How to get your handmade goods into retail shops, gallery shops, and boutiques.

so you'd love to get your handmade goods into retail stores boutiques gallery shops but you're not sure how to go about approaching the stores to get your work in there i'm going to tell you exactly how to do that in today's video i'm going to give you a few simple steps a few do's and if you do not do's and to make sure that you approach them in the right way and improve your chances of getting your work into your dream shops welcome or welcome back my name is jess van den i have been selling

my own handmade jewelry under the ethereal brand since 2008 i predominantly sell online but i have sold wholesale over the years since i started so i've had a lot of dealings with shops over the years now the first thing i want to touch on here is cultural difference so what i'm going to be sharing with you today is from an australian point of view this will probably work pretty well for anyone else in you know western countries but if you're in a different culture things might work differently there and you may have to take that

into account so even in you know what i'm talking about here australia we have a very casual laid-back culture that might be different to say america maybe a slightly more formal culture than we have so you might need to tweak your approach somewhat although i think you know the americans are getting a bit more casual these days as well but just take that into account when it comes to organizing your own personal approach so the first don't don't rock up to a store with samples and expect somebody to spend time with you in australia especially

this would be seen as very rude you don't want to just you know it's basically cold selling to somebody and that's probably not the best approach to take especially in our industry you want to make a personal connection you want to be polite you want to make sure that the person on the other side doesn't feel pressured in any way so if you are in a shop say you you know you're walking around you're in a new location you find a shop or even one that you know already and you really love the work and

you happen to be in the shop what you could do is you could approach the salesperson or whoever it is behind the counter and just say hey absolutely love your your shop give them the reasons you love their shop and then just mention i'm a maker is there somebody i can contact um you know can i get a card for the person who i could contact about potentially getting my stock into this store and you may find that you're talking to the owner and you can continue a conversation from there or you might find it's

just a salesperson and they can give you the contact details of the owner if you're comfortable with that sort of interaction then great because you're not you're not demanding anything at that point in time you're not demanding their time you're just asking them hey is there someone i can i can contact about this and the best thing to do when it comes to contacting a shop is email back in the day it was probably calling but these days especially because you are selling a physical product email is the best thing to do because you can

share some of your work in that email and give the person a chance to get an immediate feel for whether your work is going to be a fit for them or not so generally speaking first step if you're not just you don't just happen to come across a shop and you want to you know ask the person for contact details you're online you are doing your research to look for shops and there's lots of ways you can do this by the way which i do cover in my wholesale know-how course i'll tell you more about

that at the end of the video you're doing your research and you've found some shops you're interested in you want to dig deep you want to make sure that they're a good fit for your product then you want to find the name of the buyer or the owner of the business and their email address and you want to send them a short concise email do not tell them your life story they do not need your entire background they they don't need all that at this point in time all they need is a short email that

does a few things one it uses their name for starters i don't know about you but i have a personal rule that if i get an email that says hello hi hi dear hi there what a if you can't be bothered to even figure out my name i am not going to spend the time to read your email which is probably asking me to give you something so find the person's name and then have a short email that says something about their shop like to show that you understand what their shop is all about what

you like about it who their target market is then mention your product and why you think it would be a good fit for their shop give them a reason explain what is special what's your unique selling proposition what is it about your product that would be a perfect fit for their clientele then for the love of handmade put a direct link to your website i cannot tell you how many people have sent me pictures over the years for my blog or my podcast or whatever and they're like this is my business name blah blah blah

but they don't put a link to their website like it's just put a link to your website make it easy for them don't make them google you and then troll through results to try to find your website my goodness put a direct link to your website and attach a couple of low resolution so not the high resolution ones you would upload to your shop a couple of low resolution photos of your best work or the work you think would fit their shop the best to the email the reason you want to use low res is

so they load quickly and they're not sitting there like waiting for this huge image to load on their screen that might also go really wide and then make it hard to read because they have to scroll so i decided to read the text okay low resolution small images that you know just a couple of them that show off your best work and then in at the end do the pitch invite it say you know i'd love if you think my work would be a great fit for your shop i'd love to hear from you you

can also include some of your pricing here if you want like if you have a wholesale catalog you can attach that although it's probably going to be too big to attach so maybe not at the first email but the website you know if you give them your website they're going to be able to click through to that and get a good sort of sense for the sort of prices that you're putting on your work as well speaking of prices before you think about doing wholesale the number one thing you need to do is ensure your

pricing correctly so that you can still make a profit at wholesale prices i have a video that explains exactly how to break down and work out your pricing correctly i'll put a card to that up here so make sure to check that out if you're unsure because otherwise you are just going to be working yourself into the ground and not actually making any money because when you sell at wholesale prices that is 50 or half of the retail price that you sell direct your customer for okay so it's imperative that you've worked out your pricing

correctly okay back to the story so you've said that you've crafted that email couple of short paragraphs a couple of photos attached an invitation call to action at the end and then wait a couple of weeks say two weeks or so and if they haven't replied to you send them a quick reminder if they haven't replied to that leave it a couple more months because they're obviously not in space that a they're buying at the moment b they have the time or energy to be looking at your stuff see they might not even like it

and again you have sent them a cold pitch email they have no there's no requirement they reply to that okay you're asking them for something i i reply to very few pitch emails that i get because i don't have the time or energy to be doing that especially the ones that aren't appropriate and i get a lot of those especially for my podcast and which is frustrating and i'm like well you haven't done the work to figure out that this person would actually be a good fit for my show you obviously haven't listened to it

so i'm not gonna give you the courtesy of a reply same thing for a shop owner if you haven't done your research your stuff is not actually a good fit and you're just like blasting a whole bunch of shops they don't owe you anything because you haven't done the work up front okay so make sure you've done the work up front and you've crafted each of those emails for that shop specifically not just a blanket cold email that you send out to 20 different shops okay and if they wonder of wonders do you get back

to you well that's a whole nother video but today i just wanted to give you some simple ideas and a simple strategy to use to approach those shops that you are interested in whether they're down the road or across the other side of the planet i've done a few other videos recently i've done one on policies so your you need to have a wholesale policy document or terms and conditions document uh there's also another video where i talk about the difference between wholesale and consignment you can find those on my channel so you can click

through to that after the end of this video and look through those videos that i have there about wholesale that i've done recently and so this month is wholesale month because i'm focusing on uh all things wholesale in my membership community the thrivers circle i'm actually doing a live workshop that is how to land your first wholesale client if you're interested in that you can check that out below thrivercircle.com and you can hopefully join me for that workshop if you're watching this later the workshops all the live workshops i do in the circle are recorded

and uploaded to the resource library and there are 40 plus video workshops about handmade business topics covering across the board all sorts of things that you need to know in order to grow your handmade business faster so you can check that out at thrivercicle.com and this month only may 2022 i'm doing a 20 discount on my comprehensive course wholesale know-how which is a five-week self-study course that will teach you everything in detail you need to know to start and grow a wholesale arm to your handmade business i'm doing a 20 discount for members of the

circle so the 20 discount basically pays for a month's membership in the circle so you get two for the price of one this month if you join up and purchase that course again you can find out more about that below if you have any follow-up questions after this video please do put them in the comments below give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and found it helpful and i am going to again at the end here link to the video on pricing it is that important it really is step one if you're thinking

about selling wholesale you need to make sure your pricing is on point please do go watch that and make sure you're doing it right so that you are making a profit and that means your business will be sustainable in the long run hope you enjoyed this one thanks for watching i'll catch you in the next video bye for now