I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100 • Hacker News Board

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#61

Post by gcb0 » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:10 PM UTC

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #43

adamt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Furthermore - if you go to the link below, you appear to go straight through to his survey which now has over 400 responses. The results stil show a slight 'no' bias, but 59% of women in the $75k-$99k earnings bracket said yes they would. http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/view?survey=b...

Nice find. There were only 2 responses from women earning $100-150k. A suburban woman answered 'No', an urban woman answered 'Yes'. The vast majority of the remaining surveys were filled in by women earning $25-49k, which isn't OP's target audience. However, most women earning <$75k answered 'Yes', so the market might be large enough after all. Maybe not for haute couture, but for reasonably good prêt-à-porter, sure.

it's also missing age.

i think the it's a catch22. when they are old enough to be their market, they are old enough to not want to mention age and body measurements.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#62

Post by hexedpackets » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

columbo wrote: post #18

GabrielF00 wrote: post #5

Unless I'm missing something here it looks like there were a total of 17 responses (8 yes 9 no). Are you really making a major business decision on a survey with an N of 17?

This is a really good point, it was the first thing I noticed as well. 17 responses isn't even enough to throw a margin of error at, the entire survey is effectively a margin of error of 100%. If it really was only 17 responses that's the equivalent of asking five people on the street if they like hot dogs and then deciding based on their answers to open up a laundromat in Brooklyn.

Once you add in a proper confidence interval, 17 responses on a yes/no question is enough to make decisions like this - as long as you know in advance what your target numbers are. The downside of the small sample is that your margin is going to be extremely large, of course.

Using Clopper-Pearson at95% confidence tells us that between 23.3% and 70.8% would answer yes to this question. I do agree that is probably still too broad to decide to kill a business, but if you know you wanted a 60%+ (for example) positive response from this audience to hen that sample is enough to cause some serious worry.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#63

Post by sergiosgc » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:17 PM UTC

GabrielF00 wrote: post #5

Unless I'm missing something here it looks like there were a total of 17 responses (8 yes 9 no). Are you really making a major business decision on a survey with an N of 17?

The problem with statistics is that you'll always get an answer. Sometimes it's a garbage answer, but it'll be there...

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#64

Post by ericabiz » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

timborden wrote: post #32

Wow...thanks for all the comments. I've been a causal reader of Hacker News, but this was my first post. I'm really impressed all the comments. Lots of great questions/comments. There was one thing I neglected to mention in the blog post, that I should mention now. We ran a contest (prior to the survey) that required contestants to submit their body measurements. We wanted shoppers to see the power of submitting thei…

Hi Tim--thanks for replying! To show my full hand, I'm the business/marketing co-founder/CEO at a software company--though I have a strong tech background, I chose to go into the marketing side because I love psychology and analytics so much. (I'm running an analytics startup.)

I'm also a woman who's been known to drop some serious coin on clothes, and finally, I've previously stated publicly that I believe the future of clothing/fashion is getting exact fit/measurements (which sparked quite a heated debate when I published those thoughts to my audience on Facebook.)

You don't necessarily need a "marketing co-founder"--you can learn much of what you need simply by reading some books by famous copywriters. Start with John Carlton's "Kick-Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel" and branch out from there. Read some classic "ad men" books--John Caples and the like. Dig up all of Eugene Schwartz's old ads. Put aside your gag reflex and cringe factor and delve in deep. You'll learn a lot about people and copywriting that way.

I also have some great free resources on my blog and I am launching my own sales course soon as well. See my latest post: http://www.erica.biz/2013/macklemore-effect/ for more details.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#65

Post by natesm » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:31 PM UTC

nathan_long wrote: post #53

>> The pitch was to get away from inaccurate generic sizing terms like “small”, “medium” and “large” and move to a system based on body measurements. I'm a man and possibly missing something, but it seems to me that women's clothing is deliberately inaccurate. When I buy pants (in America), the measurements are expressed in inches. I rarely even try them on. Women's sizes vary by brand and seem engineered to flatter…

You should, there's lots of vanity sizing nonsense going on. For example, a 3sixteen ST-100x in size 30 is actually a 31 inch waist, and it will stretch about another inch!

http://www.3sixteen.com/collections/homepage/products/st100x...

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#66

Post by michael_h » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:36 PM UTC

omegant wrote: post #9

Did he tried with men?. I defenitely would give my measures to be able to buy clothing online, tshirts, hoodies, pants, even caps. I don't buy online right now unless is a bramd I already know and I go directly for my size. Is

http://www.ratioclothing.com is superb for dress shirts.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#67

Post by jamesaguilar » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:38 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #41

The target audience for Rewire Attire, the high end fashion marketplace, was women with enough money ... Whenever I read "target audience" and "with enough money" in the same sentence, I run the other way. My experience with prospects "with enough money": - there are far less of them than everyone else - many of them didn't earn it themselves, so... - they really don't really understand the concept of "value" - they…

Use the reply button to reply to people.

> Edit: Like OP, I'm referring to B2C, not enterprise.

?

> - they will treat you like shit, not like a trusted business partner > - they will override you > - they'll take credit for the good things > - they won't pay you on time

None of these are relevant to a pay-then-goods b2c scenario. And somehow plenty of companies have managed to make money off of rich people, so maybe you were doing it wrong?

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#68

Post by jamesaguilar » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:41 PM UTC

tarr11 wrote: post #35

ericabiz wrote: post #15

I agree with you that perfect sizing is the future of fashion retail--especially online. However, I completely disagree with your methodology. This demographic is going to be won over by marketing , and you didn't have the correct marketing play in hand when you ran this survey. I'm going to give you an example: If you ask people: "When shopping for clothes on the web, would you submit your email address if...?" Most…

"perfect fit" may be less of an issue than you think for high end fashion. If you asked them if they have trouble finding the perfect fit, I wonder what they would say. A lot of these women wear things like Lululemon, which fits really well, and makes their butt look good. They don't necessarily wear high end fashion (heels, skirts, whatever) because it "fits". They wear it because they like how it looks, how it make…

More to the point, nicer clothes typically end up getting tailored before being worn anyway.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#69

Post by peripetylabs » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:42 PM UTC

It is not possible to infer anything from such a low sample population (45). For statistically significant results, you would need to spend on the order of $1,000 not $100.

Re: I dropped over 40 grand when I could have spent $100

#70

Post by notahacker » Thu, Apr 18, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #41

The target audience for Rewire Attire, the high end fashion marketplace, was women with enough money ... Whenever I read "target audience" and "with enough money" in the same sentence, I run the other way. My experience with prospects "with enough money": - there are far less of them than everyone else - many of them didn't earn it themselves, so... - they really don't really understand the concept of "value" - they…

In fairness, these elements of customer behaviour are actually in the favour of someone starting a designer clothes business targeting the rich:

   - many of them didn't earn it themselves, so...
   - they really don't really understand the concept of "value"
   - they don't understand investing vs. consuming

(that's also why "designer" markets don't appeal to me as a startup space either)

A bigger issues with targeting rich spendthrift consumers is that most people considering a startup don't know any and don't understand them. I expect that irrespective of any issues with sharing their body size, wealthy women who buy fitted designer clothes really enjoy the experience of visiting high end stores to touch the material and be complimented on the fit by a helpful attendant, are prepared to pay the resulting premiums and wouldn't replace the experience with a super-efficient website even if they already do all their grocery shopping and flight-booking online. (But then that's a hypothesis too as none of my female friends qualify as rich yet)