How to Sell to Fred’s & Become a Fred’s Vendor

What you need to know as a Fred’s vendor

Hey everyone, this is Karen Waksman, founder of Retail MBA. Today I’d like to talk about a retailer called Fred’s and how to become a Fred’s vendor. Now the reason I decided to create this particular training is because I create all sorts of videos on retailers because when you’re thinking about who to go after, a lot of times you guys miss all of these major opportunities, right? I mean, there’s so many retailers you don’t even know about because you live in certain areas of the world or you’re not in my business or whatever, and so I like to support you and giving you ideas of ways to make more money with your product. So let’s talk about how to sell to Fred’s.

Why you should be selling to Fred’s

First of all, Fred’s has over 650 locations as of today. I mean, that’s tremendous. This is a massive retailer that a lot of you guys don’t know about. And they sell all sorts of products. I mean, they sell anything from snacks, toys, books, food, houseware products, videos, music, I mean you name it, tell sell everything. So again, another reason to explore that retailer, to see if your product would make sense for their stores. They’re a discount store, so they compete against retailers, national retailers like Dollar General, Family Dollar, and so forth. And so that’s something to consider, so it’s not for high end products or whatever, but you might want to take a look at their site or go to their stores and see whether or not your product makes sense for their stores, because a lot of people miss Fred’s as an opportunity for you to make money.

Tips & strategies on how to sell to Fred’s

So what quick tip and strategy can I give you in regards to Fred’s? Well, they’re owned by Kroger. Kroger grocery store, so they are under the same umbrella. So why does that matter? Well, if for some reason you want to go after Kroger grocery store or some of the other brands under Kroger, and you actually get your product in there, meaning you get a vendor number, what that means is that if you actually do work with any retail chain, they’ll give you a vendor number. 

So it’s like your kind of like your code that they give you if you are a vendor they’ll give you your own specific vendor number and that’s yours and so that’s how they know who you are and all information about you is under this vendor number. Right? So the reason that matters is when a major chain owns several types of brands, they usually share the same vendor number.

If you become a Fred’s vendor it is a tremendous opportunity for your business

So, if you are currently selling to Kroger or you want to sell to Kroger and you’ve got your product in there, and then you want to sell your product to Fred’s, you can actually reach out to Fred’s and let them know that you have a vendor number already because you already got one from the other retail chain. And again, they share vendor numbers across all their brands. And that’s really, really common for retail chains. That’s a major tip right there, right? 

Because again, these chain store buyers are busy, they’re looking at new products every day, sometimes they don’t take on products simply because of the fact that they have to fill out paperwork or they have to be added as a vendor and it takes time and they don’t feel like doing it. 

There are many advantages once you become a Fred’s vendor

But if you reach out to a retailer and you already have a vendor number for their company, you can basically tell them that they get to bypass all of that paperwork and you are much more interesting to them and they might be willing to test out your product a lot faster than if they did if you didn’t have a vendor number already. So, same goes for if you went to Fred’s, you got a vendor number and you started becoming a vendor and so forth, you can go to Kroger and do the same thing and let the Kroger buyers know that you have a vendor number already.