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At first, Jen Glantz didn't set a price for her bridesmaids on demand service.
- Jen Glantz founded "Bridesmaid for Hire," where couples can hire strangers to show up as bridesmaids.
- When she was first starting out, she hadn't set a price - and said on live TV that she would work with any budget. That was, in her words, a "major fail."
- To set a price, she consulted with customers, looked at what wedding planners were charging, figured out what her hidden costs were, considered clients' income levels, and continues to adjust her pricing.
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Within a week of starting my business, I made one of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make. I found myself on live TV getting interviewed about how I took an ad that I posted on Craigslist (that then went viral), and turned it into a business disrupting the $72 billion wedding industry. The business is called Bridesmaid for Hire and yes, strangers hire us to show up at their wedding and be their maid-of-honor for the day. I've been in business for over five years and have serviced close to 200 clients.
But there I was, on live TV, getting asked for the first time how much I charged for this service. By that point, I had a website built and packages created, but my pricing was a big question mark. I was asking potential customers what their budget was and how much they would pay for this service, one that didn't exist before my company created it. So on TV, I scratched my head, let out a few "ums" and said that we don't have a standard price and work with any budget.
That was a major fail. After the interview, customers reached out asking if they could hire a bridesmaid for $50. It was during that first week in business that I learned I needed to have firm and transparent pricing. The struggle was figuring out how much to charge for a brand new service.
Here are the five things I did to figure out my price points and communicate them to my audience.