Monday, June 30, 2014

How to sell the unsellable

Knowing a total of 0 things about marketing, I thought I'd lend a generous (and very free) hand to a large menswear shop and figure out how to sell the product that hasn't moved since last season.

Mr. Porter tends to stock its shop full of elusive and hard-to-find products -- usually they're hard to find for a reason but I digress -- then is stuck trying to move Milwakee Buck mascot costumes made out of 40% Alpaca, 20% Gold, 10% Snow Leopard feces, and 30% Lycra. Y'see, there's just not a big enough market for that sort of thing.

But, on the edges, in the corners of society, there are people who must want these products, right?

One's man's unsold product is another man's severely discounted steal.

40 year old men who work in puppetry for Nick Jr.

The men who work in the Amazon warehouses and never leave -- vestigal eyes and all.

Upper-middle-class juggalos.

Men who are children's librarians.

Raffi.

These are the men to whom the products must be marketable.

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Upon development of a time machine, Mr. Porter should take trip back to the early 20th century and sell these on the streets of where-ever boat races occur.

 While paper currency will be reasonably useless, there are many current day coin collectors who pay sums of money for the $2 of coins these jackets would collect. This requires a second step, but moving goods is the most important part -- amount of steps taken is a trifling concern.

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Used car salesmen who specialize in late 80s Chryslers.

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On the streets of NYFW. That's an odd and useless crew if I've ever seen one. They would eat this shit up.

Too bad they've never been to a site like Mr. Porter. OHWAIT....

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Sell this product to men who run Street Fighter console tournaments as prize support.

It would be an interesting way to 1. increase attendance for these things because people love competing for dumb things and 2. move these hoodies because the real world is not an anime (somebody tell that to Rick Owens though? Maybe? Nah? Ok.).

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Donate to the Island of Bill Cosby clones. No hope of selling this product -- cut your losses and run.