Cameesa - The Blog

Once again, another brilliant quotation by Joel Spolsky from the book Founders At Work.

Livingston : Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently [in your startup]?

Joel Spolsky : [All of those coupon, 50 cents off, 25% off, 2-day sale] schemes were all marginally good marketing ideas. Unfortunately we spent a lot of time chasing them. The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product. Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things–although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them–was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it. If we had taken all the effort we put into these crazy schemes and put it into moving our software development schedule ahead by the equivalent amount, it would have paid off much more. That was probably the biggest mistake we made.

Does this advice pertain to all types of products? Well, Joel currently sells FogBugz software for $200 per license. If coupons are not recommended for $200 software should they be used at Cameesa? Cameesa is a clothing company that sells each product for approximately $20.00 doll-hairs.

I do believe that people will enjoy getting a price-break on their t-shirt. I don’t believe that a $2-off coupon will make or break a sale. People that are returning customers and truly enjoy a design will pay $20 for it.

This brings us to the next question, which coupon-methods/tricks do you chase and which ones do you avoid? How do you determine this? Is it experience and a learned-skill? Or do you just avoid ALL OF THEM unless proved otherwise?

If we were to take Joel’s advice this would mean that we would constantly improve our product and wouldn’t worry about giving people $2.00-off for every shirt on the third Thursday of June.

Let’s think this one out loud.

How many times do you actually go to a website because they are having a sale? Sometimes. How many times do you go to a site because you like their product? Probably often. How many times do you stop halfway through a t-shirt purchase and say, “i’ll wait until this shirt goes on sale?” Probably not often. I think it boils down to the following : “if you have a killer product, you won’t need to put it on sale, and you won’t need to spend time on schemes, and coupons.”

The next question is : How do you get your co-founders to agree to the “no coupons, just a killer product” motto?

I see it now : “Cameesa. No Coupons. Just a killer product. “