Behind the Scenes - 11/29/24
Dear Friends,
For those who are new to our emails, I try to do an email once a week where I go into the details of what is happening behind the scenes of our small business. If you want to catch up on prior messages, check out the blog here or just jump right into the story below.
Well Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend is upon us. It has lost some of its dazzle over the years. Gone are the days of absurd discounts of 50% or more. Some companies still seem to offer big discounts, but that always strikes me as them tipping their hand a bit. How is it possible in an e-commerce world for them to offer big discounts like that without them also having large margins built into the product?
In the old days of retail it made sense. Those "50% or more" off products were the loss leaders (products that the store was willing to lose money selling, usually with an extremely limited stock). The purpose of the products were merely to get you into the store, because the secret weapon of retail is the fact that very few people leave a store without buying anything.
Websites make it easy to buy one thing ten times, brick and mortar make it easy to buy 10 things at one time. It's part of how Target and Walmart can still compete with Amazon. It also helps that they don't have to pay for shipping. So the Black Friday Cyber Monday deals were constructed to create a situation where you waited in the cold, in long lines, to get into the store the moment it opened. If you missed the deal that you came for you had already sunk so much time and energy into the process that you weren't going to leave empty handed.
So what changed?
E-commerce realized that they didn't benefit from waiting for BFCM. Even the fact that Cyber Monday comes after Black Friday is a disadvantage to online shopping. There are only so many dollars to go around during the Christmas season and those who get there first, often get the sale. So online stores moved up the timetables. Now from the comfort of your desk, with a click of a button your item would arrive within a few days, No fuss, no lines, no cold walks into the store. The discounts however couldn't be as big since most people weren't going to be buying many additional items that they may not have planned to get which is what happened for brick and mortar stores.
Thus we have this strange time we are in now. We have come to be skeptical of really big discounts. In fact, big discounts from some of the more expensive brands we love make us question if the company is overcharging on their products. How is it possible for an expensive product, with an expensive cost of goods and labor, to be sold for so cheap? So we find ourselves either upset, or apathetic towards all the discounts since the noise of it all becomes unbearable.
As I've been reading through my old journals (I mostly have used Classic Cut Journals in the past), I've been researching what we have done in previous years for emails over this weekend and the coming weeks. It's interesting to see what my thoughts were at the time about the resulting sales, and then to cross reference them with different years.
For us at the Murdy Creative Co. this weekend is usually pretty good by normal standards, but not usually a huge jump over the other weekends during Christmas. The first week of December is actually where the "run on the bank" happens. We've worked in the past to try to move some of those Christmas orders forward into November by putting the BFCM deal up on November 1 and running it all month. Unlike most of the other products you may buy this Christmas, we don't have your order sitting on a shelf. Everything is custom made to order so it is really important for us to try to spread the Christmas rush out over a longer period of time.
We really do have a limit to how many we can make each day.
Some years we had complex funnels with multiple emails a day trumpeting our offer. Some years we really hammered on everything we sell, or the new launches. Each different variation had a similar effect. I want to try something different this year.
You will only receive this email from me today and a reminder email of our BFCM offer on Monday.
Other than that, I'm going to try to limit our Christmas emails to one early in the week with deadlines and reminders of specific products we think would make good gifts, One email on Thursday's announcing that week's Limited Edition Drop, and the Behind the Scenes email on Friday.
If you think this is a good plan and you want to support us in our efforts to reduce the marketing noise with a purchase that would go a long way to reinforce this as the right direction. We do have products that range from some accessories priced at $19 all the way up to our bundle deals in the hundreds so there is something for everyone and every budget.
Speaking of Limited Edition Drops, this weeks Red Mini Cut was a huge hit selling out in less than 12 hours so I'll be sure to note that color as a fan favorite.
If you have any ideas for cool limited edition drops you want to see, or thoughts on our marketing plan this season I would love to hear from you!
Stay tuned for more letters on Thursdays or Fridays in the coming weeks and be sure to go subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you like and watch the videos it helps us get promoted more by the algorithm to people who may never have heard of us.
Ever your servant,
Colin MurdyCEO/Owner
Murdy Creative Co.
Cell: 414-434-9001
MurdyCreative.Co
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