Make What You'd Buy. That's the Whole Business Plan.

Small business advice nobody tells you: make what you would buy.

I think we've overcomplicated how to choose what a business should do. Trends. Niches. Market research. Funnels. Customer personas with made-up names. It's a lot. And most of it is a clever way of avoiding the one question that matters.

Would you spend your own money on it?

How to decide what to sell (the short version)

For me it all comes down to one thing. Make what you like. Make what you think is cool. Make the thing you'd spend your own money on.

That sounds too simple to be advice. But watch what happens when you actually do it.

If you love the thing, you'll talk about it properly. Not in marketing voice. In your own voice, at the market, in the pub, to the poor soul sitting next to you on the bus. You can't fake that, and you don't have to.

If you love the thing, you'll stick with it on the hard days. And there are hard days. There are days you feel rotten and you're still in the studio, because nobody else is going to make the stuff. A product you picked off a trends list does not get you out of bed for that.

And people can tell. Buyers have a nose for it. They know when the person behind the table actually wears the thing, and when they're just shifting stock.

How Forma started: a rope I didn't want to bin

That's how Forma started. A retired climbing rope I didn't want to see go in the bin.

Climbing ropes retire after 5 to 10 years even if they look fine. The core wears out where you can't see it. So every year a pile of perfectly good-looking rope goes in the skip. I had one, I liked it, and I wanted a belt out of it. Not a product. A belt. For me.

I made one. It was rough. I wore it anyway, and people asked about it. That's the whole origin story. There was no market research. There was a thing I'd have bought if it existed, so I made it exist.

Everything since has passed the same test. The recycled climbing rope belt is the thing I wear every day. The rope bracelet is the thing I'd hand a mate. The climbing rope coasters sit on my own table. The can holder was me wanting a cold can and a dry hand at the crag. None of it started as "what's trending in sustainable accessories".

And it turns out other people wanted them too. In January alone we saved over 5 km of retired rope from landfill and turned it into stuff folk actually use.

The honest bit

Make what you'd buy does not mean it will sell. It means you'll find out properly. You still need to get the packaging right, hold the stock and build the boring bits. All of that comes after. But skip this step and none of the rest matters, because you'll be pushing a thing you don't believe in up a hill.

So here's the test I run before anything new gets made in this workshop. Would I spend my own money on it? Would I use it without being asked? Would I be a wee bit gutted if someone else made it first? Three yeses and it goes on the bench. Anything less and it stays a doodle.

Working out how to decide what to sell is not a spreadsheet job. It's a mirror job. Make what you would buy, then go and find the other people like you.

What would you buy if it existed? Tell me. Comment on the reel, send me a message, or stop me at a market. If it's a good one, it might end up on the bench.

Stay classy and remember,
Make Waste Useful.

George