Looking for opinions for an online snacks business

**ksam** · 03-28-2011 11:06 AM

Hello,

My name is Sam and I have recently built a website selling Asian Snacks in the Canadian market. I am hoping to get some opinions from fellows who have experiences from e-commerce before.

Brief description of my website:
- Sell Asian snacks such as pocky, pretz sticks and large variety of Asian snacks
- Target market: smaller cities/towns where they have no easy access to these snacks

This is my very first e-commerce website so I really don't know what to expect. So I have the following questions:

1) Realistically, how big can this business become? Is the Asian snacks market in a Caucasian dominant society big enough to potentially make this company, say, a million dollar company?

2) My target audience would be the people in some smaller cities/towns in Canada where they don't have easy access to a variety of Asian snacks. However, most of these towns have a small Asian population. So for me to make this business successful, I will have to not only focus on the Asian market but also the Caucasian market.

In the marketing point of view, it is not easy to sell snacks to people from different race. If someone were to sell me middle east snacks, they will have a VERY hard time making me to even try it. I'm assuming it'll be the same when I sell Asian snacks to non-Asian people. So my question is: are there any strategies I can use to sell my snacks to people from other race?

3. Since the profit margin for these snacks are very low, volume is very important to me. I am planning to set the price low in the beginning (and not make a whole lots of profit initially). Once the volume starts to go up, I'll get the items at wholesale price. Does that sound like a good strategy?

Any other suggestions/opinions are also welcome

Sam

**mojuu** · 03-28-2011 12:31 PM

It sounds interesting, but it's not an area that I have any experience in. I'll post my my Twitter followers and refer them here, see if they can help. Do you have a Twitter account?

**ksam** · 03-28-2011 02:24 PM

Thanks! I added you on twitter.

**mojuu** · 03-28-2011 05:29 PM

Right back at you. Let's see, if we can't find someone to answer your questions.

**DiCapitalist** · 03-29-2011 01:13 AM

I'd just like to say you're going to have to be very careful and wise when it comes to who you choose your market audience as.

My father used to own an asian cuisine in the Silicon Valley. Being what the silicon valley is( a place full of educated Caucasians with somewhat global exposure due to the nature of their careers), we didn't get as many white folks as we expected. 85% of the daily customers were asians and the other 15% were friends of the 85%, so it wasn't their sole decision to come to the restaurant. If we had opened the restaurant in a rural area full of Caucasians, we'd make virtually nothing.

I'd like to say since your products might be highly unfamiliar with the majority of your customers, you'll have to sell in areas where such products are accepted and have potential. Not everyone is broadminded and aware , most people shy away even when they see a foreign language on the product(i think that's the type of product you intend to sell correct)?.

I dont know how familiar people in Canada are with foreign products but if you sell in rural areas, even in the U.S.A, I doubt you'll sell much.
I think your best shot is to sell to wholesalers or retailers in areas where there are a lot minorities or areas where people have jobs which involves mingling with other cultures. For example : IT Industry. I think this is due to the more open mindedness
people from such areas portray.

I hope this helps, everything I said comes from personal observation and studying why my father's restaurant became popular !

**Milkerz** · 03-29-2011 06:40 AM

Be careful with your profit margins because server-side shopping cart facilities will take a small percentage (paypal take 20p + 3.4% commission) on every sale, make sure you are selling at a high enough price to still easily cover this cost.

Plus, I think Asians are unwilling to try Caucasian food, but it is not the same the other way around - infact Caucasians often prefer Asian food i.e. Chinese takeaways and stuff like that. Just a thought.

Luke

**ksam** · 03-29-2011 12:54 PM

DiCapitalist: Thanks for sharing your observation. Deciding the target market is definitely a tough task for me. The Asian population in Canada is quite huge actually but most of them live in big cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, ... etc. And these cities all have well established Asian supermarkets where they offer great variety of snacks at a price that I can't compete with. I just have a gut feeling that there is a hidden market even in the rural areas and that will need some good marketing strategy to realize the potential. I'll have to dig deeper to find out whether it really exists tho

Luke: Thanks for the heads-up too. I am just starting out so I'll need to figure out the price I can get from the wholesalers before setting the profit margin. It's also good to hear that Caucasians often prefer Asian food too!

Sam

**Empire46** · 03-29-2011 06:30 PM

Hey although determining your target audience is crucial, just wanted to give you a friendly reminder to not forget about potential targets you can extend to. I wish you the best of luck.

**ksam** · 04-09-2011 09:08 AM

After doing some researches on the market, I have decided to make some changes to what I'm gonna do. I have re-packaged the snacks and sell them as a gift basket. Selling the gift basket instead of just a box of snacks raises the profit margin and at the same time expands my target market to the Asian community.

However, now I have another problem. I wanna do a little test on how the market would responds to my gift baskets. I talked to a few of my friends, and not many of them said they like it. I wanna find out the common reasons why people don't like it so that I can do some product development before launching my business.

So can anyone kindly visit my website at asiansnackie dot com and let me know (1) whether you like some of the basket and (2) why (Price, not attractive ... etc). I don't have too many products to sell at the moment and all of them can be found on the home page.

Again, any help is appreciated

PS: the website is not completely finished yet, so no feedback on the website, just the products.