Are craft kits part of your product mix? If not, they should be! These ready-to-go projects take a little extra prep time on your end. But the benefit is you’ll have access to a previously unattainable audience of potential customers!
Read on, and learn everything you need to know about this additional product venture!
First: What Are Craft Kits?
Perfect place to start. Simply put: craft kits are pre-organized bundles that give crafters all of the raw materials they need for a given project.
Think of it this way: as a wind-down hobby, I often will do a little cross-stitching and to save time from having to procure everything myself, I usually purchase a counted cross stitch kit. Included in it are the design pattern, the fabric, the floss/thread, and even a needle. Everything I need to get started.
So that’s what a craft kit is: you’ll be selling a package to allow users to create a project. Your job (besides marketing and selling) is determining what the project is, and the ingredients needed to make said project. Then, you send those ingredients to interested customers. You do the prep work. They do the creating. Everyone wins!
Why Should I Make Craft Kits?
There are many, many reasons why craft kits should become a part of your mix. A non-exhaustive list is as follows:
Fewer Hurdles = Higher Likelihood of Purchase
The absolute last thing you ever want to do in any business is make it difficult for people to give you money. This sounds obvious, but you would be stunned to see how many businesses don’t incorporate this as part of their strategy. The successful ones do. Why do you think Amazon is so big on one-click purchasing?
Your goal, then, should be to remove as many hurdles as humanly possible between your customer and a sale. Craft kits mitigate two significant hurdles to purchase:
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It makes it quicker
Cooking is fun. Chopping and measuring isn’t. The actual creation of art is always going to be more fun than the prep work. Think about how many meal kit delivery service options there are these days!
Craft kits will remove the prep work on behalf of your customers, thereby allowing them to get to the fun stuff quicker. Then, not only have you made a sale – your efforts have eased the consumption process. This should encourage even more purchasing from this customer in the future!
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It makes things easier
Some people love crafting, but it just doesn’t come naturally to them. A ready-to-go kit (which can be even better with step-by-step instructions) is ideal for those hard-at-work crafters. Because this opens up crafting to a previously tough segment, this could encourage a wider audience base and therefore more sales.
It Diversifies Your Portfolio
Unless a company is brand new and trying to offer a never-before-seen product, most businesses out there don’t offer JUST one product. In fact, all over the DTC world, formerly single-product companies are now facing the need to diversify without the nomenclature to support it (“Dollar Shave Club” now sells toothbrushes and deodorant. MailChimp works on a full suite of marketing, not just emails, and so on.)
The reasons for diversification are simple: it offers new products to formerly unaddressed consumers, thereby increasing your opportunities for income.
It Saves Time…Eventually
In the long run, craft kits will help cut down on your production time. But you won’t notice it at first. All the measuring, counting, separating, organizing, and packaging of craft kits will give off the appearance that you’re working more.
But remember – eventually, these kits will be built by your customers, not you. You don’t have to do the detail work, make every single one look camera-ready, getting the lighting and colors just so. No, you’re counting flowers and filler. In time this will be less work.
How Do I Make Craft Kits?
Ok! Now that we know the benefits of craft kits, the question is…what should your customers make?
This depends on you, your personal tastes, and what you feel comfortable teaching or answering incoming questions on. For instance, if your specialty is grapevine wreaths, make a kit out of that, rather than centerpieces!
Once you have a kit in mind, let’s talk through the particulars. For starters…
Make an Inventory of What You Need
At the very least you’ll need a container/wreath base/wood cutout/etc, sola wood flowers, and greenery. You’ll need to add or subtract from that list depending on your project. Start there, determine how many kits you’ll want to make, then math it out and purchase accordingly!
Source Your Products
You have two options here, both with relative merits.
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Mass-produced items
Aka the “dollar store” route
This is much nicer for your wallet (and your bottom line), but for the price users are paying, they may want something more unique and/or they may recognize the item you are using as being from the dollar store.
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Unique items
Aka “HomeGoods” route
The details here are the exact opposite. You’ll be spending more on items – and therefore potentially impacting your bottom line. However, customers are likely to want nicer quality products for the crafts that they’re making.
Know Your Costs!
Here’s where you can get a little tricky tricky (yes we said tricky twice intentionally). There’s something to be said about PERCEIVED value vs. ACTUAL value. We all know that filler and greenery is more expensive than flowers. But the customer doesn’t necessarily know that. And they don’t have to!
Follow my logic here: that means your craft kits can have MORE flowers and look MORE expensive to customers but actually be LESS expensive to produce, which leads to greater profit margins!
With a little clever math, you can make these kits true business drivers.
Things to Watch Out For
Even the most successful of products has its pitfalls, and craft kits are no exception. Here’s what to watch out for when planning your craft kits:
Longevity
Earlier, I mentioned buying more bespoke products, rather than mass-produced products, for a nicer finished piece. BUT, this warrants caution. Even if something is bespoke, there should be enough items to account for a year’s (or at least a season’s) worth of production. If there’s not, you’ll have to come up with a shorter sales window, or source products that are available to you in a higher volume. The LAST thing you want to do is build a groundswell and then run out of product. Plan accordingly!
Pricing
For these products, you want your prices to be higher. Reason being: you should be planning to discount these at some point, and you’ll want to make sure there’s plenty of runway without cutting into your profit margins.
One example of a discount strategy: say you want to offer bulk pricing (maybe you are marketing to at-home parties/ladies' night/etc). The idea here might be to sell 5 craft kits at a 10% discount.
There are many reasons to discount products. Just be sure your margins will allow for it!
And there you have it! Lots to consider, but we think craft kits are among the smartest additions to your product mix. Play around with the idea, and if you have any questions – don’t hesitate to reach out to us at wholesale@ohyourelovely.com.