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> Our primary success factor was starting with a rough draft. We didn't like our v1 much—an all cotton tufted mattress—but that didn't keep us from launching wi

by tieTYT 13y ago

> Our primary success factor was starting with a rough draft. We didn't like our v1 much—an all cotton tufted mattress—but that didn't keep us from launching with it. This gave us a chance to experiment with problem/solution and to start collecting feedback right away. We had to do quite a few returns at first but we iterated constantly until our customer satisfaction was high enough for us to start getting referrals. Putting myself in your shoes, this seems like a scary way to go about things. I'd think, "those first returns are from unsatisfied people. They'll give the product bad reviews and that will put the score in a negative rut it won't be able to pull itself out of. Yes, the next version will be amazing because of the initial feedback, but now we'll have bad reviews so people won't even give it a chance." Would you mind explaining how I'm thinking about this the wrong way? Perhaps you never put v1 on Amazon and that's how you avoided my concern? But doing so seems like it could limit the feedback you get on v1.

daehee 13y ago
That's a great point. We didn't put our product on Amazon until we reached a high level of customer satisfaction. In the early days when we first started, we had to hustle when we had upset customers. We fixed the problems really fast to avoid them writing about a negative experience. As an example, we've provided complimentary upgrades to our new versions of the bed to previous customers.
- tieTYT 13y ago
  If you avoided amazon, didn't this severely limit the feedback you could get? How did those initial customers discover your product?
  - daehee 13y ago
    Yes we definitely did experience limitations in the beginning. We heavily relied on our dotcom sales for initial traction and feedback. To test our idea, we carefully trickled in traffic for some long tail keywords from SEO and Google AdWords. We still don't do any advertising besides some branded placements on AdWords and Facebook. Listing our product on Amazon.com created additional sales and a new market which was great. But we realize this is a 3rd-party platform which we can't control and don't want to become dependent on it.

by tieTYT 13y ago

daehee 13y ago

That's a great point. We didn't put our product on Amazon until we reached a high level of customer satisfaction. In the early days when we first started, we had to hustle when we had upset customers. We fixed the problems really fast to avoid them writing about a negative experience. As an example, we've provided complimentary upgrades to our new versions of the bed to previous customers.

tieTYT 13y ago
If you avoided amazon, didn't this severely limit the feedback you could get? How did those initial customers discover your product?
- daehee 13y ago
  Yes we definitely did experience limitations in the beginning. We heavily relied on our dotcom sales for initial traction and feedback. To test our idea, we carefully trickled in traffic for some long tail keywords from SEO and Google AdWords. We still don't do any advertising besides some branded placements on AdWords and Facebook. Listing our product on Amazon.com created additional sales and a new market which was great. But we realize this is a 3rd-party platform which we can't control and don't want to become dependent on it.