Hooks or Hugh anyone?

Status:

Clothes Made: Check
Transactional Website up and running: Check
Retail outlet up and running: Check allbeit at markets and festivals.
Additional range designed: Check
Target market buying: Check

All sounds pretty rosy doesn't it. However we are not speaking to enough of our target market. Progress is solid, but now needs to be supercharged. So we are going on a marketing offensive, with a 4 prong attack:

1) PR - need hooks to get the journalists interested. Our stuff is great, is made in Melbourne but that is not enough. We need more hooks.

2) Social Networking - We already have a Facebook Fan page. We need to get all our friends on, and all their friends so that we can exponentially grow the people we are speaking to. We also need to make sure that the content posted is relevant and fun. We will use offers and specials to drive action. There is little point having a fan page, if you can't give something back to the fans.

3) Guerrilla Marketing - The fun we could have here! Images of celebrities with Larrakin Hats on.....

C'mon Hugh, you know it makes sense!

4) Direct Marketing - We are putting together a postcard that we will be dropping into houses in our target market area.

Over the coming months, I will be keeping you updated with progress and how our 4 prongs are working. Any great ideas, please feel free to share, contact me as always.

A river runs through it

St Kilda Beach Night Market February 2010. First date in February, the 4th, was cancelled because there was a real threat of storms and rain - none came and it was a warm balmy evening but no market. Second date, the 11th, yesterday, went ahead.

I arrived at 3.00 o'clock to set up and was ready to rock and roll by 4.00pm. Mike would be joining me at around 5.30pm and we would sell sell sell.

Everyone at the market was a bit worried about the forecast which had suggested torrential rain and major thunderstorms, and reports started coming in of flooding in Richmond, downpours on the major motorways. It seemed like we had got off lightly. Then at around 4.10 the sky went very very dark:

Then the heavens quite literally opened and I took some film of what happened over the next 30 minutes of a serious storm:

and

and finally:

It rained non stop for an hour and then brightened slightly, but the end result was that our stall looked like this:

Mike arrived at 5.30 and after a beer, some cheese crisps and with the rain starting up again we called it a day at 6.30pm.

Observations

• The Robian Stall is 100% waterproof
• The committee got it wrong
• 4 out of 8 markets at St Kilda have had rain or been cancelled
• Plastic boxes are a very very good idea
• Even cactus fridge magnets don't sell when its wet, although they probably enjoy the drenching
• Larrakin umbrellas have now gone up the priority list. We will call them the St Kilda
• Next business venture will be cupcakes

What's in a name part 3

from what a couple of friends in Scotland saw last week, obviously 
quite a lot....

There was also a boat at Geelong called Larriken. Please keep your eyes peeled for Larrakin on a boat and e-mail me with any interesting shots

rupert@larrakin.com.au