How To Get Your Product Into The Stores
Getting retailers to stock your product is notoriously difficult. The development process is often long. The money that you need to risk is high. And often the terms you end up with aren’t much to write home about.
It can be brutal for smaller players. But, as with most business operations, there’s a process than can improve your chances.
Have A Plan
Before you start out even developing a product, it’s a good idea to have a plan. In that plan, you want to map out all the usual financial metrics that will tell you how many units you’ll have to sell to make a healthy profit.
But you also want to include all those stores that you plan to approach. For many products, it’s necessary to sell a large number of units to break even. So this may influence the type of retailer you approach. If you’re looking to market a new health food product, you might want to plan to pitch to chains of newsagents.
Just make sure that your product complements their current advertising persona. It wouldn’t make sense for you to advertise health food in a fish and chip shop, for example.
Be Direct When Pitching
Getting time with retailers is difficult. Like other resources, their time is finite. They want to know immediately why they should stock your product and how it is priced.
All they care about is whether your product will improve their business’s bottom line and you have to make sure that it does.
Adapt To Their Systems
One common stumbling block in the way of getting a product into the stores is using the right systems. Often smaller companies are prevented from retailing because they haven’t completed a GS1 application.
Fortunately, there are plenty of barcode solutions out there that allow you to quickly and cheaply register. Having a barcode ready to go with your product will make it more attractive. It’s just one less thing for the retailer to have to think about.
Understand The Needs Of The Retailer
It might be the case that your product is amazing for the consumer. But is it amazing for the retailer too? Retailers want products that will sell reliably. If your product is something quite quirky and different, they may be reluctant to take it on.
This is where doing your research can help. Find out whether any of your competitors has stocked their products with other retailers. Then find retailers with similar characteristics. It’s likely that they will look at your product favourably if their competitors offer your competitor’s product.
Don’t Give Up
Too many entrepreneurs think that the only way to success is to land one big contract with a big retailer. However, this is rarely what happens, even for the most successful products.
Rather businesses start off small, using independent local stores to get their product off the ground. Then follows a long, drawn-out process that involves a lot of setbacks and rejection. Often, it’s only after many years and tremendous effort that products find their way into the big retailers. But if you stick it, the rewards are there for the taking.
