Words of Wisdom shared by Entrepreneur, Kim White from Zimbowties

MarketingAfricaVideo ProductionZimbabwePortrait Photography

23 Apr

In this blog, H&M Productions have invited upcoming and innovative entrepreneur Kim White to talk to us about his advice on marketing his products. Here is his advice for new startups:

From Kim White - 19th April 2018

One of the first things you should do when starting a business is to pay a photographer to take some great pictures.

I have no doubt in my mind that having beautiful photos and videos helped to "sell" the Zimbowties idea...

I can't remember exactly where I read it, or if someone specifically told me this gem of advice, but when we first thought of starting up Zimbowties, this kept on bouncing around my head:

And so, without fully understanding why this piece of advice was so valuable, and before we had even sold a single bow tie, I got H&M Productions to do a photo-shoot for us with our early sample bow ties. I now realize why that piece of advice was such a gem. Having professional photos transformed the ideas bouncing around my head into reality and really that's what innovation is all about; turning your ideas and inventions into something real. Having something tangible allowed me to test out our ideas, to market ourselves, and finally to apply for startup competitions.

What do I mean by test out our ideas? At Zimbowties we wanted to see if we could sell eye-catching bow ties to raise money for scholarships for talented children in Mutare and Zimbabwe. To test this idea, we've tried to try to implement The Lean Startup Methodology invented by Eric Ries. What's this? Well it basically consists of 3 main steps: BUILD, MEASURE, LEARN.

***Build Measure Learn Loop Source:*** ***https://www.mindtools.com/***

As the image above shows you loop through these three steps. The aim being to get through them as quickly as possible while spending the least amount of money and time. Why do this? Well really you want to find out as quickly as possible if your idea is a dud before you go and spend too much time or money on it.

So how did we apply the methodology for Zimbowties? The quickest way we thought to do this was to BUILD some sample bow ties, have H&M Productions take some great pictures of them, and to share these pictures with people to see or MEASURE what interest there was. Based on what we then LEARNED from this test we started the cycle again and made a small batch that we sold. We learnt a bit more. We built some more. And so on...

We still feel like we've got many more cycles of the BUILD-MEASURE-LEARN loop to go through before we can graduate from being a startup to a full blown business but we've now sold bow ties to people in 15 different countries, we've managed to sponsor two children's school fees and we're starting to get orders for our bow ties from various shops in and out of Zimbabwe. So, we're quite happy with our progress so far.

*Before we even started selling we tested our business idea out by showing people pictures of models in our sample bow ties*

Another reason to get professional pictures taken is obviously to market your idea. People have been story tellers for millennia and it's one of the things that makes us human. Now, in the age of printed media and especially social media these stories have become visual and people are more likely to share them if they have a beautiful picture attached to them. So, create a great story for your business that people will want to share (Zimbabweans are great at helping out each other with this) and back it up with some stunning pictures or even video (check out this great video that H&M Productions recently put together for us).

Each of our eye-catching Zimbowties that we sell pays for one week of schooling for a child in Zimbabwe. Find out more at www.zimbowties.com

The final reason I've found the early pictures taken by H&M to be so valuable for us was for applying for competitions and startup incubators. I'm not too sure what's available in Zimbabwe, but last year while I was studying in Scotland there was an incredible abundance of support opportunities available for entrepreneurs. I won a couple of business idea pitching competitions and I was accepted onto a three-month startup incubator, Entrepreneurial Spark financed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, that helps new entrepreneurs understand the mindset that they need to have.

I have no doubt in my mind that having-beautiful photos and videos helped to "sell" the Zimbowties idea to people by showing how it was more than an idea and we are turning it into a reality. I'd imagine if you're looking to enter startup competitions, incubators, or are applying for financial support or investment then pictures and videos would help you too.

Zimbowties is hugely grateful for our collaboration with H&M so far and I hope that any budding entrepreneurs that read this might pick out their own gems of advice here to apply as they test, market, and find ways to grow themselves and their ideas.