So I am a Highschooler who plans on going into entrepreneurship and photography and I am honestly curious when you guys are specifically shopping for Lift Kits and armor what are you looking for, I.E what makes you buy one kit over another one.
If you want to be successful in a business selling to folks who own Jeeps there are a few things you need to get your head around and you don't have to do it yourself, you can hire someone to do it for you.
1- Marketing- you have to be able to basically lie about your products and or service and tell everyone you are the best. If you are more on the honest side, that really limits your target demographic. That may sound like a bit of bullshit but go look at any of the low end lift kit sellers and see if they actually tell you why their crap is cheaper. From high to low, the tag line is the same, "we are the best". That can't really be true so someone is stretching the truth a bit or more than a bit.
2- The best kept secret in selling products to Jeep owners is to figure out with a quickness that the vast majority of them won't actually use most products for their intended purpose offroad, they just want to look like they do. The more your products make them look like a perceived serious offroader, the more you will sell. Two examples are Alloy USA when it started and RCV. Alloy axles by and large were no stronger than stock. But, the owner knew that since most rarely use their rigs hard enough to break even stock axle, it didn't matter and as long as his no questions asked warranty was rarely used, he was golden and he was. The second part of that bullshit was almost none of his axle products were US made. Gotcha twice.
RCV makes a good product. When they first came out several purchased and then any time an axle discussion came up they hopped in and said you had to get RCV. I spent several years making a point of asking what problem they solved by buying RCV? How many stock axles did you break? What other brands of high strength axles did you break before you attempted to solve that issue by going to RCV? For several years the answer was always the same, never broke a stock one but you still need to run RCV.
3- Jeepers will buy shit endlessly and spend crazy amounts of money on stuff that is gimmicky. Come up with anything that is a gimmick and you can sell a metric shit ton of it. You just need to believe you can convince them as to why they need it. If you can make it shiny, offer it in colors to match their underwear of the day, even better.
4- Find a genius to partner with that knows the inside of a Jeeper's head. That will help you target them to sell what they will buy. An example is the shade products that are a piece of net stretched over the top of a roll cage and bungeed in place. They sell 1000's of them and that is a product that I simply do not understand. You want shade, you don't get something with a zillion holes in it. You get solid cloth and that not only gives you shade, but if it sprinkles a bit, you don't get wet. I'd never own one, run one, and I never stop giggling at those who do but there you go, 1000's sold so it is clear I don't understand what folks will buy. The sad part is I used to have a tarp business and made many products from that industrial netting cloth. Mostly it is used to cover trash on the way to the dump so maybe that's why I don't get it. Or maybe I'm too much all or nothing but a shade that isn't, baffles me.
In short, be awesome at bullshit, believe in your ability to bullshit customers, make bullshit products, and no matter what, never let anyone know you are bullshitting them. My only sadness in life is I can not do that. I wish I could.
