将产品进入零售商的4种方法
July marks Independent Retailer month!Here,Win实验室has collaborated with four savvy entrepreneurs to get their advice ongetting product ready for retail,partnering with retailers,helping those partners sell your products， 和opening up your own shop。以下帖子是由Katharinbeplay官网体育e Requa MBA ’17创建的，For Nowand aBabson WIN Lab accelerator教练。
Katharine ReQua and Kaity Cimo are the co-founders ofFor Now– a retail incubator where digital-first brands come together to test retail in Boston’s Seaport and Nantucket. For brands, the storefront is a much needed space in between e-commerce and traditional wholesale. It’s a place where their product can be seen and felt and customer insight can be attained; a place where they can grow / thrive and engage with the community at large without needing to invest a lot of time, resources and capital. For Now started as a marketing and operations consulting businesses specializing in retail and e-commerce consumer brands. They opened a co-retail space because they saw how many brands were wrestling to get their product physically in front of their audience and knew that brick and mortar is the solution for many brands.
Finding the right retailer(s) can sometimes feel like dating: exciting, exhausting, misleading but every now and then totally worth the wait. And frankly, your retailers become some of the most critical partners – don’t rush the process, be strategic, and never settle.
Retailing has been and continues to evolve – while it’s still competitive, many retailers are constantly looking for emerging / new brands to liven their shelves. Venturing into wholesale is a great way to:
- Connect with your customer – get them touching and trying on your product
- Penetrate new markets
- Grow revenue
- Increase marketing/visibility
- Build partnerships
- Test a new sales channel
Here are four tips on getting into your wish-list retail partners:
1) Identify your top partners.
Not all retailers are created equal so once you set your partner outreach into motion, make sure you’ve done your research first. Start with targeting 5 to 10 of your top tier prospects – stores that you will proudly list as retail partners – and consider staying local in the beginning so that’s it’s physically easier for you to manage the relationship andget them your products。在您的宣传中，您可以将这些零售商作为优先事项的重点和方法，他们将既注意又欣赏。然后，将其放置在这些位置将“燃烧起火”以在将来建立批发业务。
2) Be strategic, and thoughtful, about your offer.
As you get ready to reach out, make sure that you determine the best channel for connection. If there’s an opportunity to get introduced to them, go for it. If not, do some research and consider whether email, social channels, or the phone will be your best bet to get a response.
确定最佳通信渠道后，请考虑提供分层要约，以允许您和潜在的零售商测试水域。这将使你们俩都可以查看合作伙伴关系是否有益。选项包括：
- Samples:Give the stores samples of your productsso that staff and customers have a chance to experience them.
- Trunk show / event: Offer to help, or take the lead, on creating an in-store event by bringing in like-minded partners and foot traffic to their store. A good way to keep costs down is by recruiting friends and supporters who may live in the area to help execute.
- Short-term consignment：提议将您的产品留在商店一周，以查看他们的客户购买的东西以及他们不买的东西。
- Longer term consignment: If you can part with your inventory for a longer period of time, consider a consignment deal where retailers can hold onto your product for more than a week. From there you can see what sells and what stays on the shelves.
- Create an on-location marketing strategy，基于特定的商店 +机会，让他们知道您通过与他们建立合作伙伴关系的想法，并认真考虑将访问到他们所在的位置。
3) Develop an email and content strategy.
让零售商打开您的电子邮件与让客户这样做并不差不多。这两个目标都希望有理由打开您的信息，并根据竞争优先级这样做。为了确保您成功地达到顶级零售商，请考虑以下内容：
- 电子邮件级联的基于松散的模板where you can craft different responses whether they open the email or not and different responses based on whether they respond or not. I would recommendYesware– the service is inexpensive and allows you to see when people open emails.
- Be sure totailor each emailto the specific retailer/buyer.
- Test your subject linesto grab their attention. One example is “Featured in (insert publicity/media outlet here).
- Test the content you lead with。通信产品驱动或所有者/创始人故事是由驱动的吗？
- Include noteworthy sales statslike mentioning that you’ve sold “x units to date”.
- Send a teaser lookbookwith a request to follow-up with the full lookbook.
4）创建一本Lookbook。
Make sure you have a visual representation of what your brand looks like so retailers get a sense of whether your products will line up with what they want (and can easily sell). As a part of this exercise, do the following:
- Create a teaser version of the lookbook,应该约1 - 2页吗in length – enough to entice them.
- Host your lookbook在Google文档上，使其易于访问。并确保将其格式化以进行Web浏览以正确传达您的颜色。
- Highlight any press+ add customer voice / testimonials when possible.
- Showcase your proof of concept：任何零售商都想知道您的产品可销售。如果您可以向他们展示您在其他零售商，市场，树干表演，在线上都取得了成功。他们更有可能对您的产品感兴趣。
Before I go, here are a few final thoughts:
- 仅仅因为零售商下订单并不意味着您的产品将出售。您必须帮助您的合作伙伴移动您的产品。为此，请确保您提出要进行采样 /演示，并宣布您在新商店中有空 - 这取决于您的促进！（（See this post on how to help your retailer partners sell。) You should also list your retailers on your website.
- 要求您的零售商反馈。这将为您提供可以将其纳入产品中的信息，并让您的合作伙伴知道您关心确保每个人都成功。
- Let them be your eyes and ears – What’s selling? What’s not? What are people saying? Getting this information will also allow you to incorporate feedback and continue to build a better product.
Want to learn more aboutFor Now？访问他们的网站或在波士顿去拜访他们Seaport: 68 Seaport Blvd, Boston, MA and in Nantucket during the summer of 2019.