A Complete Guide To Starting A Buckwheat Hulls Pillow Business
Sleep is a vital routine activity that people need to accomplish to attain a healthy mind and body. With the right kind of pillows, their bedtime becomes more comfortable because of the right amount of softness their pillows have, lulling them into a deep slumber. And there’s a high chance that the right type of pillow they need is the ‘sobakawa’ or buckwheat hulls pillow.
What Are Buckwheat Hulls Pillows?
This type of pillow originated in Japan. It’s filled with hulls, which provide a firm and spring-like feel. It contours the neck and head for optimum support.
A buckwheat hulls pillow eases muscle tension and strain by promoting proper spinal alignment. Hence, consumers who want to try a different type of pillow from the regular ones in the market choose buckwheat hulls pillows for comfortable and restful sleep. And this is a good enough reason to start a business selling buckwheat hulls pillows.
If you desire to start a buckwheat hulls pillow business, read this complete guide to help you attain your sales and marketing goals.
Find A Good Supplier
Are you thinking of starting a physical or online store that sells buckwheat hulls pillows? If yes, then you need to find a good supplier.
Here are the things you need to check when looking for a supplier:
Supplier’s Reputation: How long do the company manufacture buckwheat hulls pillows? What do verified clients say about their products in reviews?
Quality Of Their Products: Before you proceed with bulk ordering, order or request the manufacturer to send some samples of pillows they sell. Doing this can let you inspect if they manufacture high-quality pillows as they advertise online or say over the phone.
Payment Scheme: Find out if the supplier offers some sort of payment scheme such as a consignment basis or paying only for items sold. If you prefer to pay upon ordering, then that’s okay. However, ask if you can get a discount for bulk orders.
Brainstorm Your Sales And Marketing Team
Before you decide on the best marketing tactics to use, it’s crucial to meet and brainstorm with your employees or marketing team to achieve success. A sobakawa pillow has promising qualities, so it’s not difficult to create effective marketing strategies.
When brainstorming your team, you need to decide on the following:
Assigning Roles To Employees: You need to decide who among your employees will be responsible for customer service, product display, and implementing digital marketing strategies. Assign their key roles in your business.
Offline Marketing Strategies To Use: You may offer free buckwheat hulls pillows on your store opening. You might want to install giant signage or storefront digital displays. Giving away branded trinkets is also a good idea such as miniature pillow-inspired key chains or small giveaway pillows with your store logo engraved on these items.
Online Marketing Strategies To Use: When it comes to online marketing strategies, there are a wide array of options to choose from, such as content marketing, video marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) marketing, social media marketing, pay per click (PPC), paid ads, and influencer marketing. Learn more about these digital marketing strategies below.
Create A Website
Regardless if you want to put up a brick-and-mortar or online pillow business, it’s necessary to create a website for your branding. If you have a website, you can promote your brand to more local consumers as well as tourists.
You can hire a web designer and developer to create a website for your buckwheat hulls pillow business. It’s crucial to establish an intuitive, responsive, fast, and attractive website to entice more people to visit your store and make a purchase.
Strategize Your Content Marketing
If you already have a website, you can kickstart your content marketing strategy. It’s essential to create a blog section for your website where you can share your expertise, story, and ideas.
Here are some content marketing ideas you can try:
Publish Information Articles: For instance, you can publish articles about the basic information people need to know about buckwheat hulls pillows.
Create How-To Articles: Teach your audience how to use and care for buckwheat hulls pillows. You can also educate your customers on how they can design their bedrooms using your products.
SEO Optimize Content: Make your articles and web pages visible to your target audience by implementing the principles of SEO. In this way, you can optimize your content to increase your website’s ranking online or search engine search results pages (SERPs). Learn more about SEO marketing below.
Implement An SEO Marketing Campaign
Search engine optimization is a business marketing strategy that involves keyword research, proper keyword placement, link building, and technical content creation. Of course, mobile responsiveness, loading speed, and website accessibility are important considerations when starting an SEO campaign.
Here’s a systematic guide on how to implement SEO marketing for your buckwheat hulls pillow business:
Keyword Research: The first step in implementing an SEO campaign is to know the best keywords to use in creating your content. Luckily, there are many online keyword research tools available nowadays that you can use to check the keywords used by your competitors in their articles and other web content.
Topic Creation: Once you have compiled a list of keywords to use in creating your content, you can think of the best topics for your blog. Before you start doing this, you can check the topics your top competitors have on their websites. You can write the same topic but make sure to improve it and use your creativity to make it unique.
Don’t Forget The Meta Tags: Optimize your meta tags such as the meta title and alt tags. Meta tags usually appear on HTML source code or head of the page, visible on search engines, describing a web page’s content. Take time to create your meta tags by using relevant keywords too. In this way, search engines can easily scan your web content and determine what the page is all about.
Social Media Marketing
You probably know the impact of social media on consumers. If you want to grow your website leads and your entire business, you should also have a solid social media marketing strategy. You can start by creating a social media page for your buckwheat hulls pillow business.
How do you create your social media marketing strategies? Check these tips to help you kickstart your social media marketing campaign:
Be Consistent With Your Branding: Branding involves being consistent with your product and company profile presentation. You can use your company logo on your website and social media pages to maintain brand consistency. Include a profile picture and a cover photo consistent across your online pages. It’s totally fine to use your company logo and your organizational picture to maintain consistency.
Invite Friends And Family: Establish your customer base starting from your close family and friends. Invite them via your social media accounts and ask your family and friends to accept your invitation and share your page with their social media contacts.
Publish Your First Post: Your first post is very important. It must be professional, convincing, and interesting. Publish a post that will leave a mark on your audience and it should tell a story. Create a press release type of content, announcing the opening or launching of your store with photos of your employees on the go, such as arranging your buckwheat hulls pillow displays, giving flyers, preparing giveaways, or installing banners and signage.
Use Social Media Tools: You can make your life easier by using social media tools, including built-in ad managers and analytics.
Video Marketing
This business marketing strategy involves publishing compelling videos to capture the attention of your target customers. Videos are a form of visual communication that captures the eyes. They provide a more convenient solution than reading long text content.
So, how do you incorporate video marketing in your buckwheat hulls pillow business?
You can watch the video below to find out more about how you can promote your buckwheat pillow business:
Take Advantage Of New Retail Technologies
In stores, high-tech tools manage ordering, track pricing, and balance inventory assortments. Customer tracking tools improve customer satisfaction and boost customer loyalty by improving shoppers’ in-store experience.
On the other hand, retail marketing technology improves management planning and decision-making with the use of data-mining software programs. Hence, these tools and programs improve product design and development pricing, stocking, and marketing decisions.
Below are some examples of retail technological solutions used nowadays that can also help you in your buckwheat hulls pillow business:
Marketing Technology: In retail businesses, marketing technology refers to the use of innovative digital solutions such as augmented reality, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), data mining, and software programs in promoting products. For instance, mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are IoT solutions, in which users can use them to shop products online. You can also use these digital technological solutions to promote your buckwheat hulls pillows.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): This software enables you to track your customers.
Smart Registers Or Point-of-sale (POS) Terminals: You can use POS terminals to print reports and coupons, check shopper discounts, and gather customer profile information. In addition, you can use smart registers to schedule work hours and as email terminals.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): This software program manages computer-to-computer transactions directly from your store to the vendors’ ordering systems and databases.
In-store Interactive Kiosks: You can use this solution to provide your customers with interactive product details.
Signature-capture Technology: This technology can be used as a POS terminal for your store’s credit and debit card transactions, in which receipts are processed and stored electronically.
Universal Product Code (UPC): This technological solution uses unique numbering and bar codes for the product identification system.
E-commerce Technology: This technology helps retailers and online shoppers interact anytime and anywhere.
Executive Information Systems (EIS): These systems generate graphs of complex data, helping retail executives make sound business decisions.
Obtain The Appropriate Licenses And Permits
It’s not enough to register your buckwheat hulls pillow business. Before you sell pillows, you need to obtain the appropriate licenses and permits. The licenses and permits you need for your business depend on your industry and location.
Here’s a list of the types of licenses and permits for your start-up business:
General Business License: You need this license to operate a buckwheat hulls pillow business in the place your business is located.
State And Tax Identification Number: You’ll need to apply for a federal employer identification number (EIN) or a tax identification number.
Sales Tax Permit: Regardless if you have a brick-and-mortar or online buckwheat hulls pillow business, you need to have a seller’s permit or sales tax permit to collect sales tax.
Home Occupation Permit: If you want to set up a home-based business when selling buckwheat hulls pillows, you need to have this permit. Check with your city to see if you need to obtain a home occupation permit when operating your business at home since local policies may vary.
Other Permits: You might also need to get a fire department permit and an environmental permit.
Consider Business Basics
Financing your business is one of the basic considerations of a start-up. Do you need to get a business loan or a personal loan? Alternatively, do you want to use your savings? You can talk to your bank or lending institution to know your options.
In any type of business, you need to determine if you’ll be renting a place for your physical store or conduct business online (e-commerce). In addition, you need to decide if you need to hire employees on start-up or handle everything on your own and outsource repetitive tasks, such as content writing and digital marketing.
You must be prepared to deal with the most common business roadblocks. Consider taking business courses online or finding a mentor that can help you get started.
Conclusion
Starting a buckwheat business involves collaborating with a reputable manufacturer or supplier. It’s important to meet your employees and think of the best sales and marketing strategies to promote your business. A perfect blend of offline and online marketing strategies can boost your visibility, traffic, and sales.
Of course, the use of new retail tech tools and solutions is vital in running your day-to-day business operations. As you grow your buckwheat hulls business, it’s easier to get things done with automation.
