segment?
  2. Can I get in contact with them easily?
  3. How urgent is their need to buy?
  4. Could I delivery my product to them today (meaning without any 3rd party dependencies)?
  5. Does customer from this segment see a lot of competition for my product (Note, look through the customer’s eyes, not yours. Consider, that not buying from you at all can be the most common option for them, too)?
  6. Is customer segment suitable as a beachhead market? That is, can you easily expand from this customer segment to the next, using the beachhead market as a reference?
  7. Does the customer segment align with your own core values? This point should never be neglected. As an entrepreneur, you’ll need to get through a lot of hard times. Working for and with a market segment that correlates with your core beliefs gives you the much needed power of endurance.

Create yourself a matrix with your customer segments and the seven aspects listed above. Then, evaluate each aspect for each segment by giving points from 1 to 10, where 1 is a poor result for a given aspect and 10 is the best value. That way, you can identify your 6 customer segments that you’ll target first.

Step 3 is customer interviews. Yes, you should actually leave the building and get in contact with your customers. You need to be open to what they have to say and never be pushy or try selling them your idea. Just learn, how they buy shoes today and what problems the might have with the current options. Learn, how they try to overcome these problems with today’s means. If done right, you’ll collect valuable insights from your customers, which help to finally pick the very first customer segment.

Once you’ve gone through this first steps, you’ll know a lot more about your customers and what problem to actually solve for them. This is just the beginning, though. But identifying your target customer segment and talking to your customers first should prevent you from a build-that-app-and-they-will-come approach, which comes with a high risk of failure.

Hope, that inspires and helps! Bunjip

Answer 13638

Bunjip offers a great answer regarding your customers. There are a few other sides to your business to think about as well.

Another side of the business is your suppliers: Nike, Adidas, etc. You’ll need to contact each one to find out how to become a distributor.

Another side of your question is running your business. Will you need a warehouse to store shoes? How many shoes of each type and size will you keep in stock? How will you ship them to customers? How will you handle returns?

You’ll also need to consider advertising your business. Bunjip’s answer describes how to identify customer pools. But how do you reach them and convince them to use your app, rather than buying their shoes the way they do now (at their local stores, through Amazon, etc.)?

One more question to think about: how will your customers know whether a shoe fits them or not? I always go into stores and try on shoes to find out how they feel. I only buy shoes online if I can find the exact brand, model and size of shoe that I’ve worn before. You may get a lot of returns / exchanges because the customer doesn’t like the way the shoe feels.

These are questions you’ll need to get answers to. (I know, this is supposed to be an answer, but sometimes it’s more useful to answer a question with another question!)

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