Punch Needle Embroidery. My craft. My first product. It met every single qualification that I had and I realized that this was going to be my micro niche where I could start my business. My first punch needle kit arrived, and upon opening it, I knew that this was a product I could very easily innovate on.
The first way to determine if a product has room for improvement is quite simple: read the reviews and find out what people do not like about the product. The negative reviews all shared the same frustrations: not enough yarn and no instructions in English.
Everything about this product screamed, “This product is not made for you, English-speaking American mom in need of a stress relieving project!” This example has the color “Flesh pink” but another design in the kit had the color “Meat pink.”
So, Pain Point #1 seemed simple enough: provide instructions in English, including video tutorials for a deeper explanation, if needed. Also, create a product that would feel like it was designed for my audience, not a global audience.
Pain Point #2 was to provide enough yarn to complete the project. As someone brand new to the craft, I thought that I would complete each design to see how I fared with yarn quantities. The first design turned out nice and I had excess yarn in every color. The second design, however, left me shy of one color. Oh, this was very frustrating for me to not be able to complete the design!
I hoped that maybe one of the other designs might have the same shade of blue with enough extra for me to borrow some, but alas, none of them did so this design will forever be left unfinished…grrrr.
Now, Pain Point #3 was not really something that other customers brought up, but it stood out to me and I realized that this would be the way that I could make my product unique: the designs were all very Asian-inspired. I just didn’t find that I would actually do anything with projects because the colors were very bright and I don’t think they are pretty enough to put on display in my house.
I began to get very excited at the prospect of creating attractive punch needle kits that would look awesome in a nursery or hung up in someone’s home. My first inspiration came from a onesie that I absolutely love on my daughter. My artist rendered it perfectly, and I simply can’t wait to see how my sample turns out.
With the top-selling “Amazon Choice” punch needle kit having only 4.3 stars, I knew that this was going to be the perfect product with which to start my business.
So, I knew the direction that I wanted to go with my product, I knew that it fell within a reasonable price point, and most of all, my product excited me. Onward and upward with sourcing!