School Bag Business

With an estimated 19.3 million school-age children enrolled for the school year 2008-2009 (13 million in elementary schools and 6.3 million in high schools), entrepreneurs are looking at bag-making as one of the most profitable ventures during school openings. Assuming that only 10 percent of the school children will purchase new bags, the total market is still a sizeable 1.9 million consumers.

To start a bag-making business, an estimated PhP 300,000.00 start-up capital may be needed. Most of this capital will be used to purchase materials, at least 5 sewing machines and the wages of 5 in-house sewers. Rental cost could be avoided if the shop is set in one part of the house or better yet in a garage.

While looking for equipment, materials and employees, it would not hurt and save some cost if the time is also used to look for prospective clients and take orders from them. It may not be much at first, but once the clients are familiar with you and your products, orders will just pour in. Once they do, try to attend to them personally and immediately, especially the complaints.

Try to find people who can give you referrals and be gracious enough to thank them whether or not the referred customers actually purchase your product. For starters, it is best to start with the grassroots and local marketing by tapping parents, neighbors and teachers within the community you live.

To encourage loyal consumers to endorse your product, it will certainly help if you offer warranty or free bag repair promo for say 1 year. Free pick-up and delivery can also be an option as long as the location is just within 5 km radius. Further than that may not be anymore worth it because of the rising transportation and gasoline cost.

To penetrate the market of big companies, additional investment is required mainly to purchase high-end bag-making machines and hire additional skilled workers. Since the quality standards of companies are higher than students, product rejections should be taken with a ‘grain of salt’ and used as a motivation to do better next time.

Diversifying to other products, like T-shirts and shoes, may become a tempting option to a budding entrepreneur, but if the name of the flagship product has not yet been established and widely recognized, this may only cause a great setback. Having too many options will only spread your sewers too thinly doing several things at the same time and delay brand association among customers. Quality deterioration is another thing that may jeopardize customer’s sustained consumption. Diversification is a vision that can be kept in mind, but not during the early years of operation.