In our last blog we talked about the Boom Boom Bags – an initiative by the Skipton Girls’ Young Enterprise team. We have been guiding the girls through the world of business and they have learnt a few lessons along the way, including this one.

In this blog I wanted to touch on the idea of tribal marketing – something which we have written about before. The girls, with their bags, had started to visit various markets and companies in the region to sell their wares. In the beginning sales were slow, but then the girls came up with a great idea. They started customising the bags and letting other people sit down with them to create something really unique.

Not everything needs to be customised or even be individual, but the girls had found a way to make their bags appeal to everyone from 60 year olds to 11 year olds.

For them it was a game changer and their sales rocketed. So much so, that very soon they will have to buy in more stock.

This teaches us two things, one it’s okay to change tactics to improve sales and secondly, if you have a product available to all, it is better to market it differently to each tribe.

For example, the girls were selling the bags in school, and as every grownup teenager knows – there is nothing worse than being the same as everyone else. Not everyone wants neon painted wares with studs.

It’s an interesting lesson, made even more so by the fact that we were there when the girls made this discovery.

It’s a simple lesson to learn, and its great that they got there by themselves.