You may find yourself scratching your head at all the possible ways to grow your new glass business. Here, we will cover some essential strategies that are pivotal in growing a fledgling glass business.
How to Grow Your Glass Business
Once you find yourself in the glass business, you may find yourself scratching your head at all the possible ways to grow your new business. There’s nothing as satisfying as watching your passion turned business thrive, but it helps to have a friendly guiding hand to show the way. Whether you create glass bongs, hand pipes, or dab rigs, this blog post will be that very hand! Here, we will cover some essential strategies that are pivotal in growing a fledgling glass business.
Building a Strong Foundation
First things first, without a strong foundation for your business, you’ll have a hard time growing it. A solid foundation includes meeting standards of supply, product distribution, and a strong brand identity, just to name a few. Meeting key standards of a solid business foundation gives you the proper footing to meaningfully expand your business over time. It’s important to remember that meaningful growth is gradual; you won’t see your glass doing gangbusters immediately until you’ve established your strong foundation.
Define Your Niche and Brand Identity
Entering the world of custom glass, you’ll find you’re not the only talented glass artist by a long shot. In a crowded market space, carving out a niche and establishing a strong brand identity helps set you apart from the competition. Whether it’s a specific style you bring to your glass pieces or even a type of glass piece you specialize in, like bongs or dab rigs – locking down your preferred style connects you better with a customer base that resonates with said specific style.
Expanding Online Reach
Utilizing digital platforms to their fullest extent and expanding your online reach can exponentially increase the attention your glass receives. By posting your work on platforms such as Instagram or Etsy, you open the door to a wider audience of glass enthusiasts, and by hosting your work on digital marketplaces like Giggle Glass, it becomes much easier to sell your work to this broader audience.
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Optimize Your Giggle Glass and Website Presence
Once you optimize your Giggle Glass and website presence, you’ll see your glass making great dividends! But how does one go about this kind of optimization? Simply take your defined brand identity and glass products, and get the two as present as you can on Giggle Glass by putting up as much of what you have to offer online. On a site like Giggle Glass, you can promote your brand and glass by having articles written about what makes your glass unique with SEO techniques.
Improve SEO and Product Listings
Utilizing Search Engine Optimization techniques for your glass is one of the best ways to maximize traffic and interest in your products. SEO strategies involve creating clear and direct content that is boosted amongst search results that better captures the artistry of your glass and provides potential buyers a clearer picture of your style and offerings. Engaging an audience with precise descriptions of how your glass is crafted, how it functions, and the overall feel of it helps you and your glass proliferate the market like wildfire.
Use Email Marketing to Retain Customers
Gaining a solid customer base is just the first step in consistent sales. To keep a loyal customer, you should employ email marketing strategies to retain your new customers. Inviting interested parties to a mailing list once they buy from you and offering unique benefits like discounts or early access to new glass helps maximize the retention rate of your customer base. Keep your email marketing consistent, but not annoying. Don’t spam your audience but provide them with valuable new information about your glass that’ll pique interest.
Marketing and Audience Growth
After you’ve established the foundations of your brand identity and optimized product listings, the next step is to keep the pressure on, getting yourself out there with strong marketing strategies. Embarking on a marketing campaign establishes more than just the item lists of what you’re selling, but the story you have behind you as an artist and how this translates into your glass. Posting pictures and videos of your process in making glass and becoming a part of a digital network of fellow glass artists helps keep the foot in the door of consumer attention and expand your audience growth.
Strengthen Your Social Media Strategy
Your social media strategies should involve consistent posting on social media platforms that showcase your brand and identity. Using relevant hashtags on your posts will enhance visibility, and a high output and consistent posting schedule helps you to ride the algorithm to marketing success. However, make sure to ride the fine line between consistent and constant; you don’t want the quality of your content to take a dip due to overextending yourself.
Collaborate with Other Artists and Influencers
Sometimes getting your name out there helps when another big-name collaborates with yours. Get involved in your community of glassblowers and artists by messaging reputable creators who may have an interest in collaboration. This can go beyond the realm of social media, too; finding local influencers or headshops that might want to feature your work for themselves gives a great boost to exposure.
Host Workshops and Live Demos
Hosting workshops and live demos is a great way to share your process in real time and reach new audiences. Teaching newcomers what goes into the process of crafting intricate glass pieces is also great for galvanizing interests in people who may not have originally been into glass – helping create lifelong enthusiasts. Some ways you could go about this are to partner with art festivals or smoke shops to host a glassblowing demo, or if you have the means, offer your own paid workshop where beginners can study your technique and spread the good word of your artistry.
Increasing Sales Opportunities
After you’ve built up a network of collaborators and customers, your next move is to drive up your sales opportunities. This is where your business can shift from simply maintaining steady sales to truly scaling up. Expanding your reach to new markets, forming strong retail relationships, and showing up in the right spaces all play a huge role in this phase of growth.
Build Wholesale and Consignment Relationships
A quick way to get your glass pieces into shops is to build wholesale and consignment relationships. Wholesale involves selling your pieces to a shop for a discounted price for upfront payment; you’re essentially selling to the shop. Meanwhile, consignment involves payment upon sale via loaning your pieces to shops. Both strategies have their benefits, so to reap both, build upon both strategies of sale with multiple vendors. Wholesale for certain vendors can net you a quicker cash flow, while consignment can work to build your brand.
Attend Trade Shows and Local Events
Local trade shows and events further help raise the visibility of your glass and brand, so capitalizing on these events when possible is greatly encouraged. At local events, you can showcase your glass pieces in person. In this case, you should elevate your showcase at these events with a professional level of preparation using business cards, descriptive pricing, and varied offerings that will not only catch the eye of a buyer but also properly inform them of your product and brand identity.
Continuous Improvement
When all is said and done, there is always room for continuous improvement. Your business only stops growing when you stop growing it, so don’t rest on your laurels but keep at improving your glass business by following some of the following strategies.
Track Analytics and Customer Feedback
Know what’s working and what’s not! Keeping an eye on customer feedback and tracking the analytics of sales gives you the greatest tool you could have in the glassblowing trade besides a torch, and that’s knowledge. Knowing what sells well and what customers do and don’t like informs you on what products you should be focusing more on producing and marketing, and what’s better to sideline.
Adjust Strategies for Sustainable Growth
Sometimes the best way to judge your next move in growing your business is to take a big step back and take a holistic look at how your glass business is doing. Depending on the results you see for yourself, good or bad, you can take in what’s working for you and what’s not and make the necessary adjustments to keep your business sustainably growing.
Conclusion
Growing a glass business, hopefully, seems a little less daunting after reading about the strategies you can take to effectively grow your business. Whether it’s getting listed on Giggle Glass or finding an in-person avenue to promote your glass, there’s a plethora of strategies to better grow your glass business. So get out there with your glass pieces and show the world what you’ve got, make some sales and grow your glass business today!
