In this #AskEvan episode, Evan Carmichael reviews a submission for the Easy Slide Pet Bandana, a collar‑integrated bandana that makes it easy for dogs and cats to wear. He advises the creator to build the business around paying customers rather than chasing the difficult consumer market. The core recommendation is to target B2B partners—companies already selling to pet owners—by pitching co‑branded designs, offering logo placement, or collaborating with local artists. Evan suggests securing upfront orders from these partners to generate revenue and validate the product before attempting consumer‑focused social‑media campaigns, which he warns can be costly and low‑yield. He concludes with a call for likes, comments, and future product review requests.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of #AskEvan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my Twitter followers, Lady Abigail, who wrote in about a new product that she created called an Easy Slide Pet Bandana invention and wanted for me to let her know what I think. So she included the YouTube video that I loaded up here. And so just watching this, basically what it does is it allows a collar for your pet, if you have a cat or dog, to slide through the bandana, so it makes it easy for pets to wear. So I have a dog. I've had dogs my whole life, from big dogs like German Shepherds, and right now we have a tiny dog, which is a Maltese. And, you know, we've never used bandanas, but there are a lot of people who do like the bandana concept. I think for you, the biggest thing to help you launch this is try to build around the customer. And this is the same for any new business. It can be really hard to sell new products, right? And especially selling to the consumer market can be super tough. So the best thing you can do is try to build your product around a paying customer who has a problem and sees this as a potential opportunity to help them out. Ideally, you can go after a business customer. So I try to find businesses who also target the dog market and cat market and pitch this concept to them and see is there a design that could work for them where they could help promote it and they would buy it. Maybe it's their logo on it or maybe specific designs that you partner up with local artists or whatever it is. I try to partner up with brands who are already selling to your market. They already have an established base and try to get them to buy these things in quantities. So approach them with the idea, let them know what the concept is all about, see what they think about it, see if they have any logos or design or artwork that they have in mind, and see if you can line up a deal through that. You can go after the consumer market. It's a tough slog. You could do it through social media and do more of these videos, show people using it, try to make them some fun videos, and hopefully that will help generate some attention. But it can be really, really tough selling to consumer market with a new product. and you can spend a lot of money creating all sorts of different designs that never fly off the shelf. So a better strategy, in my view at least, would be to go out and try to make those partnerships with bigger companies who are again selling to your market. Try to find ways to work with them, let them pick the design, get an order up front, and, uh, you know, they can help, help you build your business. And then later on, if you want, you can go after the consumer market with some fun designs, it's kind of brand building and gets you out there, but you have money coming in from your customer. So find a big customer who you can build your business around and you're a lot, a lot closer to having your business become successful. So hopefully that helped. It's a cool little invention. For those of you watching the video, if you liked it, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys, and I always appreciate seeing those come in. It makes my day, so thank you. And if you have a comment about this product, or if you want me to review one of your products, or you have another question, feel free to leave it in the comment section below, and I'll definitely check it out. And we'll see you on the next episode.
