I love reading Inc. magazine and one of my favourite sections is Joel Spolsky. In his column he talks about his experience as an entrepreneur and gives monthly advice. I find that his advice really connects with the true reality of everyday business issues.

In this month’s issue which features Marc Ecko on the cover (which also is a good read), Joel says that it’s not the “Big Idea” but the little things (you won’t know these until after the success) will dictate the success or failure of a product. He gives the example that for one of his product they only offered Pay-as-You-Go option for a software. Then they decided to offer a subscription option and the product really took off. In fact if they continued with the Pay-as-You-Go option they would have dumped the product because of the low demand.

Today I met two of the newest JUZD team members. One was Sarvie who have been in the industry for a long time and works at one of the store that carries JUZD. She answered a question that if it wasn’t on my mind, it should’ve been. She told me that after we drop off our shirts for the buyers at the store it was just laying there for a month before they contacted us. And she said the reason was that we didn’t have a look book for the buyers to browse through.

How simple! I didn’t make a lookbook because I wasn’t fully happy with the photos we had and I didn’t think it was that important. I have sent and dropped off lots of samples with buyers and kind of surprise that they didn’t get all excited and want to pick up the line. I wonder because I have such a great product and all the buyers that I’ve met and shown the whole line to really like it. So that’s the missing link!

The moral of this is that always get feedback and watch out for any little things that will catapult your line to the next level. Oh and also always send a lookbook to buyers. How simple of an idea!