Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Listening for Luck




Late last year I was taking an early morning flight from Austin through Chicago with a final destination to Detroit.  Slowly snaking through security I pondered if I would be able to resist my favorite caramel corn at the fabulous Nuts on Clark shop during my layover at Chicago Midway.  Deep in my inner candy-coated popcorn turmoil I barely heard someone calling my name. 

“Excuse me; are you Penny from Penny’s Pastries?” I looked to my left and saw an attractive woman with short, curly hair and a warm smile attempting to roll a carryon case while holding hands with what I presumed were her elementary school-aged children.

“Yes I am, I responded.”  I owned a popular cookie bakery in Austin for many years and taught cookie classes all over the state for an equal number of years so her recognition came as no surprise.

With my response she looked at her kids and said, “This is the lady that created the cookie recipe we use to make our special decorated cookies.” 

I looked down and smiled at their sweet faces.  Meanwhile they looked up at me like their mom had just introduced them to Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.  Adorable

As we moved along the security line, the mom went on to tell me she had taken my cookie class years ago. Since that time she had used my roll and cut cookie recipe many times with great success. She went on to tell me of the elaborate Noah’s Ark she and the kids constructed yearly complete with multiple sets of animals, Noah’s family and of course the large boat. 

Sincerely I told her how happy it makes me that she and her family have so much fun with creating the cookies.  As the security line continued to advance, I quickly handed her my business card and invited her to send a message if she ever had a problem with the cookies. 

Later as I settled in for the flight I had a real aha moment about this woman and my cookies. 

Our signature line of cookies were the hand-decorated roll and cut cookies.  With a thriving wholesale business for this line we also built an impressive special order business, fetching a handsome per dozen price for the little masterpieces.

I always considered the cookie classes held at my wholesale accounts or at independent studios and shops as a clever way to promote this line.  And for certain some of my best cookie customer came out of these classes.  Not only do many people view cooking classes as entertainment, once they witnessed up close and personal the work that went into creating hand-decorated cookies they were more than happy to make the phone call to Penny’s Pastries. 

What I did not totally recognize (until my airplane aha moment) was a secondary group of people that could have developed into a powerful target market for Penny’s.  Those crafters were at the class to seriously learn how to make the cookies at home.  Like the woman at the airport, many of them were women with small children looking for at-home craft ideas, birthday party favors or ways to impress teachers and other parents at school potlucks and PTA meetings. 

If I'd been looking for opportunity this was indeed a potential market Penny’s Pastries could have exploited. If I had recognized these crafters as a potential market to be leveraged I could have created products to service them and perhaps created an income stream without the high labor costs associated with the decorated cookies.  Things like a collection of cookie cutters, cookbooks, gel colors, sanding sugars come to mind.   

It actually happens once we’ve been in business for a while.  We sort of stop looking and decide we know with some certainty who we’re serving; the profile of the target market. 

However we may want to take another look, or look a little closer; a new opportunity may be hiding within your market. 

It’s so easy to go on “auto pilot” especially when your Profit and Loss is healthy.  But the moral of the cookie story is to stay conscious and learn through listening.   

You never know; there may just be nuance to your target market that without closer inspection will go unnoticed. 

But if you noticed it could yield a harvest.      
     

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