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Get noticed in your next trade show
I watched Big Idea with Donny Deutch a while back and he had two mompreneurs asking how they could get noticed and present their product in the upcoming trade show, without being too pushy, and how they would get people to stop at their trade show booths. Here are some of my ideas, which many of them are the same as in the show. Keep reading and you will also find an excellent real life example how one company made me really want to see them in a trade show.
1. Connect before you go. Contact prospective retailers, introduce your product, and let them know where and when they can see your line. Ask if they’d like to make an appointment at the trade show. I can not say this too many times - the personal connections make all the difference in business, start building them before the trade show.
2. If they don’t get back to you, it is OK to contact again before the trade show, and ask if they are interested in making an appointment, while announcing a new product release, other company news, or maybe a celebrity sighting (with your product) or recent media attention - something saying “others love our products, you might too” - without actually saying it.
3. Your trade show booth needs to grab attention, be inviting and be very easy for the buyers to get to know your product. Biggest fail: not enough lighting.
4. Make ordering super easy, with easy to read order sheets available. It’s always good to have these tucked inside your brochure, even for those who just get the brochure without stopping and really talking to you at the show.
5. Gimmicks are always good, but be careful not to go overboard, and that your prospective
customers will see your product, and are not just overpowered with your gimmick. An example of an excellent gimmick follows below.
6. Follow-up! There are no guarantees the buyers will make the order, until, well, they make the order. Great communication and follow up will triple your chances of getting those orders in.
Treating your retailers right is the key to successful relationship with them. Your retailers are always part of your team, like learnt from the case study.
I recently got two emails from Scandinavia Child inviting me to visit them at the trade show booth in a trade show I unfortunately didn’t have chance to go. But Scandinavian Child made me feel welcome to visit their booth, interested in their product and appreciate them as a company.
First email I got from them was about two weeks before the trade show, saying something like “people who visit our trade show booth often say how great our products are, how they like the design, but the thing we hear most is “my feet hurt from walking” and we wanted to do something about it” and the email continued explaining that they will be gicing away Dr Scholls massaging gel shoe inserts to easy everyone’s pain. Brilliant! Gimmick, yes, but did it make me want to visit their booth? Yes!
A week later, another email arrived, saying something like “Come by Booth 6845 to see our finalists in the JPMA Innovation Awards competition” and introducing their two new products, which also were finalists in the JPMA Innovation Awards competition. This time it was offering a validation why their products were great by giving an example that other people think they are great too, without actually saying “our products are the best”, which of course everyone wants to say.
Like Scandinavian Child - think what you can do for your buyers, and then think after that what they can do for you.
Case Study - Carol’s Cuties
Is the more retailers you have the better? Not necessary as our case study shows. Read first more about the four Ps in marketing mix, and especially how “Place” should be one of important pieces of your marketing strategy. Told by a girl to a girl, and trying to avoid all the difficult words so even small biz owners with no business education can follow.
CASE STUDY CAROL’S CUTIES - MORE RETAILERS ISN’T ALWAYS THE SOLUTION
I have a great example of a designer who makes handmade products and has almost 200 retailers but her company is not using the retailers as a marketing tool as effectively as they could. In fact the designer told me, that she feels she is competing with her retailers and wishes she could get all the sales from her own onlinestore. Let’s call her company “Carol’s Cuties”, but so you will know - this is not the real name of the company, nor her name is Carol. Carol’s Cuties is a 6 year old company. And with almost 200 retailers Carol’s Cuties is still struggling, and sounds like having 200 retailers might actually be worse than having 50 good ones.
What did Carol do right?
Carol got her products to almost 200 stores, that’s amazing isn’t it?! She wanted to raise the awareness of Carol’s Cuties so she did exactly what I would suggest her to do - got her products in many stores, even if it meant lowering the price or doing drop-shipping for online stores. The retailers were her marketing force, they told their customers of her handmade product. Carol’s Cuties reached their target market very effectively, and probably in a very short period of time. You might even call it a marketing miracle, but just don’t do it yet.
What did Carol do wrong?
She didn’t choose retailers who share the message she is trying to voice out with her product. The product is sold in variety of stores, having totally mixed and opposite messages. So even though she got her product known and out there - this by selling for anyone who would buy- didn’t actually work as a brand builder. And her price was too low, now she is selling too many products on too low wholesale price and her business is struggling.
HANDLING 200 STORES
Carol’s Cuties is a handmade product Carol still makes herself. Yes, it is possible even with 200 retailers. Because over half of those retailers are online retailers and Carol just drop-ships for many of them. Some of the retailers sell only 5-10 Carol’s Cuties a year, so she can still handle tens of drop-shipping accounts herself. And can you believe this, but Carol is one superwoman, she also handles all of her retailers herself. Selling, staying in contact etc. with her close to 200 retailers! As amazing as it sounds, but also sounds like she is wasting a lot of time. While “brand building” is important and I’d keep the high profile stores that goes with my product’s brand, even with 10 product sales a year, sounds like she was collecting retailers just for the sake of it. And she should just drop some of them and focus on getting sales from the good ones.
MESSAGE 200 STORES SENDS OUT
You know when you graduate from school and you don’t have a lot of experience, you add things in your resume to make it look better; like you were the team captain in a sports team or won spelling bee several times. But someday you will have some real work experience, and you won’t show these in your resume anymore.
(And to be honest, doesn’t it become a bit embarrassing at some point to keep showing your hobbies from high school in your resume? Especially if now you are 200 pound “ballet dancer”. Just saying.)
Well, Carol has that amazing resume now - when I talk about resume, I call her retailer list a resume- but she is still showing the “spelling bee wins”, “swim team accomplishments” and everything else from Kindergarten, and unfortunately some of the real accomplishments, in this case the high quality stores, which carry her products, don’t shine through and be the effective marketing tool as she hopes they would be. People are not “wow, her products are even in Laura’s Luxury Store” because the list of stores just is that: a long list of stores, sending a message “Carla’s Cuties are available everywhere”.
Which message of course isn’t bad - if the truth was that the products are also sold in quantities in all these places and Carol’s Cuties actually were everywhere. But when some of these stores sell only 10 Carol’s Cuties a year - there is no way Carols products are “everywhere” with those sale numbers. Now it just looks “nice product, sold everywhere, but why haven’t I seen it before”. Don’t have your products “sold everywhere” if they actually don’t sell everywhere. Especially if the stores are not sending the messages you want your product to send.
Like I said, Carol’s product is a handmade product she makes herself. The “available everywhere” message doesn’t really go well with the “handmade with love” message. You start thinking, how does she have time to make products for 200 stores and still say they are all handmade by her. A mixed message again.
RETAILERS AS CAROL’S COMPETITORS? NO!!!!! THEY ARE YOUR TEAM MEMBERS!
Carol feels that the retailers are not making her enough money and she is just making, packing and shipping her products from her home all the time, and still not making enough money to pay herself a good salary. Her company actually has some cash flow problems. She feels that her own retailers are her competitors and she is trying to get the sales from her own website carolscuties.com instead of customers buying them from her retailers.
There are so many things wrong here that I don’t even know where to start.
First of all, retailers are never your competitors, they are your team members, they are helping you to get your product sold. Look again that little circle I did about Your Marketing Mix - the “Place”, your retailer is INSIDE your marketing mix circle. It is not an external thing totally out of your control, your retailers are part of your team, part of the sales force you have created, they are in your circle. They are not your competitors and liability, they are your asset.
If you feel your retailers are a liability or your competitors, you should make changes as soon as possible.
The retailers think they are doing you a favor by selling and promoting your product, and I can assure you that they would rather put their money on a product from a company who actually wants them to succeed and sell their products - this is the way they get profit too.
Retailers want to sell your product.
If you don’t want them to sell your product, drop them as your retailer.
No wonder the retailers are not making enough sales for Carol, if Carol doesn’t even want them to make many sales.
Over all seems like this is a big mess Carol should fix as soon as possible.
HOW TO FIX IT?
Most important thing right now would be branding Carol’s Cutie - to get the “message” down. What is “Carol’s Cuties”, what is the image, who buys it, why they buy it, and everything involved with branding the Carol’s Cutie. And after that everything Carol does has to be in the same line as the brand. Also “where the customer buys it”.
If Carol wants her product “available everywhere”, she should start thinking of a distribution center, and how she can handle the “available everywhere”. Obviously she has now reached her limit making the product from home, so she should also start thinking of how to start making the product in bigger quantities, maybe even how to lower her manufacturing costs. Maybe she can hire a friend to make them with her to start with, or have a part of the product pre-manufactured. If the message is “available everywhere” Carol should work with her retailers to get more sales from all of them to achieve this goal to really get her product not just available everywhere, but sold everywhere. Big problem here might be the cost.
If Carol wants to keep her product “special and handmade to order” she should drop half of her retailers immediately, especially all of the stores who don’t have any other products “special and handmade to order” - all those stores which do not go together with the brand Carol is trying to build for Carol’s Cuties. After all, half of the retailers are not really making money to her anyway and other half Carol feels are her competitors.
Also, if you are not making enough money with your wholesale price, your price is wrong. It is understandable Carol feels her retailers are her competitors - because she is selling her product way too cheap for them. You should always be happy with your wholesale price, and to be able to celebrate each wholesale contract. If you have your own website, the sales from there are just cream on the top, because you are making so much more than with the price you are happy to sell your product = wholesale price.
If you sell your product directly to the customers, your retail price should always be the same as the retail price at your retailers. If you offer your product cheaper on your own website than what your retailers are selling it in their stores for - then you are competing against your retailers. And why would they want to sell your product, if they are competing against you? They have enough competitors that they don’t want one of their own vendors to be one!
ONE POSSIBLE STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
1. Re-think Carol’s Cuties Brand.
2. Higher the price of a Carol’s Cutie. And be comfortable with your new wholesale price.
3. Price might already drop some retailers, and drop most of or all of the retailers who do not go with the Carol’s Cuties brand.
4. Offer drop-shipping only for the stores with high visibility or which you feel are the stores you would proudly like to have in your “my retailers” list. If a store has been successful with your drop-shipping program and continuously brings you sales, you might even ask if they would be willing to start stocking your product. This would save you some time from packing and shipping.
5. Start working together more and better with your retailers. Keep them updated and excited about your product. Do joint-marketing efforts with them and help them to sell your product. When your retailers are excited about your product, they will want to sell more of them.
YOUR INPUT
Please leave your comments. What do you think Carol should do?
