#38: Selling Licensed Band Merchandise with David Jenyns from Planet 13

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David Jenyns from Planet 13 join us to talk about selling the largest range of rock, punk, metal, and gothic merchandise online in Australia. Planet 13 has been in business since the early 2000s, and David brings a wealth of experience running offline and online operations of a business. David also runs Melbourne SEO Services, along with a string of other serial entrepreneurial ventures throughout his career.

Sign up for our SEO webinar this week 3/21/2013 Thursday on keyword research and analyzing the top 10 competitors in Google at www.buildmyonlinestore.com/seowebinar

Topics Discussed:

  • 04:00 – Offline retail and E-Commerce in the early 2000s
  • 08:30 – Advantages of being part of your target market
  • 10:00 – Getting into the mindset of your target market and creating an MVP
  • 14:30 – Combining offline and online customer development strategies
  • 16:00 – Using the search box as a demand tool
  • 19:00 – Crowd-funding, changes in the music industry, and merchandising
  • 24:00 – How to be observant on upcoming trends
  • 26:00 – How the licensing business model works
  • 27:30 – Scaling your business that offers a wholesale/drop-shipping model
  • 29:00 – Getting to the closest point of manufacturing when starting out
  • 33:00 – Ebay, Adwords, Offline advertisements, Organic SEO, and Facebook
  • 36:00 – SEO, long-tail keywords, and targeting more competitive key-phrases
  • 39:00 – Challenges of an early upstart and bootstrapped business
  • 42:00 – Focusing and not letting yourself get distracted with Entrepreneurial ADD
  • 45:00 – How boom and bust cycles in trends separate the men from boys
  • 47:30 – Minimum viable product and making sure the numbers work before scaling
  • 49:00 – Higher margin products and being able to make more mistakes
  • 50:00 – Finding your business skills and understanding the hurdles you must get past
  • 52:00 – Why “guru” advice may not work and taking ownership of your journey
  • 56:00 – Why you shouldn’t get caught in the website design details
  • 57:00 – Changing shopping carts and platforms – easy in, very difficult out
  • 59:00 – Don’t let online tools, apps, and products over-complicate things
  • 62:00 – Understanding cash flow, P&L, and managing finances through Xero
  • 65:00 – Don’t confuse tools and magic bullets for building a sustainable business
  • 66:00 – Documenting and recording everything you are doing to create processes

 

Mentions in the Episode:

Episode Length: 70:13

 

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Comments

  1. Incredible episode. I’m listening for my 4th time and this time I’m taking notes.

    I watched that Market Samurai Paycheck Keyword video too! I implemented the paycheck seo keywords reports as well as made reports for referrals and email campaigns.

    A couple questions come up for me after listening.

    Search bar: I currently don’t have a search bar. I have 40 sku’s, they are either t shirts or button up shirts. I’m on shopify. How easy/hard will it for my developer to create a search bar? Will I need to be categorizing or tagging in a way that creates efficient search results? Did you say search results in your site were driving titles, descriptions, and keywords?

    I’m really into your ideas about systems and tracking information, specifically data about profits, losses, revenue, and cashflow. I’m new to business with no background in data tracking or accounting or general business “numbers”. Can you give me any suggestions on where to start? I know that could be a much bigger answer and conversation but was hoping you might have some thoughts on this. Should I start with an accounting software like Quickbooks(which I own) or Xero?

    1. Been looking for a finance/payments person lately too – will flag your Qs to Dave and see if he can chime in.

          1. Big Big thank you David! The message was so thorough and thoughtful and I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

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