Richard W. Price

View Original

Super Epic-Super Pacific Road Trip

I've got 15 days to get everything in order before we leave for the Super Epic-Super Pacific Road Trip.

There's a lot to do, including packing up the latest run of the 1st Gen Tundra/Sequoia Auxiliary Battery trays so that new orders will still ship while we are gone.

I realized last week that I'd missed an enormous marketing opportunity for this brand.

T-Shirts.

Who loves T-shirts?

Everybody.

Hardly anybody ever throws a t-shirt away.

Even if they are ugly as sin, they'll at least mow the yard or paint the spare bedroom with it.

And I should know this. I probably have 50 or 60 t-shirts right now, and that's not counting the giant pile of them that have been cut up and are waiting to go to the quilt maker.

Sticking a t-shirt in the box with every order is a no-brainer, and I didn't think of it.

Kind of like when I started R.W. Price & Associates.

Could anyone tell, from the name alone, what that company did?

Nope.

It could have been a law practice.

It could have been a consulting firm.

It could have been anything; who the hell knows?

And it took nearly a decade for me to realize that and fix it by registering a DBA for R.W. Price Realty Associates.

One small change, suddenly everybody knew exactly what we did, and I was left wondering how the hell it took me so long to figure that out.

And that change cost me nothing.

Same with the T-shirts.

I just got the quote - they will run me about $6 apiece.

But they're not going to cost me anything, because I'm going to increase the price of this product by - you guessed it - $6.

And nobody will care.

Nobody paying $235 for this product will bat an eye at $242. In fact, with the t-shirt included, the perceived value will go up because it will feel like a premium.

It's kind of in the same vein as why Apple products come in crazy expensive packaging, and, like these t-shirts, you can bet that the extra cost is figured into the retail price.

99% of buyers will feel better about paying $242 and getting a t-shirt than paying $235 without a t-shirt.

And, since nobody throws a t-shirt away, every single order becomes a walking advertisement at no extra cost to me.

That's a win-win if you ask me.

I just can't believe it took me two years to realize it.