We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nikolai Given. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nikolai below.
Nikolai, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
My brand/store makes products as cheap as possible, We only receive about $0.05/ per product. We also do custom orders, so we bring your ideas to life. We are trying to give back in that aspect, instead of endless searching for a specific product and finding it just isn’t in your size.
We also try our best to make sure we have sizes all the way up to 5XL for every product.
We are also very open to criticism and can make a product specialty tailors to your desires/needs.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started the business on my own one day to try and earn a mostly passive income as I don’t qualify for child care and my partner works 4/7 days of the week and everywhere within driving distance isn’t willing to work with me on that type of schedule. The “Meme Clothing” line originally started as a joke but one of the products we launched in that section got us our first order and we were baffled but decided to run with it so now we’ve got about 20 products in that section and still growing.
We also only ever use unisex clothing sizes as we’re aiming towards an all inclusive brand. We want everyone regardless of gender identity, sex assigned at birth, and sexual orientation to feel seen, heard, & dare I say it understood.
I myself am a trans man who was born intersex and I’m exceptionally proud of the “he/she/it/yee/yee” products. They make me chuckle and make people question before assuming pronouns.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Something I cannot say enough is using hashtags, you’d be surprised just how much using a hashtag or two on each marketing post increases your chances of getting noticed. More specifically I would make screenshot posts or speaking videos with relevant stickers and hashtags for each new product I wanted to showcase.
I also posted the link to the shop in the comments of each post or video.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
Showing or explaining what clientele the product is made for or who and how it is relatable to. Including myself and those I know in person.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/OGNGFoxProductions
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nredfox2002?igsh=MXRkdnF6ZnRwZTBkdg%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/nikolai.given?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikolai-given-b97a3b239?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJG58m8qE5789AOa9HRldTg