Need some help with a class project / Market Survey


jHop

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So, as part of the Small Business Administration degree I'm working towards (not really a surprise announcement), I'm collecting data on a market survey.  The class is a New Business Development class, and the survey is part of the projects for the grade.  (Of course, it's a woodworking themed business the project is on.)  I'm aware that the results I get from here will be slightly skewed, which won't help the overall results from the survey.  But I need to see if the basic survey is sound, or if I need to go back to the drawing board.

 

If you get a moment, would you guys be able to take the survey?  Should only take a couple of moments.  Feel free to message me or post up suggestions to improve it; the limitations of a free account through Survey Monkey do not allow me the full range of questions (or types of questions) I originally had included.

 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZLQCBSG

 

(For those considering starting their own business, market surveys will help refine your ideas.  For those who have already started a business, how did your market survey help out your business in the beginning?  Do you have any tips for starting surveys?)

 

Thanks for all your help, guys. 

 

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With custom I think you would be wise to know your income demographic. In my work we do not work for individuals or small companies. We need to know sales figures or volume. We won't even deal with anyone not doing 80+ units a year. With custom furniture your target is going to be upper end of the earners. There is no sense in spending time going after customers that are at median income. Your survey is missing key elements like home ownership, income, married and children.  

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  1. I think your age question should be more granular, 25-50 for example covers several different generations, and generations look at stuff differently. I would break it down to 6 - 10 year groups.
  2. You might also want to ask about gender. In my personal experience, women seem to want more custom stuff and are willing to pay more for it.
  3. I wouldn't refer directly to furniture. Woodworkers make stuff besides furniture, that your average joe will buy (doors, gates, bowels, picture frames, display pieces etc).
  4. I'd either skip or describe the different furniture tastes, as most people won't know what the different terms mean.
  5. like PB said, Income and other key life status info is important.
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I think it would be nice to find out......

1. Stage of home ownership- I'm just buying my first home so I need lots of furniture

2. Tighter age range at thirty I'm looking to spend less then a newly retired person

3. Skill set...someone like me is more likely to build my own furniture rather then buy it.

4. Income...I'm a teachers aid so I make much less money then say a banker or a Ceo of a text book company

5. Family status....as a single man I'm more inclined to spend more then a man with a family

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I appreciate all this feedback, guys.

 

The survey was intended to be larger (perhaps double the length), as I'm focusing on a very specific area... and discovering through this survey that very few people are actually aware of the area of focus.  Either I need to change my direction, or I need to target the market better (and write more direct questions).

 

 

To answer some specific questions, I was focusing on furniture especially and primarily because I was targeting reenactors that might need portable furniture.  Perhaps better known as campaign furniture (or simulations of such to cover modern technological replacements), this is not a section of the market that is in broad discussion, from my preliminary research.  Dan, I know that people do buy these items - I had just thought I would focus on other items to differentiate myself from the market.

 

 

Duck, PB, you both mentioned the lack of children question.  When I presented this survey to my class instructor, he heavily suggested removing it from the overall survey.  It was detracting from the product itself I was attempting to ask for feedback on, and was deemed unnecessary.  I will admit I had not given the thought enough weight: having kids myself, I am well aware that my disposable income is not nearly as bountiful when children are present in the equation.

 

Duck: skill set is a big part of my worry about posting this survey here.  I was very hesitant about doing so, because I know most of us would rather make it ourselves than pay someone else for it.  I'm trying to tweak this survey here, before I present it to the other crowd who might not have the skill set.  Do you have a suggestion on how I might clarify the target audience is consumers rather than makers?

 

Mike: I had a targeted product and price range already in mind before coming up with the survey.  It was fortuitous that recent Guild Build is what it was... I was planning on making Morris and Limbert Chairs.  (This was before considering the reenactment furniture.)  I had a rough time-frame and cost already in mind...  and am not sure how to set up the price range question to find the right market on them.  Do you have any suggestions on phrasing the question to address this?  I don't want to start out too high, but having done a fair amount of reading this particular sub-forum, I know that I don't want to do just 120% of materials.  (Might be where I start as a hobby shop, but pros can't do this for long... I've run numbers to verify this.)

 

PB, when someone tells you that they own a home, what information does that give you?  Assuming they just mention that one fact, and you don't get additional questions to ask, do you get a string of information, or just a couple of data points?  What other questions should I ask in concert with that one?

 

Mike: I had not considered designers... may have to revisit the drawing board to make some alterations in the plans...  thank you!

 

Dan: the reason I had mentioned the different tastes in furniture is that I am planning on focusing on three distinct styles and time periods.  As has been mentioned elsewhere in this forum, there's a lot of information on Arts And Crafts style, because it's a common style and has popular factors; Art Nuveau, on the other hand, is not as popular and therefore has fewer publications and instructors focusing on it.  I'm planning on focusing on Arts and Crafts, Colonial (just before Federal), and Provincial.  Both colonial and provincial are the "country" versions of styles, one in the budding Colonies in America and one in the countryside of Europe.  But I'm also interested in blacksmithing, and have two plans already for more classic medieval furniture in the drafting stage (Dark Ages, just before the wide-scale acceptance of the Renaissance) that will have more elements of steel and iron in them.  Would putting a timeframe of years in parentheses after the period style names be sufficient, or do I need to describe the period in about a sentence?

 

All:  thank you guys very much for the feedback.  There's a lot of information here to digest, and I clearly need to work on the survey further.  Hopefully, I'll be able to post revisions soon.

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PB, when someone tells you that they own a home, what information does that give you?  Assuming they just mention that one fact, and you don't get additional questions to ask, do you get a string of information, or just a couple of data points?  What other questions should I ask in concert with that one?

 

I don't think when it comes to the homeownership question its good to go beyond that. Your really going to get overly personal and your survey will just go in the trash. For me I might ask how old is your home but not how long have you owned your home. Once you start asking questions that make it look more like a credit application it going to go in the trash.

For my industry homeownership is top priority, I wouldn't target a renter for a cabinet job. For furniture Im not going to target low income renters. For surveys its really about what you plan to do with the data. Are you going to give it to a direct mail company. If thats the case they will break it down and map out your target areas. Personally I think if your selling furniture  your surveys are useless, statistical data would be more useful. With surveys its better to buy survey data from other companies. If your doing the survey you already have that person either in your show room or sending in a warranty registration which really has nothing to do with the warranty. Warranty registration / activation is not legal in pretty much every state. For example really what I want is the data from maybe a hardwood flooring companies registration data to help me target possible cabinet customers. This is how the survey game is really played and why its expensive information.

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frankly i think your instructor is wrong children affect our lives in every aspect if i had kids i would not have my grandfathers furniture he built out in the living room and i would not have the cabinet with the large curved glass doors as they would be dangerous and expensive to fix.  from what i understand  this survey is to to figure out a target customer.  i would think that if your survey showed that there is a large number of particular age group of children in your local area or young families, collage age, retires ect... then that is the type of furniture i would want to make and sell.  for example if your survey shows that 60% of your future patrons are 30 and under still in collage then i would build and sell cheaper disposable future.  if they are 30-45 with your children then i would want to build furniture that is sold with soft edges, padding and portable since they are more likly to move within 10 years time.  45 and up the children will be last couple years of high school into collage so those people would be more inturested in fine furniture and might have a little extra money to spend on there furniture.  

 

so the age of any children will show the best funiture to make as well as the cost and materials to use.  i think kids are too big a part of the picture to write them out of the equation.  

 

as for the best way to get a target audience you should not use this forum were too bias you should instead post it on forums that have nothing to do with making stuff like a photographing forum or a cooking forum ect..... as for geting good feedback from us perhaps instead of members taking the survey instead have our families, co workers, friends.  

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  • 4 weeks later...

I know I've been quiet for a while.  I've read your comments, and they have been very helpful!  I've just been swamped with homework too much to reply before now.

 

The survey is still open, but I've already bottled results and wrapped them into the business plan.  

 

PB: I did narrow my target down using other statistical data, namely education and median income, from the census bureau.  There's more to it than that, but the snapshot look made those two particularly important.  I was facing the limitation of a free Survey Monkey account, which means you have 10 questions max.  Trying to get both demographic data and market research out of only 10 questions is difficult when you are just starting out.  A paid survey account or paying professionals to handle your survey certainly makes sense!

 

Duck: the children aspect he was referring to was after having several conversations with me about what I was trying to do already.  (I've had a couple more conversations after posting this, so clarification was passed along to me.)  Based on the idea I had, and what I was intending to do, he wanted to stress moving past the input of "how many/how old" children and get back to the market that PB directed me to define.  

 

All: this survey doesn't really show what I wanted it to show.  It was intended to find out how people felt about furniture and "stuff" for the re-enactor.  The main products I'm focusing on are Civil War, American Colonial, and Medieval furniture.  Mostly for the re-enactor or RenFaire enthusiast, but not specifically.  I'm also trying to develop a plan based off the shaving mirror kit in a recent Woodworker's Journal to adapt it for smart phones (replacing the mirror with the phone, and including a charge cord/port for the phone).  This will help re-enactors hide their modern technology without abandoning it.  (There are essentially 3 grades of re-enactors: period appropriate, period accurate, and period authentic.  Appropriate means it could look similar but be made from non-period materials like plastic.  Accurate means it looks right but might be made from modern materials and stained to look old, or power tools were used to make it.  Authentic means tools appropriate to the time were used - hand tools and the like - and materials as close to the original were used.  I'm aiming for Accurate and authentic, but that's hard to convey in the survey.)

 

Dan: I wanted to look further into a niche than just "woodworking," because I wanted to create that successful business.  I had forgotten that you can be successful at whatever you do as long as you do it well.  Sometimes you need to accept any job in your field.  I also know, though, that when the business gets going, you need to stay in your preferred field rather than accepting just any job that comes along.  Your suggestions reminded me to offer more than just the two products I had initially thought to offer.

 

Mike: I deliberately didn't establish pricing in this survey.  Partially because the two products I had initially mapped out for sale already have much of the market pricing done for me.  (One was the Morris chair that had just finished in the Guild.)  During the course of this class, I also discovered a pricing strategy that I think works for me, and have approximated materials and labor costs to each project.  It was a very mathematical, logical step (which means it's probably not going to work without adjustments for reality and change), but I have some general pricing already.  I have also figured that further surveys can help refine the pricing, but that is something that comes down the road after the general fuzzy image has been refined.

 

I do so heavily want to thank everybody for their input.  I would not have managed to work this out without it.  Both the survey results and the comments were essential in my understanding of my products/ business, and in my education.  Thank you to all.  If I could afford to fly out to everybody and thank you in person, I would do that this holiday season.  Unfortunately, I'm limited to merely attempting to describe in electron form how deeply in debt I am to each of you.

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  • 4 months later...

Want to thank everybody who helped out on this.  Ended the class and got good marks on the project.

 

During post-class (and post-graduation) research into this project, realized I was charging almost double for a replica of something that is available from the original manufacturer... so some parts will need to be rewritten.

 

I"m not giving up, just trying to find a better way.  (And one that will continue to let me eat.)  But thank you again for all your input.  Wouldn't have been able to accomplish as much as I did without you guys.

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