Business 101 observations
I have been a businessman ever since high school and have run a few businesses that have been moderately successful, the most successful of which to date is Razer, which has revenue in the double digit millions (undisclosed as we are a private company).
Over the last year focusing on CoolMiniOrNot, I have encountered businesses and read forums posts that to me, have unusual ideas about business. Rather than offer advice where it is not solicited or wanted, I thought a general post that speaks to the subject would be better.
1. Father Knows Best (not)
When your entire industry is moving in a certain direction (be it greener cars, e-books, miniature scale creep), going the other way is a strategy not for the inexperienced or under-capitalized. Certainly, if you make Ferraris you may be able to get away with a 10mpg exotic due to the extremely niche market Ferrari serves, but even behemoths like Toyota and Audi must bow to market realities and serve up vehicles that have better or even zero fuel consumption.
To ensure "beating your own path" isn't in reality giving yourself a beating, you must know that the market actually exists in the size you need for your quirky products. Yes, the Internet is a vast place, and selling to the world is exciting, but your 50 regular customers aren't exactly going to put food on the table (unless, once again, you are selling $200,000 Ferraris). The only market research that is of any value is "how many did we sell?" or, even better, "how many did they sell?"
2. Marketing is everything.
Now, some of you may feel this is over-stated. "But Chern.... won't people find out how great my stuff is by word of mouth?". Yes, it's true, marketing without a good product is a recipe for failure. However, a good product without marketing is much worse, you spent presumably more money doing R&D to get a good product done, manufactured, only to fall flat on your face at the last mile. You'd probably have been better off just marketing a crap product (although this is not desirable either).
As I've mentioned elsewhere, a good paintjob on an average sculpt will inevitably sell more figures than an average paintjob on a good sculpt, and I've got the numbers to prove it. Do not balk at putting your products in the best possible light.
I've seen posts that I have found incredulous, akin to: "My descriptions are so graphic my customers don't need pictures, and they certainly do not affect my sales." Even Desktop Computers have pictures to help sales, miniatures you'd think would be in even more desperate need of pictorial help.
A good website, announcements and advertising on high traffic sites all help drive sales to your products. Put yourself in your customer's shoes. Especially in the realm of luxury spending like miniatures, they certainly will not seek you out if they have no idea who the hell you are. In times of crisis, never scale back on marketing. That is a downward spiral of doom (less sales -> less marketing -> less sales etc until.... death).
3. I want to eat your lunch.
This is the most important thing to learn when you do your own business. Whatever you are doing, you have competition.
If you fail to have enough product available for sale after *shudder* spending money on creating demand for your products, then you frankly do not deserve to be in business. Someone else is going to realize the demand is there ("I would really like to order this product", "Sorry ma'am, it's out of stock and the manufacturer is on holiday") and make a competing product. You did all the hard work educating everyone on how cool thingamabob is, and now someone else is going to pwn you.
Never, ever, fail to satisfy demand, especially demand you create. This, incredibly, is the number #1 epic fail that I see everyday, and which CMON is sometimes guilty of.
For example:
I like Razer mice. I need to buy a new mouse. The new mouse from Razer is late. I buy, albeit reluctantly, the mouse from Logitech instead.
Why does this happen? Why aren't your customers super loyal? Well, for one thing, they're your customers, not the other way round. Imagine, your customer loves miniatures, and has $50 to spend on figures..... but oops, you're out of stock. He isn't going to keep his $50 in his piggy bank, oh no... he'll go to the movies instead with his girlfriend, buy some popcorn, and possibly go out for dinner. And that'll be that. You didn't even lose the sale to a competitor, you lost it because your customer got bored. Which is the worst, worst possible business sin ever.
4. I want you to share my lunch.
In almost any rational situation, other business people would prefer to work with you, rather than against you. For example, many manufacturers sell to CMON to retail miniatures on to our userbase. Now, in theory they could keep all the retail profits for themselves, and in theory CMON could make miniatures in a similar theme, but on both sides of the equation we both make much more money by cooperating.
For example, Razer makes mice. Best Buy sells our mice. Now, no one in their right mind at Razer would say "Let's go set up 2000 retail electronic stores and compete with Best Buy so we get that juicy additional retail margin." Why? Well, we don't have enough money to do that, we don't have the management know how to handle big box retail and we have no desire to sell other people's products. Best Buy similarly isn't thinking of entering the gaming mouse space because they can just buy from the winners without worrying about creating R&D teams.
Especially when you are aware that you have motivated and sufficiently capitalized potential partners and/or competitors in the same space as you are, do your best to make them your partners. The miniatures industry in particular has very little intellectual property (it's all Historical, Fantasy or Science Fiction tropes) and the low startup costs means there are almost no barriers to entry.
Another real life example:
Nintendo makes a super popular SNES console. Sony wants to play in the space. Sony approaches Nintendo and says, Nintendo, you are the experts, we have the money, let's work together and come up with a CD based system. Nintendo jerks Sony around a little and finally says, nahh... let's not, we're fine on our own. Sony then proceeds to develop the Playstation from scratch, spending more money than they would have working with Nintendo but completely destroying Nintendo's dominant position.
EVEN WORSE, Sony now has more expertise than Nintendo in making consoles, making any future partnership extremely unattractive to Sony ("Gee... this isn't as hard as I thought it was"). Nintendo in effect, created their own competitor when they could have made millions more; why? Maybe they doubted Sony's resolve.... or maybe they were arrogant and believed only they knew the secret sauce to great home consoles.... which leads me to..
5. You're Not Special.
Everyday is a struggle. You have to be smarter, faster and more hardworking than your competition. Do not be your own worst enemy by believing your own hype and trying to go it alone. Even GW has realized this and is trying to rebuild their network of independent retailers.
The miniatures industry, as I've said, has a very low barrier to entry. Every well run company in the vertical chain from manufacturer, to retailer, to specialized news site adds tremendous value because they know what they're doing and they're good at it (survival of the fittest, after all). Be on good terms with your partners and peers, and do not screw them over unless you really, really know what you're doing. Your product or service is ultimately replaceable. Your job is to ensure that no one has any reason to desire that happening.
6. QQ less
In business, it is important to leave emotions at home. You may decide that dealing with a particular supplier or customer is too expensive (either it takes too much time or money), and sever the relationship because of that. As long as this is a considered decision based on $, then make it. It may be right, it may be wrong but at least it was made for the right reasons. This does not come easily to new business people, and it takes practice.
This is very important from a business discipline perspective because sometimes you may need to make decisions in literally seconds, especially when negotiating. If, in retrospect, the reason for any of your business decisions was "I felt like it", you have screwed up.
I've seen companies post news about upcoming projects for no apparent reason (customer can't really do anything about it, and they frankly don't really care); control this urge to share until you're ready, your competition will exploit it if they are alert.
That said, emotions are excellent tools for management and negotiations. I'm not suggesting you feel nothing. Expressing happiness and anger are necessary if you want to make a point. Just don't base your decisions on what you're feeling.
7. The Internet is forever
Before you write anything, anywhere, think first. If it is in any way, shape or form offensive or unpleasant, don't do it. Never commit words in anger to the Internet. Yell if you must in person or over the phone (and even then make sure you aren't recorded). Once out, these words will be forever unretractable. As a business person, you have partially given up the right to voice your opinion on anything (religion, politics, your competition). Always have nice things to say about your competition, you may be partners one day.
This post is not public domain, do not reproduce without permission.
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Not that I'm in the business myself 
Generally deal with SME requirements but the bosses occasionally want something snazzy for home use 
, hence third party apps and support for stuff like USPS shipping isn't properly coded.
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