Getting Your Products Into Retail Stores

Integrating your products into retail stores is an excellent way to expand and monetize your business while expanding geographically.

Retailers that offer both commodity- and niche-type products have greater chances of succeeding as they transition their business models.

Commoditized products, like toilet paper or toothpaste, are staple items; while niche items include things such as sports team phone cases or handmade jewelry boxes.

How to Get Your Products in Stores

Entering retail stores is a major milestone for any company, offering large wholesale orders and expanding into locations they hadn’t anticipated before. But this can also be difficult and complicated process that may need expert guidance to navigate successfully.

When pitching their product to stores, companies need to be able to tell store owners what makes their product different from everything they already sell. That differentiation can make or break whether a store accepts your offering. Mike De Los Santos of Mike D’s BBQ sauce line says his main differentiator is its mix of tomato- and vinegar-based sauces in ways that cannot be found elsewhere on the market.

Pitch in person whenever possible; come prepared! Store owners and decision-makers may ask you questions, so ensure you bring all the pertinent info if they do ask, such as competitor prices and pricing lists, customer feedback forms, sales stats for products sold by your business and any other necessary pieces of data.

Mike D’s recommends conducting extensive research on the store you wish to pitch your product or service. Researching what other products they carry and their target demographic will enable you to tailor your pitch and show that you’re an ideal match. Visiting the store yourself would also be useful, so that you can better visualize where your product would fit into their offerings.

How to Sell Online

Selling online is an effective way to reach more people and expand a business with little involvement from you. Selling can be run either full time, as a side hustle while keeping a full time job or as part of an affiliate network – any method works! Once your product and target audience have been determined, market research, competitor analysis and business plans should follow before selecting an ecommerce platform on which to sell them.

How to Sell Your Products to Retailers

Acquiring product placement at stores requires time and effort, but is worth the hard work – as it increases sales by bringing new customers into your brand, reaching further than you could on your own.

Sell directly to retailers can reduce your workload as store owners will sell the products directly to their customers – this allows you to focus more on expanding your business by creating more products or marketing efforts that attract more potential customers, and often costs much less than opening retail locations of your own.

When approaching retailers, it’s crucial that your products stand out from those already carried and meet an unfulfilled market need. Create a sell sheet detailing product details, pricing information, order forms and customer testimonials as this will help convince retailers that carrying your product would be worthwhile.

Getting Started

Doing business in retail stores takes hard work and persistence. You must create a product sell sheet, research the stores you intend on approaching, provide various payment options such as credit cards, PayPal, Stripe or Afterpay payments and offer flexible shipping logistics as well as marketing/sales strategies if you hope to succeed in getting them into stores. But if you’re ready to put in the effort it could be an invaluable way to expand your business!

Selling to stores can reduce overhead expenses by eliminating individual product shipping expenses, giving you more time and energy to focus on other aspects of your business such as lead generation or expanding customer bases.