Transcript for this Video:

How to Sell Your Baby Products to Retail Chains – Hey everyone. This is Karen Waksman, founder of Retail MBA. Today we’re going to be talking about baby products. So if you have a great baby product that’s great for Buy Buy Baby or any retailer that can conceivably buy your product that has a larger scale to it, anyone who sells baby products, I’d like to talk to you about what you’re up against, what your category is all about, give you some tips and suggestions on how to get started today.

A little background about me again, my name is Karen Waksman, the founder of a company called Retail MBA. I’ve personally sold millions of consumer products to the world’s largest retailers as a manufacturer’s rep, started my career back in early 2000s and over the last 11 years, I’ve taught close to 50,000 consumer product brands across the globe on how to generate revenue with consumer products. Baby products come up a lot, and I’m here to help you think through what it’s like to work with you in regards to baby products and stores and so forth. My ultimate goal is just to help you generate as much money as possible with your brand. And I do this because when I first got started in the business, I dreamed of someone explaining to me what buyers care about, ultimately, what makes them more inclined to buy. And so that’s what I wanted to do as a career. And that’s what I do and help so many people across the globe. And I hope this provides value for you.

So let’s talk about baby products. First of all, it’s a great category. Buyers are hungry for new, interesting innovation. They are looking for that next new thing. I have so many diaper bag product clients who are getting into stores, major retailers and diaper bags are not an easy thing where there’s a lot of them out there. So it’s really about the right story, the right strategy and so forth. That’s just one example. But the ultimate concept here is that they are looking for new, constantly for the next hot new thing. And so it’s a really, really exciting time if you have a baby product.

You’re always going to want to focus on innovation. You don’t want to focus on the functionality of your product, whatever it is, but interesting things about it, the resonating factors for a buyer for baby products is that it’s going to convert. It’s going to make money for them. It’s got something interesting about it. And so when you speak to them, you want to focus on how your product will make them money, what will get them to believe that product will sell once in stores, even if you’ve never sold your product before. I have clients who’ve never sold their product anywhere and have gotten their products into the world’s largest retailers and have done well. And one chain store order can means millions of dollars to your business and your bottom line. So I definitely want to focus on your strategy, the words you use and so forth.

So if you have a product that you know is material, and it’s a common product that everyone’s selling, a lot of bibs and this and that, maybe you can create a new design element, some new color scheme, something hot and trending. Can you get a little bit more creative on that front, on the design elements? Because they are looking for new products, but maybe sometimes it’s just a little tweak to your product. Can you talk to the buyer about the things that make the product stand out, whatever it is? You definitely want to consider that in the baby category. They’ve seen everything. And so now it’s just tweaking an existing product to make it look cooler, better. That’s what inventors do. They look for new products, new innovation, and they try and make it better, cooler, more interesting, maybe put a new design on it, maybe make a better packaging.

A lot of these things matter to the parents out there. You definitely want to make sure that your packaging is aligned as well for stores. They definitely are looking for new, exciting things to pop off store shelves. So spend a little bit more money and time on packaging as well. We have other trainings for packaging. So if you want to learn more about packaging, look at our YouTube channel and/or subscribe to anyone of our free trainings on retailmba.com. We discuss this at length. But for now, just note that for baby products, they’re looking for things that a new mom will buy, because they’re looking for that.

Anyways, the other thing I’ll mention is that everybody reaches out to Buy Buy Baby and certain retailers because it’s a baby specific, but what about all the other retailers? What about the Walmarts, the Targets of the world? What about the department stores of the world? What about the discounters of the world? What about Ross and all the other types of retailers that could conceivably buy the product? What if you can repackage your product to make it a gift product for babies, for parents and so forth? Can you put a baby on the package? Can you find another angle? What can you do to generate revenue with your consumer product brand? Don’t just go after the same retailers that everybody else does, but think about beyond where else can your product fit.

I’ve seen baby products sold at all sorts of crazy retailers. And part of your job is to slow down, go to stores, go online, dig around and see where are the people selling products and where you can, too. So if I was to give you any tips or strategies on how to get started today with baby products, again, we’re just trying to give you some ideas and things to think about for your category. Basically think about new design, redesigning, upping your game in terms of new elements that other people are not doing. What can you do to add an existing product to make it look better, more interesting, more innovative? Again, sometimes it’s just a cooler coloring scheme that somebody else didn’t think of, because again, these buyers are looking for products.

The other thing you’re going to have to deal with is the fact that these could be ingestible, that they’re baby stuff. So you definitely want to make sure the regulations are on that. You might have to deal with more liability insurance because of the fact that you’re dealing with baby products and so forth. You definitely, before you reach out to retailers, you want to create a strategy so that you don’t have to backtrack, recreate things later on. You can make money as quickly as possible.

With that said, if you want to learn how to approach, pitch, sell to retailers, how to prepare for chain store success, you might want to take a look at our webinar that’s coming up. You can go to retailmba.com/free. It’s a free training. And the purpose of it is to give you ideas on why buyers buy, gives me 90 minutes with you, we answer questions and so forth. It’s a powerful training. So go to retailmba.com/free.

Or if you want some support in actually focusing on your existing product and helping you along the way with packaging, pricing, deliverability, words to use, different ideas for strategies and so forth, take a look at what we’re up to at retailmba.com. We have do-it-yourself programs, done for you programs, where we can reach out to retailers on your behalf. We have one day live events. We have intensive master classes, all leading to one thing. We sell a formula on how to generate revenue with physical product stores, online retail outlets, catalog, small retailers, Groupon goods, HSN, QVC. We basically help people make money with consumer products brands.

So also take a look at our success stories. Listen on retailmba.com and keep in touch with us. If you like this, subscribe to this channel, like this post, tell your friends, comment below if you like us. Keep in touch. We’re always creating new content. Karen Waksman. Retail, MBA. Hope this helped you. Thanks so much.