How To Get Your Products Into Stores #AskChristyWright

hey everyone and welcome to business boutique today we are sharing with you another exclusive video training lesson from our business boutique Academy today's lesson is answering a question from one of our existing Academy members Katie Katie owns the wearable wallet and she was asking how to get her products into stores this is a really common question maybe you have a product based business and you want to know how to get those products into retail well today's Academy training lesson answers that question check it out hey everyone and welcome back I'm so excited about this lesson

because I am actually teaching you about a topic that you asked about now as many of you know we do a coaching session every single month but of course because there are a lot of questions I don't always get to every single one but some of those questions are really really good and some of those questions many of you can benefit from because many of you have the same exact question so here's what I'm going to start doing I'm going to start answering some of those very good questions in our lessons and I have one

this week from ktw Katie's business is the wearable wallet and Katie asks how do I get my products into stores now any of you that have a product-based business or want a product based business you may be wondering how do you do that how do you sell your products into stores into wholesale so that's exactly what we're gonna unpack in this video lesson Katie I love this question now the first thing that I want you to think about and for all of you to think about is I want you to make sure that you actually

want your products in stores now of course I would assume because you're asking this that you do but I want you to think about the implications of that first of all of course you're going to get more exposure you're going to sell more so you'll have more volume and you'll have more validity in your business because you're in a retail store however because when you sell wholesale in two stores it actually cuts your profit significantly because here's why the retailer will get most of your profit they're going to mark up the price that they pay

for your product by 100% so let's say for example that they pay you $20 for your wallet they will sell it for $40 let's look at an example let's say that the retail price of your wallet is $40 stores will sell it at the retail price but they're going to pay wholesale price for it which is usually half of the retail price so they're only going to pay $20 to you for that same wallet now let's say for example that each wallet costs you $15 to produce when you sell the wallet wholesale in two stores

you're making $5 per wallet in profit but when you sell it in retail direct to consumers yourself you're gonna make $25 per wallet if you sell it at the same retail price now because you make so much less per wallet sold it's really smart to create order minimums so when you're working with retailers you want to make sure they have a minimum amount that they have to purchase in order to make it worth it for you you don't have to do this when you're just getting started because you probably want to get your foot the

door but definitely once you have your products into stores and you've built those relationships you're going to want to create a minimum order it's gonna make it worth it for you and your time to create those products ship to the stores and take a huge cut in the profit obviously the only reason that you would take a huge cut in your profit is to have a higher level of volume a good way to ensure that is by creating order minimums now there's a few other things that I want you to think about to consider if

you really want to sell your products into stores you obviously want to think about order minimums but you also want to think about reorder minimums so let's say they order from you for the first time and then they sell out which is awesome when they reorder what's the minimum amount that they have to order in order to make it worth it for you you also want to think about turnaround time so if a business comes to you and says hey I'm gonna need fifty wallets today can you do that do you have 50 well it's

an inventory to deliver to them that day or what if they need it that week or even the next week I don't know how quickly you create your wallets and I don't know how quickly you can fulfill orders as especially bulk orders because again you're not dealing with the same exact volume that you're dealing with direct-to-consumer that you've been used to these businesses are buying in bulk they're buying according to your order minimums so they're gonna learn a lot at one time you need to think about how long it's going to take you to produce

that and how quickly you can turn around those orders you also want to think about payment terms so when do they pay do they pay when they receive the items do they pay within 30 days of receiving the items or maybe they pay upfront in advance you get to decide because it's your business you also want to think about your shipping terms now here's where it can get tricky if you ship an order to a business to sell your product you need to think about who is responsible for that shipment when it's in transit so

when you ship something are you responsible for it until they receive it and open it or are they responsible for it the moment it leaves your hands you get to decide but that could have some implications when it comes to lost packages or damaged packages who's responsible for that which brings me to insurance this may be really important in a product based business but certainly if you're shipping a lot of packages to retailers that expect to get their products in good condition you also want to think about exchanges and returns if they don't sell the

products can they send a Mac and get their money back or if they receive the product and they're damaged in some way what's your return policy what's your exchange policy and how quickly is that turnaround time see all of these things are factors that you need to think about when you're working with another business you're now going from business to consumer business to now business to business and when you're selling wholesale you need to think about how you're going to operate from that technical standpoint now once you know that you do in fact want to

sell your products into stores I want you to make a list of all the stores that you'd like to sell into so who is a good fit for your brand and your business and your specific product line I want you to think of your ideal business now if you've watched the lesson on your ideal customer you know I talked a lot about your target market being identified by your ideal customer so who's the perfect customer that your business exist to serve well--that's business-to-consumer now you're thinking in terms of business-to-business so apply the same concept who

is your ideal business what business or business owner would be the perfect fit for your specific type of product in your brand who would love to have your products on their shelves it would probably be businesses that serve the exact same target market that you do there are going to be businesses out there that serve that same market that would love to have your products in order to serve them and help them those are the businesses I want you to identify and I want you to list out once you've created this list of all the

ideal businesses you're going to take one of two approaches to get your products in those stores there's two different techniques depending on the size of business let's first talk about small businesses so for small businesses or local boutiques you're going to want to take the approach of building a relationship with the store owner or manager or buyer you can bring them coffee you can set up a meeting you can just lurk around and stalk them all the time until they will actually talk to you about this I don't care your approach there's a lot of

ways to build a relationship and just bang their door down and don't take no for an answer you can show up because they're a real person running a real business like you are you can get to know them and serve them send them Christmas cookies send them presents show up again and again and actually get to know them when you build that relationship it gets your foot in the door to talk about how they can sell your products in their stores but I want you to remember something I want you to actually talk about how

your product can help them and their customers remember in this whole conversation and in this relationship the store owner is your ideal customer so they're thinking all day every day what your ideal customer is thinking what's in it for me now we've talked about this before so everything you pitch to them and present them should answer the question they're thinking which is why do I care what's in it for me now I'll tell you the number one thing that store owners care about is serving their customers so everything you talk about should be how your

products can serve their customers how your products can make their customers needs how your product set them as the store owner up is the hero to serve their customers well when you take that approach I promise you the store owners are much more likely to listen now I'll give you a really practical example people reach out to me on social media all the time for me to pitch their books or support their products or share their blog and that type of thing and that's awesome that's great they need more exposure but I'll tell you the

posts that I listen to are those that take the approach of saying how they can serve my audience if someone sends me a tweet and says hey I have a new book I'm so excited please share please share I need views me me me please help me not really interested in that because it's all about them and what I can do for them but if someone takes a different approach that says hey I have a new book that I think would absolutely help women in this specific area of their business and I know you talked

about this and I follow a business boutique and Business Boutique has helped me and I want to come alongside you and serve your audience and I think this book will do that and here's why you know what I listen because the angle is not about what's in it for them the angle is about how they can serve my audience and I don't care about anything more in the world than serving my audience through the business boutique so when someone aligns themselves with me and with my goals of serving my audience I pay attention and you

want to do the exact same thing you want to align yourself with the goals of the store owner which is of course to serve their audience now that's the approach that you want to take first small stores local boutiques small businesses that type of thing for large chains and large corporations you're going to need to go through their process they're probably gonna have an application process and you're gonna have to jump through a few hoops and you're gonna have to go through some red tape in order to get to the right person to be considered

you're also going to need to have more information than you'd need to have with a local boutique they're gonna want to know all about your company they're gonna want to know about your wholesale price your retail price any sizing or color variations and all the details so for example for each product you're going to need a SKU which is a stock keeping unit number now this is unique to the company selling your product you're also probably going to need a UPC which is a universal product code that's unique to the product so a product for

example might have only one UPC but it would have different SKUs depending on how many different stores are selling it now you can get your product into small business stores or large corporations if you're persistent and go about it the right way the thing to remember is that a small business will buy based on a relationship whereas a large corporation will likely buy based on your application but if you get through to a real person at a large company by the way that's great you can build a relationship with them and set yourself apart but

if you don't don't get discouraged just do your homework cover your bases and work through their application system now if I were you I'd start with your local boutiques that specifically seek out unique one-of-a-kind products which by the way Katie you have the wearable wallet is such a great idea and local boutiques would love to sell something like this they love buying handmade because they will be stocking and selling something that people can't get anywhere else it's a great unique advantage that you offer them and then as a result they offer their customers Katie your

product idea is awesome and I can't wait to see how this takes off for you and for any of you that have product based businesses I know that these tips are going to help you take the right approach to get your products into the right stores now the action step for this lesson for all of you is to identify if you want to sell your products into stores and if you do then I want you to make a list of which stores are a good fit for your specific product line and your business [Music] [Applause]

thanks so much for watching and don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel and if you are interested in joining the business boutique Academy to get more lessons just like the one you just watched well guess what we are actually open for enrollment this week only you always spend the rest of the entire year focusing on serving our members but right now you can get in and get your spot in my online training and coaching group if you are interested in joining you can click the link below to find out more information