Donating to Ladies Night Out Shopping Extravaganza Showcasing Local Escanaba Vendors

Local vendors are what give towns just like Escanaba their special culture and flavor. We had an opportunity to donate to the door prize of the event and our donation will be matched by the Highland Golf Club. You can find the event on Facebook. 

The Importance of Updating Your Amazon Listings (Esky Polo Example)

You won't make very many sales if your customers can't find you! Incorrect categorization of products can cost you sales and revenue because people are looking in the wrong spot. That is exactly what happened to us.

Noticing that our start up wasn't making many sales on Amazon I started to explore the roots of the problem. I found my listing on the Amazon Sellers dashboard and clicked the edit link.

What I found was that not only was our polo mallet listing very weak it was also in the wrong category!

 They listed our mallet's in power tools. I don't know about you but I wouldn't normally look for equestrian products in hardware.

We were on the problem and decided to make some changes......

We changed our category and updated our listing. Its not perfect but getting it into the right category is a must! 

Our second step will be to really work on the pictures and other information to ensure it is in in line with Amazon best practices. That will require some research on how to use listings effectively. 

You can check out our Polo Mallet Amazon Listing (Yes I know it needs more work. Another topic and article.)

Category is incorrect above.

I was able to submit a new category suggestion

I found a pretty strong resource on how to change the categories on Amazon. HERE

Escanaba Polo Mallet Co. is a start-up seeks to build a good works company that provides not only great products but supports the game of polo, local development and charitable causes. One way to do that is to build the best business model we can and in turn share what we have learned so others can build their own American based businesses. 

Escanaba Polo Mallet Co. Charity Report 3Q 2022

I'm happy to announce Escanaba Polo Mallets (EPMC) 3Q Report of donations. Esky Polo donates approximately 30% of its profits and hopes to get that up to 50% and use the other 50% as growth capital. Furthermore, there is a long (Maybe 5 years out) term goal of funding an entire orphanage (basic process already outlined), hiring locals (Such as Vets, college students and special needs), and encouraging better public policies that rebalances the long term health of the economy through fostering small business development. 

What are the Attributes of a Successful Polo Player?

This is a very interesting video I think you would like and enjoy. Some nice tips within. :)

Saturday October 29th 2022: Australia vs. US. Polo Team

 

You can gain more information HERE.

Program HERE

Watch on Global Polo TV. 

The Difficult Customer and the Good Customer in Small Business Development (Esky Polo Mallet Example)

Customers are the lifeline to any business and you will want to do your best to ensure you keep them as happy as possible! Happy customers become repeat customers! This is one the reasons why we have easy return policies, answer questions, allow for customization and other special requests that help customers feel like their needs are being met. Sometimes, despite your best efforts you might still come across a customer that doesn't like your product for whatever reason.  

The more unique your business, the more likely you will have a certain percentage of customers that love your business and a certain percentage of customers that don't understand it. Before you pull your hair out in frustration be mindful that unhappy customers can be an amazing source of information. They will tell you the things you might not want to hear.

You have an obligation to find out from customers what they don't like so you can consider that information in changing your approach. For examples, my mallets started out pretty terrible and I sold them cheap in exchange for feedback (i.e. like an informal customer market study) and each time I got the feedback I improved the mallet and sold another trying to raise the price and quality.

I have two examples Customer Joe and Customer Angie that might help us understand the value of positive and negative feedback.  

Customer Joe: Asked about sizes and then ordered two mallets. He did not like the handles and the thin shaft. He said the quality is poor and the handles are not big enough. He asked for a return and even called them "poo poo". We have an easy return policy. No worries!

Curious about his comments we asked Joe for some advice on how to improve our product so we can improve our start-up (i.e. continuous improvement and CRM). To our amazement he said that the quality of the mallet was actually good but he has very large hands and most mallets don't fit him well (Once I received the return I also noticed the handle felt a little thin. Since these are handmade there may have been a little too much variability in product outcomes. To solve this we should implement an inspection step to ensure consistency. Thanks Customers Joe!)

We were unaware our unhappy customer had a great need for a much wider handle and we could have customized and resolved this issue for him. Turning that frown upside down! 😟😁  Next time someone wants to return a product let us talk with them and see what we can do to improve. (It actually costs small business when a customer initiates a return. In my case like $20.)

The second follow up response we got from our customer offered a more objective analysis than his first assessment and that allowed us to gain some deeper feedback. We want to minimize incorrect product understandings customers may have so we went back and reviewed our listing to ensure it has the most accurate information as possible. 

We checked our listings for accuracy and made a few small tweaks when we found something didn't match. All in All the listing information was accurate. You can see see the Ebay listing HERE. Some tweaks included making certain characteristics more obvious.  What we did learn is that we have to connect with customers and know our customer, know our customer and know our customer.

Customer Angie: 

Angie bought a mallet a few months ago and loved it! She used her mallet regularly and sent us comments stating she loved the quality, loved how light it was, and enthusiastically said the mallet helped her become a better player! 

She bought another one! That is what want to see!

When customers are happy they come back over and over because your product is associated with positive feelings. They also give good ratings and refer their friends to buy from your company as well. In our market we would want polo trainers and club managers to refer us to their clients. Keeping our customers happy is central to our strategic approach. 

Business Lesson 1: Positive and negative customer feedback can provide insight into the product. Using that information to improve the product and/or service leads to continuous improvement. 

Business Lesson 2: Ask lots of questions and find ways to turn customer concerns into opportunities for future products/services.

Escanaba Polo Mallet Company isn't just a mallet company we want to teach others what we discover from launching a business with under $500 in capital. We are a good works company that includes good works and public benefit in our ROI. 

II FIP Arena Polo European Championship 09/14