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The biggest question is this: Have you actually done a calculation to see if your market is big enough? Will you reach enough wedding people, particular conside

The biggest question is this: Have you actually done a calculation to see if your market is big enough? Will you reach enough wedding people, particular considering that people only wed once or twice in their lifetime?

hugh3 16y ago
Good question. With a birth rate of about 3.5 million people per year in the US, assuming everyone gets married once (a rough estimate), and there are two people per marriage (a less rough estimate), that should work out at 1.7 million marriages a year. Even if you can charge every one of 'em twenty-five bucks for printing then that's only $45 million a year. At more realistic market shares you're not looking at huge money. But I guess you could easily expand horizontally into _other_ parts of the wedding-planning process once you get your foot in the door with the invitations thing. That's where the big money starts flowing.
- limedaring 16y ago
  Yes, exactly. Moving into Moo.com like printing, offering templates through the site, licensing or partnering with template makers should increase the revenue available.
  - maxklein 16y ago
    But there are only 2.1 million events, and you'll only reach a small percentage of these. Even if you maximise the revenue you receive from each marriage, it won't be much unless you absolutely and totally dominate the wedding scene, which will be a difficult thing to do because your recommendations path is poor. I.e, if you randomly get a customer, he cannot recommend you because he may not know anyone getting married at the time, and when another person gets married, it may be too distant in time for him to remember you. Your biggest problem is market, and you should explain it properly.
    - hugh3 16y ago
      2.1 million events per year. The average cost is something like $20K according to five seconds' googling (sounds high for an average, but let's go with it). That's a $42 billion a year industry. There's a lot of people already making a lot of money by servicing this industry. Oh, and there's a whole publishing industry devoted to bridal magazines and websites, so it's reasonably easy to reach your target market if you have an advertising budget. Difficult to bootstrap though.
      - dagw 16y ago
        Given that I know several people who spent less than $1K on their wedding (and indirectly one who spent by all estimates over $200K) imagine that that $20K number has pretty huge variance. The really interesting number I'd want to know is how many weddings cost more than, say, $15K.
- waterlesscloud 16y ago
  Your estimate was close-ish, according to the CDC. 2.1 million marriages for the 12 months ending 12/08. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm

hugh3 16y ago

Good question. With a birth rate of about 3.5 million people per year in the US, assuming everyone gets married once (a rough estimate), and there are two people per marriage (a less rough estimate), that should work out at 1.7 million marriages a year. Even if you can charge every one of 'em twenty-five bucks for printing then that's only $45 million a year. At more realistic market shares you're not looking at huge money. But I guess you could easily expand horizontally into _other_ parts of the wedding-planning process once you get your foot in the door with the invitations thing. That's where the big money starts flowing.

limedaring 16y ago
Yes, exactly. Moving into Moo.com like printing, offering templates through the site, licensing or partnering with template makers should increase the revenue available.
- maxklein 16y ago
  But there are only 2.1 million events, and you'll only reach a small percentage of these. Even if you maximise the revenue you receive from each marriage, it won't be much unless you absolutely and totally dominate the wedding scene, which will be a difficult thing to do because your recommendations path is poor. I.e, if you randomly get a customer, he cannot recommend you because he may not know anyone getting married at the time, and when another person gets married, it may be too distant in time for him to remember you. Your biggest problem is market, and you should explain it properly.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    2.1 million events per year. The average cost is something like $20K according to five seconds' googling (sounds high for an average, but let's go with it). That's a $42 billion a year industry. There's a lot of people already making a lot of money by servicing this industry. Oh, and there's a whole publishing industry devoted to bridal magazines and websites, so it's reasonably easy to reach your target market if you have an advertising budget. Difficult to bootstrap though.
    - dagw 16y ago
      Given that I know several people who spent less than $1K on their wedding (and indirectly one who spent by all estimates over $200K) imagine that that $20K number has pretty huge variance. The really interesting number I'd want to know is how many weddings cost more than, say, $15K.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
Your estimate was close-ish, according to the CDC. 2.1 million marriages for the 12 months ending 12/08. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm