Don Rickert Design

Background: Strategic Businesss Marketing On-line

We are no longer seeking consulting engagements in this area.

A number of years ago a book, The Attention Economy, was published. It described a coming time when the coin of the realm would be getting noticed. For a business, you have to be noticed by a whole lot of people who love what you are selling in order to make money.

Our first experience in opening an online store several years ago is familiar to any first-timer in the online business arena...NO VISITORS. With the experience of opening several of our own online stores (and lots of research), as well as numerous business websites and blogs (our sites are usually a combination of website and blog...there are reasons for this) behind us, we have become accidental experts in the fine art of getting noticed on the web.

Getting noticed translates to lots of visits to your sites. If you have the right product or products, visits translate to business, provided you build your site to make it easy for people to do business with you. It should be noted that determining the right product or products is difficult in a Recession...but there is a big difference between difficult and impossible.

People have asked us what we do to generate the high levels of traffic to our business sites and online stores, which we have been able to do. In good times, these high traffic levels translate to lots of sales for the kind of products we sell online (high-end consulting services and expensive musical instruments and accessories). We have sold about 100 specialty violins designed by our studio over a two-year period, and that entire period has been a Recession in the luxury goods market. The normal annual output for a small lutherie (violin-making workshop) is in the low 20s. In other words, our output has been several hundred % greater than the norm.

In addition to our musical instrument endeavors, we have also obtained several lucrative design consulting contracts during the same period. Selling of design consulting is far different (and more dependent on personal contacts and reputation) than sale of tangible goods; therefore, Strategic Business Marketing On-Line focuses more on tangible goods and what we call essential services, such as catering, plumbing, and so forth.

Details on Don Rickert Design In-House Product Development

In addition to work for clients, we invent many new Don Rickert Design^(tm) products in-house, being very careful to avoid conflicts of interest with our work for clients.

Some of our in-house New Product Development is self-funded and some involves joint ventures and limited external funding. We tend to avoid external funding, as primary ownership of our inventions is key to our business plan.

It is no secret that Don Rickert Design has unique expertise in the design, manufacture and marketing of innovative musical instruments, primarily bowed instruments (acoustic and electric violins and synthesizers with a violin-like interface). In fact, Dr. Don Rickert is internationally known in the field of musical instrument invention and innovation.

Some might find this musical instrument angle surprising. It is no different, however, than Cox Enterprises owning the world's largest used automobile buying and re-selling (to dealers) enterprise, Manheim Auctions. Nor is it different from Clabber Girl, a brand of baking powder, baking soda and corn starch, which also owns and operates the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indy Racing League.

Would you really want a product development firm that does not invent, manufacture (through a complex network of boutique CNC, laser-cutting, carbon fiber fabrication and violin-making workshops in the U.S.) and market its own products helping you in your own product development efforts?

A key business partner in our musical instrument arena has been Fiddarci Lutherie (lutherie is the proper name for a stringed instrument making workshop), located in Helena, AL. Another critical business partner has been International Violin Company, which serves as a broker to specialty workshops in Germany, Eastern Europe and Hong Kong for the manufacture of some of the parts, such as the distinctive necks used for Don Rickert-designed violins.

The current main website/blog for Don Rickert Design musical instruments is www.AdventurousMuse.com. There are several online retail outlets where both Don Rickert Design, as well as instruments and accessories from other makers are sold. The primary online store is www.AdventurousMuseStore.com; however, we also own storefronts on Amazon.com and Etsy.com.

Other In-House Product Development Areas:

In addition to the musical instrument development described above, Don Rickert Design has considerable expertise in rowing craft design and construction. We are "sitting on" three original designs for high-performance boats intended for ocean, bay and rough river rowing until we can get the rest of our business running on a new "troubled times" business plan.

Another reason we are waiting is that high-performance rowing craft are "luxury" items and launching them now (no pun intended) would not be prudent, even if investment resources were available, which they are not.

Process

Since every consulting engagement is different, and our clients have their own product development processes, there is no single process. That being said, when developing our own products we do follow a specific NPD process, summarized on the diagram below. The diagram is a good way to organize communication of all of the things we can do FOR YOU. Click on the diagram for more...

Introducing Strategic Business Marketing On-Line

We no longer offer this service.

The website thumbnail you might have clicked on to get here is an image of the current project for Strategic Business Marketing On-Line: Small Business Specialists, a website designed and launched for the sole purpose of selling s single home without the assistance of a Real Estate Agent.

Click on the thumbnail image on the left for a full size view of a screen capture of the home page. You can look at the actual live website as well.

Our new line of business, Strategic Business Marketing On-Line, is dedicated to:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Traffic generation
• USEFUL analytics

...for your business web site.

A number of years ago a book, The Attention Economy, was published. It described a coming time when the coin of the realm would be getting noticed. That time is NOW! For a business, you have to be noticed by a whole lot of people who love what you are selling in order to make money. Click here for some background details on this topic and more of our story.

Colleagues have asked us what we do to generate very high levels of traffic to our business sites and online stores. Helping other small businesses with websites to increase their SEO (i.e. get listed on page 1 of Google searches), generate lots of visitors to their sites and constantly improving visibility by proper use of the right web traffic analysis tools is the mission of Strategic Business Marketing On-Line. We can also help business that do not have a website to have a great one!

Click here for a list and description of our Strategic Business Marketing On-Line services, as well as some examples of achieving astounding web visibility in very short periods of time.

In-House Self-Funded and Investor-Funded Product Development

It is no secret that Don Rickert Design has unique expertise in the design, manufacturer and marketing of innovative musical instruments. It is indeed true that, in addition to our work for clients, we invent many new Don Rickert Design(tm) products in-house, being very careful to avoid conflicts of interest with our work for clients.

You might find our musical instrument ventures surprising. To read more about this and other in-house product development, click here.

Would you really want a product development firm that does not invent, manufacture and market its own products helping you with any aspect of your own product development efforts?