1) One person must be a domain expert in your industry.
- I contacted Martin Espinosa, he is a high school friend that now studies at SCAD, Savannah in Georgia. He designs sunglasses and eyeglasses, establishing direct contact to businesses and selling design (B2B) and also sells online in e-commerce. He talked about expanding my ideas of selling a "storefront" into selling an experience with unique design and giving my store an artistic design. He helped me design sleeves for my roses that I sell through Etsy, and he gave me an interesting point of view to be further developed in the future.
2) One person must be an expert on your market.
- I spoke with Juan Diego Perez, he is an SEO (Search engine Optimization) expert and helps his father with advertisement on his business. He graduated from SCAD as well, and helped me find an artistic way to optimize the keywords to attract new niche segments such as the word "Market" has 600% more searches in Google than the word "bohemian" and since I sell the items from the "Market of Otava;lo" I can reach more customers with the same keywords. It's interesting how different perspectives may further develop as you give them time.
3) One person must be an important supplier to your industry. This would be someone who is selling products and services to other organizations/firms in your industry.
- My industry is Retail and sales from the Otavalo suppliers which include the Otavalean artists who produce these textiles. Honestly, to contact them I would need to send someone over to Otavalo and talk to them, so it's pretty complicated to contact them.
Finally: Reflect.
- The two interviews I had with my old relatives from SCAD helped me shift the perspecitve of "Make sales = make mone = profit-driven" into a focus that consists more of giving a unique experience to my customers by presenting unique, superior, intelligent small details that make up the whole concept of my company to its original mission that bases off of giving an experience rather than selling a lot.
Wow, great details on this assignment. Looks like you found great contacts who offered valuable insight. The supplier was the hardest for me. Since you couldn’t contact that person you could find someone in the same industry but not necessary selling the identical product. So other suppliers who make homemade unique products in the US. While not identical to your business they would still be able to offer some insight.
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