The Great Combinator
Registered Member
- Jul 3, 2021
- 67
- 282
Sharing is caring and today I will share 100% original method. Targeted audience are easily accessible for marketing & sales and therefore others have done this in the past but the product tied to it is 100% my own idea. I will keep it simple and explain audience and followed by product itself & my proposed distribution method. All of this is written as it applies to my own situation, even if you cannot repeat it in your city you can learn from how to find masses of people into potential customers and how to build larger teams doing
Audience – In NYC there are still over 1M riders in the subway each day, even with COVID lower ridership. For decades there have been people utilizing access to masses of people and making money from them. There are sellers / performers near subway, inside subway stations and even inside subway themselves. Day after day thousands of people have been doing this to reach potential customers. Many of them actually do this as a full time job and NYPD didn’t bother most in the past and doesn’t bother anyone now. Back in the day people used to walk around subway carts selling AA batteries when people used to listen to Walkman’s & CD players, kids still walk around selling candies, music performs walk cart to cart playing music and getting tips as well as selling their CDs. Directly on some subway stations there are full time sellers of churros that during rush hour can probably get 50+ sales per hour. Sometimes cops might kick them out and they move to the next station. It’s all a numbers game and if you’re in front of thousands of people all the time you will get people getting your product. Do you remember Seinfeld selling umbrellas on rainy days?
Product – I thought of this product on my own after seeing it on AliExpress. It is not evergreen, its seasonal but during the right season it will be a hot seller. I never seen anyone else sell it but have seen very few subway riders use similar product. Good products need to be intriguing where customers have not seen it before, and it needs to a problem solver. I found one product that fits in perfectly under certain circumstances.
NYC gets hot & humid during some spring / fall months and summer. Some days can be over 100F / 38C on the outside and it can be 20F+ degrees underground in some stations. Even on 80F / 27C days underground can be 10F+ and subway carts with broken AC are not different when packed with hundreds of people.
Introducing Multi USB plug (micro usb / usb c / apple) powered mini fan that can be plugged into their phone. When you’re sweating balls and someone offers you solution for $5 I believe a lot of people would jump on it. When I’m standing on underground subway station @ 110F for 10 minutes I’m not very interested in purchasing churros but I might be more open to purchasing cold water for $5 and USB mini fan that will keep me cool for next 10 minutes waiting for subway packed like sardines to arrive.
Simple product that solves problems at the right situation. People do walk around beaches selling water / beer and other products but I think offering people USB mini fans when they’re in heat that they can’t escape is a different story. They can be purchased in bulk for under $1 and sold for $5.
Delivery – Serious hustlers don’t run many of their hustles directly themselves and instead outsource it to others. You can certainly buy 1000 of them and sell them yourselves for $5 each and keeping $4 of profit per each unit. Walking through busy subway cart while travelling from one station to the other its possible to have 5+ sales of everyday products that people are used to. Music performer can get 5+ tips from people and I’ve seen 1-2 purchases of CD happen. I also notice a lot of copycats as in when someone takes out $1 bill to tip some performer others see it and do the same. If there is a new product that they haven’t seen before being purchased by someone across subway cart there are some that are already curious and want it for themselves.
How I would do it is by outsourcing the work to others. Let’s say you bring 1000 units that were purchased to one central location (ie. Big subway station) right before rush hour and sell 200 units each to 5 college age, street smart hustlers for $3/unit. They spend $600 for 200 units to flip them for $1000. They can make $400 cash offering hot product when people are sweating (pun intended) and each person can travel on different subway line into different directions, go into one subway cart offer the product, make few sales, exit on next stop and enter next subway cart and so on. Good hustlers can make few sales per subway cart and / or move around specific high traffic subway stations. Selling 200 units in few hours is not only possible its very doable during a hot summer day.
I had this idea few years ago but busy with other things to do selling myself or managing team myself in person. I had thought of doing it on bigger scale by buying 10,000 units and finding managers of teams that would buy larger quantity from me and manage their own smaller teams. Example would be 4 managers each getting 2500 units each at $2 and they resell smaller portions to their college age hustlers at $3. Each level of reseller gets $1/unit while street hustlers get $2.
I had this idea before COVID and never got chance to implement on larger level with several managers managing individual teams. I know that because of other commitments I will not do this method on my own. Instead of taking it to the grave I am sharing it with BHW community. I’m just adding my own twists to existing guerilla marketing sales.
Happy Saturday & enjoy!
Audience – In NYC there are still over 1M riders in the subway each day, even with COVID lower ridership. For decades there have been people utilizing access to masses of people and making money from them. There are sellers / performers near subway, inside subway stations and even inside subway themselves. Day after day thousands of people have been doing this to reach potential customers. Many of them actually do this as a full time job and NYPD didn’t bother most in the past and doesn’t bother anyone now. Back in the day people used to walk around subway carts selling AA batteries when people used to listen to Walkman’s & CD players, kids still walk around selling candies, music performs walk cart to cart playing music and getting tips as well as selling their CDs. Directly on some subway stations there are full time sellers of churros that during rush hour can probably get 50+ sales per hour. Sometimes cops might kick them out and they move to the next station. It’s all a numbers game and if you’re in front of thousands of people all the time you will get people getting your product. Do you remember Seinfeld selling umbrellas on rainy days?
Product – I thought of this product on my own after seeing it on AliExpress. It is not evergreen, its seasonal but during the right season it will be a hot seller. I never seen anyone else sell it but have seen very few subway riders use similar product. Good products need to be intriguing where customers have not seen it before, and it needs to a problem solver. I found one product that fits in perfectly under certain circumstances.
NYC gets hot & humid during some spring / fall months and summer. Some days can be over 100F / 38C on the outside and it can be 20F+ degrees underground in some stations. Even on 80F / 27C days underground can be 10F+ and subway carts with broken AC are not different when packed with hundreds of people.
Introducing Multi USB plug (micro usb / usb c / apple) powered mini fan that can be plugged into their phone. When you’re sweating balls and someone offers you solution for $5 I believe a lot of people would jump on it. When I’m standing on underground subway station @ 110F for 10 minutes I’m not very interested in purchasing churros but I might be more open to purchasing cold water for $5 and USB mini fan that will keep me cool for next 10 minutes waiting for subway packed like sardines to arrive.
Simple product that solves problems at the right situation. People do walk around beaches selling water / beer and other products but I think offering people USB mini fans when they’re in heat that they can’t escape is a different story. They can be purchased in bulk for under $1 and sold for $5.
Delivery – Serious hustlers don’t run many of their hustles directly themselves and instead outsource it to others. You can certainly buy 1000 of them and sell them yourselves for $5 each and keeping $4 of profit per each unit. Walking through busy subway cart while travelling from one station to the other its possible to have 5+ sales of everyday products that people are used to. Music performer can get 5+ tips from people and I’ve seen 1-2 purchases of CD happen. I also notice a lot of copycats as in when someone takes out $1 bill to tip some performer others see it and do the same. If there is a new product that they haven’t seen before being purchased by someone across subway cart there are some that are already curious and want it for themselves.
How I would do it is by outsourcing the work to others. Let’s say you bring 1000 units that were purchased to one central location (ie. Big subway station) right before rush hour and sell 200 units each to 5 college age, street smart hustlers for $3/unit. They spend $600 for 200 units to flip them for $1000. They can make $400 cash offering hot product when people are sweating (pun intended) and each person can travel on different subway line into different directions, go into one subway cart offer the product, make few sales, exit on next stop and enter next subway cart and so on. Good hustlers can make few sales per subway cart and / or move around specific high traffic subway stations. Selling 200 units in few hours is not only possible its very doable during a hot summer day.
I had this idea few years ago but busy with other things to do selling myself or managing team myself in person. I had thought of doing it on bigger scale by buying 10,000 units and finding managers of teams that would buy larger quantity from me and manage their own smaller teams. Example would be 4 managers each getting 2500 units each at $2 and they resell smaller portions to their college age hustlers at $3. Each level of reseller gets $1/unit while street hustlers get $2.
I had this idea before COVID and never got chance to implement on larger level with several managers managing individual teams. I know that because of other commitments I will not do this method on my own. Instead of taking it to the grave I am sharing it with BHW community. I’m just adding my own twists to existing guerilla marketing sales.
Happy Saturday & enjoy!
