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How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - The Basics of Shipping

Everybody wants their stuff yesterday until they find out how much it it going to cost to make things happen in their royal time frame.

As I write this article in 2010, having a duct tape wallet shipped overnight in the mainland U.S. or Canada is going to cost approximately Eighty U.S. dollars or about four times the retail value of the wallet. Somebody would need to own a duct tape wallet pretty bad in order to pay a "C Note" (one hundred dollars) for one of these babies...

Shipping Is An Odor That Lingers

Many folks (especially salespeople) forget that a sale is not legitimate until the customer accepts and RETAINS the purchased item, none of which can occur until you have made arrangements for the goods to be delivered.

To that end, here are a couple of concepts which can dramatically influence the effect of your shipping policy:

Control Your Customer's Expectation - this advice may sound a bit like cheating but I recommend telling customers that it will take longer than it actually will for them to receive their goods so you set their expectation at one level and then automatically exceed it. While this takes some finesse, it is not very difficult to accomplish because few folks are trying to exceed customer expectations in the first place!
Box Like You Have Golden Gloves - quality products that arrive damaged tend to make the recipients ill. No one likes to see good stuff wrecked but the double edged sword of packaging weight and packaging integrity make this a difficult call. Simply ensuring your wallets are protected with a layer of paper wrapping inside the shipping envelop will eliminate potential damage from friction and handling.
Learn Maximum Sizing - Canada Post uses a plastic template with a slot in it to determine if packaging conforms to a regular size. To qualify for letter size the envelop needs to be no larger than 15" x 101/2" by 3/4" wide and less than 1.1 pounds in weight. We can fit three wallets into this size of bubble wrap envelop which reduces the shipping cost by 50% of what we would normally pay to ship as a package.

Examples of 2010 Canadian Shipping Costs

If you are shipping across international borders you need to consider customs and brokerage fees as well as the delay enhanced security checks sometimes take. All this can be handled efficiently and cost effectively through any major carrier like UPS, FedEx or DHL.

Here are a couple of actual costs to ship wallets around the world.

One wallet (Canada Post) - $ 2.75 arrives 4 - 6 business days
Three wallets (Canada Post) - $4.75 - arrives 4 - 6 business days
One wallet (Canada Post Registered) - $17.00 - arrives 4 - 6 business days
Six wallets (Canada Post) - $18.35 - arrives 4 - 6 business days
One wallet (UPS Overnight) - $79.90 - arrives by 4 pm next day

Ship, Ship, Let Her Rip!

Nobody should be afraid of shipping today because most freight companies have simplified their technology to the mom and pop level of understanding.

Today it is possible to sell anywhere in the world with the confidence that you can get your wallets to wherever they are desired for a very reasonable cost.

Here's hoping you stick to it!

Thank you, friend.

Barry Williams

DuctHide Tough Wearables is the worlds largest handmade duct tape wallet company providing several brands of wallets in more than 750 color combinations. Wholesale and retail orders shipped world-wide. Please visit our website to learn more about how you can earn an income with duct tape wallets. http://ducthide.com/trade-secrets http://www.ducthide.com/ducthide_story.html

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Start-a-Duct-Tape-Wallet-Business---The-Basi...] How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - The Basics of Shipping

How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - Finding Customers

We have tried some "getting up waaay too early and assembling stuff you don't want to" methods that should work but did not pay off for us and my hope is that you will avoid these time wasters and start making money sooner than we did.

No Doubt About It, Weird Stuff Sells

There are plenty of niche players who have done quite well in their unique markets with corny crap and you can, too if you are willing to search for the sales methods which work best in your area.

Here is what Did Not Work to generate sales where we started:

Ding Dong, Ding-a-ling Calling - I visited twenty stores in our city and a couple nearly phoned the police, one asked me if we had a business license and the rest of them kept their door open while I was talking to them. Even I got kinda scared...
They Are Selling Farmers?! - Farmer's markets drove me and my wife crazy. Long drives, big set up and tear down with few sales. I say let them keep their farmers!
Voiceless Town Criers - I discovered The Law Of Free Classified Ads by wasting plenty of time producing ads for free sites. Oddly enough, folks who surf free ad sites think everything is expensive. Hmmm.

And here are a few things that did work:

Alligator Skin Cowboy Boots - we would whip our wallets out at house parties, garage parties or family gatherings. Sometimes we had to give credit because folks didn't have enough cash to meet our big Rubbermaid tub selection but collecting was never a problem. Kinda like candle parties.
That's You On TV! - Even though the first wallet we shipped was a PayPal scam, our website has garnered sales from the UK, US, Canada and Africa.
Lean On Me - find a big brother like we did. After being turned down as a dancing partner from The Red Green Show and several other websites / duct tape names, we were accepted by UncommonGoods.com as a supplier. We are thankful to the gods of duct tape for that, let me tell you!

Let The Games Begin

If you take a gander at Google Key Words for duct tape you will see that the popularity of that phrase is growing by 50% per year. That's a lot.

Someone who was seriously considering a hobby that could work into a part time business might want to give this industry a deeper look because I believe we ain't seen nothing yet.

And I know this is something you can do.

Here's hoping you stick to it!

Thank you, friend.

Barry Williams

DuctHide Tough Wearables is the worlds largest handmade duct tape wallet company providing several brands of wallets in more than 750 color combinations.

Wholesale and retail orders shipped world-wide.

Please visit our website to learn more about how you can earn an income with duct tape wallets. http://ducthide.com/trade-secrets http://ducthide.com/tightwad-template

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Start-a-Duct-Tape-Wallet-Business---Finding-...] How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - Finding Customers

How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - Where to Find Black Duct Tape and 24 Additional Colors

What they don't realize is it is also available in camouflage, safety stripe, and aqua blue too.

And while black is still a sought after color deserving a spot right up there beside gray or silver, today I want to discuss the great variety of colors of duct tape which are available to you.

This Back Pocket For Colored Only

The additional cost to carry several colors is more than offset by the fact that you can appeal to a wider array of customers with your wallets if they are available in a variety of colors and combinations.

Once you begin producing duct tape wallets from the colors available, you will see that people are literally surprised when they discover that the waterproof fabric they have come to know and love is also available in their favorite color.

Alright, this is the selection which can be obtained from our supplier:

Purple
Dark Blue
Pink
School Bus Yellow
Camo
Real tree Camouflage
Safety Stripe
Medium Blue
Black
Aqua Blue
Brown
Yellow
Burgundy
Dark Green
Light Green
Olive Drab (Army Green)
Red
Orange
Silver
Tan
White
Fluorescent Green
Fluorescent Yellow
Fluorescent Orange
Fluorescent Pink

Mix And Match Colors For Best Effect

A great way to attract significant attention is to mix and match colors in order to produce wallets that would astonish those stuffy types who swear by their black accessories.

Some pretty extreme impressions and finishes of duct tape can be found in specialty craft shops like Michael's and they almost always have a good selection of tie die patterns in various hues and even chrome duct tape can be found from time to time. And while there are plenty of companies selling duct tape, the colors listed above are only available from Tape Brothers, the people who supply our company.

You will soon find that one of the major advantages to having access to several colors is the ability to build wallets that correspond to corporate colors in order to interest them in this unique marketing concept.

Because once you have seen an orange and purple duct tape wallet, there is no going back to black.

Here's hoping you stick with it!

Thank you, friend.

Barry Williams

DuctHide Tough Wearables is the worlds largest handmade duct tape wallet company providing several brands of wallets in more than 750 color combinations. Wholesale and retail orders shipped world-wide. Please follow this link to connect to our supplier. http://ducthide.com/trade-secrets

And here to find the template for making TightWad Wallets; http://www.ducthide.com/tightwad-template

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Start-a-Duct-Tape-Wallet-Business---Where-to...] How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - Where to Find Black Duct Tape and 24 Additional Colors

How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - The Basics

That is an excellent decision and I will tell you exactly how we built our business so you can duplicate what we have done.

First, let me make a couple of things perfectly clear:

Building These Wallets Is NOT Easy - if you think there is no trouble working with the stickiest, toughest tape known to mankind - THINK AGAIN.
So Simple a Child Can Do This - tons of kids make their own duct tape wallets. The tough part is keeping things organized and easy to create high quality wallets every time.
Wanting To Do This Is 80% of the Battle - if you have good manual dexterity and can follow instructions, you will be able to do this. Understanding that quality comes with practice will help you develop a production system quickly.

Building a wallet business is not rocket science:

Learn How To Build Them - perform a YouTube.com search for "how to build duct tape wallets". This is how we started. After combining techniques we learned from the top 40 YouTube duct tape wallet building videos, we developed our own system.
Source Tape - most hardware or building supply stores like Home Depot or Lowes stock a few colors of 2 inch wide duct tape and special craft stores like Michaels have a much larger selection of colors. Over time, we sourced 4 inch wide tape and we now carry it in 28 colors and patterns.
Selling Product - we initially sold our wallets at farmer's markets and craft fairs but found that sales from that method barely covered expenses and sometimes not even that. Today we retail / wholesale our wallets through our own website and have an exclusive wholesale agreement for some color combinations with uncommongoods.com. You can easily sell through online sites like 1000markets.com or Etsy.com, too.

The biggest duct tape wallet manufacturing company in the world now produces wallets by machine in China and they sell hundreds of thousands of units every year. They have been in business since 2001 so there is definitely a demand for this type of accessory.

By contrast, every wallet in our small company is made by stay-at-home moms and we produced just over 2000 units in our first year.

So, there is the short story about our initial success and I assure you, if we can do this, you CAN do this.

Here is hoping you stick to it!

Barry Williams

DuctHide Tough Wearables is the worlds largest handmade duct tape wallet company providing several brands in more than 750 color combinations.

Wholesale and retail orders shipped world-wide.

Please visit our website to learn more. http://www.ducthide.com/

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Start-a-Duct-Tape-Wallet-Business---The-Basi...] How to Start a Duct Tape Wallet Business - The Basics