• Posted by belassi on March 22, 2016 at 4:58 pm

    I’m delighted to announce that we have been granted the BRAND NAME:

    PEAR AND PEACH.
    We’re now looking for venture capital to launch our line in Mexico. Our intention is to build a brand that competes with Lush.
    Existing market-tested product line includes hand, body, face creams, antiaging creams and gels, antiacne gel, enzyme facial, shampoos and conditioners, cold process soap.
    beautynerd replied 7 years, 11 months ago 8 Members · 18 Replies
  • 18 Replies
  • PharmaSpain

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 5:26 pm

    Congratulations Belassi!!! Hoping to see your website and products. I am happy for you after your last name history ;)

  • OldPerry

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 5:41 pm

    Great news!  Keep us posted on how it goes.

  • beautynerd

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 7:05 pm

    Congratulations @Belassi. Mexico seems like a great playground for Lush-esque concept. Now to tame the marketing beast.

  • belassi

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 7:39 pm

    I’m just glad they (Lush) haven’t arrived yet!

  • ozgirl

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 8:56 pm

    Congratulations!

  • belassi

    Member
    March 22, 2016 at 10:02 pm

    My next steps will be to choose the look we want (in broad terms) eg clinical, natural, homely, etc etc and provide our brand designer, who is in Honduras, with three existing examples of similar “look”. That’s for the logo and colour scheme.

    Then we’ll ask our printer to print a new label set for all the existing products.
    I already have the domain but I still have to find a host, and get the Web site designed. I’ll use a local design house for that, we have some of that talent in-house.
    I’ll also have to make the social media sites active and begin marketing activities.
    And build the Amazon store.
    Quite a lot to do and we haven’t even begun retail yet.
  • PharmaSpain

    Member
    March 23, 2016 at 8:36 am

    @Belassi. Because of personal reasons I had to leave temporary the pharma field to reconstruct almost from scratch a familiar business. In this time I have learned a lot about ecommerce platforms, SEO tactics and marketing (I consider that my level is higher than some “professionals”). 

    My particular advice to you ald all new entrepreneurs is that SEO will be specially important to you. But at the same time it is a really dangerous field if you trust in someone who just called him “SEO expert” without having the personal knowledge to evaluate it yourself. It can literally ruin your online presence. 

    If you need some advice or punctual help, just write me by private ;) (to avoid non pure-cosmetics topics in the forum) Or if @Perry prefer it, maybe in “off-topic”.

    It is a pity that you are not in Europe as I am interested to co-create/invest in cosmetic business (but a near location from me is required)
  • ashish

    Member
    March 23, 2016 at 9:27 am

    Congratulations Sir!!!!!!

  • Chirag

    Member
    March 23, 2016 at 10:25 am

    Congrats belassi Sir..

  • belassi

    Member
    April 1, 2016 at 9:32 pm

    Those of you interested in seeing a startup at work might like to try my new Web site, pearandpeach.com 

    Please note, it is under construction, so you’ll see that some parts are incomplete and there are surplus items that I’ll remove later.
    Building an effective site complete with ecommerce is child’s play using a modern content management system, compared with the bad old days of static html and Dreamweaver. I have only been working on this about ten hours or so and it works well, with correct contact info, query form, Google map, and so on. I’m using a CMS called Concrete5.
  • PharmaSpain

    Member
    April 5, 2016 at 3:51 pm

    @Belassi, I just came to my mind: If you want to “take the place” of lush in mexico and they did not arrived yet, there should be a lot of mexicans searching in google “lush mexico”. Think about get a very good position for these terms in google SERP and you could get a very effective marketing effect.


    About Concrete5 I do not have experience with such platform, but you should consider to evaluate WordPress or Prestashop platforms too (magento is often for bigger companies). Why? those two have a huge community that gives support, much more professional are able to work in them, they evolve incredible faster because of millions of clients and you can have more addons that you can imagine. Just consider it now that you are still starting ;)

     
  • belassi

    Member
    April 5, 2016 at 4:24 pm

    Thanks! I did consider WordPress but it is far more complicated and difficult, and there are too many bad apps because there’s no peer review process. Prestashop requires a monthly payment, I already have my own host.

    Concrete5 has proved very easy to learn and has everything I need. At the moment I am stuck at critical path item “design the logo” and then we have to redo all the label designs, do the product photos, and then I will create product pages for them.
    When I think of the way I used to create sites using Dreamweaver and editing CSS directly … it makes me feel ill! And those sites weren’t responsive to mobile either. My new site is, it works great on the phones.
  • Mike_M

    Member
    April 5, 2016 at 5:54 pm

    haha not all that long ago I was taught dreamweaver in school, what a headache even for the most simplistic button click platform.

  • PharmaSpain

    Member
    April 6, 2016 at 11:47 am

    Yes, now you have an important job. About prestashop, it has not montly payment, it is totally free (only premium addons need to be purchase). Maybe you rode about prestashop cloud that is a new service (and i do not recommend it as it is less flexible) that is a suscription service.

  • Anonymous

    Guest
    May 22, 2016 at 4:31 am

    Hi Belassi, I am new to this site and I know this thread is a bit old but was curious to check out your new site since you mentioned Lush. More than that I was curious about the CMS you mentioned and was interested to hear that you found wordpress too complicated. Looking briefly at Concrete5 I was curious to know beyond their backend structure do you have full access to the backend via FTP to edit their files?

  • belassi

    Member
    May 22, 2016 at 1:55 pm

    Yes, C5 provides me with complete access. Actually I don’t bother to use FTP, C5 comes complete with up/download file access. I just open the file manager and drag ‘n drop. I am waiting on the graphic designer at the moment, we are changing all labelling, corporate design, packaging, the lot!

  • belassi

    Member
    May 22, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    By the way if anyone is interested in the economics etc of running a retail operation, I am working on the business plan for our first retail store and looking to exchange ideas with anyone interested. While I say that we’re like Lush, we’re not really. After reading right through their catalogue, they have very few “core” products and an awful lot of what I regard as fripperies. I mean, refreshing foot powder? Bath bombs? Not mainstream products in my playbook.

  • beautynerd

    Member
    May 23, 2016 at 8:06 pm

    @Belassi… agreed on the fluff but the dry shampoo and ‘buffy’ (lotion bar w/physical exfoliants meant for shower use) are worth a try

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