Survey Part II

Wow a long time between posts, but it will all be busy now. I've been distracted by a very ill family member so the business has been on the back burner.

A wrap up of some of the individual comments and suggestions from the survey.

There is a strong feeling that people buy two sorts of nappies - the plain, go with anything, go anywhere, serviceable nappies, then the splash out, wild, funky, embellished ones.

Labels are important. Not only for reliability, but there is a whole positive feedback cycle happening, where for resale only certain brands go well, so they get double the exposure, so they are more popular, so they get more word of mouth, and it goes on. I'm not going to get into why they got big in the first place, I assume they're good nappies and deserve it, I'm just saying my survey shows that feedback loop is very, very strong.

Some of the other suggestions - I'm definitely working on the store layout, this one was a bit rushed to get ready for the GDUNH, when I start selling side snaps it will definitely be a bit re-organised. I also have ideas for a boys section to match the girly things, unfortunately it has been put on hold while travelling and getting the new pattern up and running. Now testing takes a while, so while that is happening hopefully I will get some of the other ideas made.

There were some great suggestions, combined with people's preferences I'm going to start heading towards more fancy and embellished nappies. I've tried being middle of the road because that's the sort I like, but that seems to be the smallest market segment. There'll still be some there, but I have a huge minkee order coming from a co-op and it's a good excuse to do some of the embellishment that I enjoy.

An interesting idea was to do an AIO/2. I've thought about it with my snappi pattern, but it wouldn't work the way I want it to so I didn't go into it. But with the side snap pattern I think it would work, that might be somewhere to go in the future.

Survey part 1

So some of the basic results from the survey:

Most respondents have all sorts of nappies, then pockets are the most popular.

Again most have all sorts of closure, then front snaps. I'm surprised that side snaps are least popular on their own, possibly people try the others before their baby's shape changes, or it may be that most of the workhorse brands (baby beehinds, bumGenius etc) are velcro or front snaps. Even terry flats are snappi-able, so people are obviously spending a lot of money with these sorts of nappies.

For outers, respondents preferred plain for their workhorse nappies, special fabrics for going out, and embellishment for parties, although some wanted invitations!

The things that influenced people when buying are:

1. Reliability,
2. price,
3. longevity,
4. cut,
5. fabric,
6. looks,
7. closure,
8. manufacture,
9. availability,
10. sizing and
11. resale.

Not surprisingly, minkee is the most popular outer (and my US co-op just got a great deal on it!), then velour, prints, and dying. The Aboriginal prints were interesting, you either love 'em or hate 'em. Although it could be more of a case of 'they're lovely but I can't imagine them on my baby's bum' as one person said.

There is absolutely definitely a side snap version coming! Although looking at the above results a front snap/velcro version would be more popular, but this is where the individuality comes in. I'm definitely not going to compete with Baby Beehinds or Itti Bitti, and as I said I think that's what's causing the results. And front snap won't fit my girls and velcro is just plain dangerous, so how could I design a nappy with no models?

I'll discuss some of the comments and do more analysis next time.

Survey

So now I have most of the re-organisation done and I have a survey up. It's interesting seeing people's responses so far, looks like the side snap design I gave up on the started again then put aside will be starting again.

It's amazing what you can find on the internet, this site allows you to set up a professionally formatted survey and does the analysis for you. All you have to do is not make mistakes with your questions (like I did, but it was easily fixed). It's good to know what people think, rather than guessing. In fact how else can you run a business?