Side hustle?
Try an entirely new category
New product and business from scratch
Starting a business is basically one big creative project. You come up with a concept, use every trick in the book to bring it to life, then try to keep it from dying. Sure it’s work, but making a sale from a product you made up feels exactly like playing shops when you’re a kid. Not quite real, and lots of fun.
Imitation is flattering.
It’ll also drive you out of business
Good ideas catch on. After trading for five years at mattibag.com.au, the marketplace had been flooded with copies of my bag. I had manufacturers contacting me to try and undercut my supplier and using knock-offs as evidence of their mattress-making chops. So after more than 11,000 orders I called time on my one-person shop. Also I was tired.
Solving a problem people didn’t know they had
Your mattress gets a little bit trashed every time you move it. I used to move a lot, so one time I tried taping it up in a big tarp, which worked really well. That thing was bombproof. I wondered if there was a tarp bag out there designed for moving mattresses. There wasn’t, so I designed one.
Building trust with simple branding and clear UX
When your closest competitor is a $5 dust cover at Bunnings, getting people to pay $49 for a Mattibag is all about communicating value fast. I used Helvetica, the world’s most trustworthy typeface, with a clean layout and clear proof points, and let reviews do all the selling for me.
Nailing CX just by meeting expectations
Companies always talk about exceeding expectations, but many struggle just to meet them. So from product quality to comms, shipping and customer service, I give people the experience I would want. And if things go wrong, do whatever it takes to make them right. Usually that just means a refund. People love a refund.
