Are you approaching the right store?
Do less selling by picking a store that wants you
I did something really stupid once. Okay, I’ve done a lot of stupid things. But as far as business outreach goes, this took the cake, maybe the whole darn bakery.
Here’s what I did.
In my desperation to increase buyer outreach, I scraped the Yellow pages with a web mining tool, because I thought I was so damn genius. I got a hold of a list of buyers. A nice elaborate csv file that I could load on to excel, and use mailmerge and blast to every single buyer on that list.
Here’s one response I got from the buyer at a yoga studio which really hurt.
“Fuck off.”
I was PISSED at first. Couldn’t you just ignore the email and move on? You are a yoga studio! Aren’t you supposed to be as calm as a lotus?
Isn’t your whole thing supposed to be spreading peace and meditation.
Ironic.
Then I thought, this is probably what was going through the yoga studio buyers head.
“You clearly don’t know my business. I’m a yoga studio. Why would I be interested in your fucking housewares?”
Now everyone probably thinks the same thing when they receive a random email, but 99% are nice enough to hold their thoughts.
Retail stores get inundated with submissions from makers who clearly aren’t the right fit.
“I cannot believe how many submissions I get where the maker probably never been to my website,” says Lily Chau of Acacia.
We want to stay away from these tactics. We hate selling remember? We don’t want to waste people’s time or be rude.
We’re focused on “Less Selling”.
Selling is harder when you’re flying blind.
So let’s eliminate those odds by finding the right stores.
Your first thought is, I have to focus on making. Now I have to find stores? That’s a reasonable motive some hair pulling.
The world has thousands and thousands of stores. A search on Yelp for reveals 4823 Specialty stores in San Francisco Bay Area. Even bakeries sell handmade products.
OK, before you throw in the towel, the trick is to break it down into bite size pieces.
You only want a small percentage of a big market. Once you corner that market, stores will start coming to you.
That’s what happened to us.
So let’s begin.
Find your Type
Here’s a list of all types of specialty stores (and it’s not even a complete list).
Main Categories
Museum
Boutique
Clothing
Apothecary
Home Decor
Specialty Food
Gift
Toy
Childrens
Mens
Womens
Furniture
Stationery
Consignment
Used
Home and Garden
Tech
Baby
Vintage
Antique
Subcategory
American Made
Concept
Luxury
Sustainable
Lifestyle
Natural Living
New Age
Bohemian
Salon
Whew!
You have to first find which stores that matches your top category. It could “Jewelry”, “Furniture” “Apothecary”.
Don’t dig too much into subcategories like “Natural”, “Sustainable” “American Made” and so on just yet.
Go Narrow
Let’s say you are a maker of bath and body products, looking to hit the San Francisco market, then search “Apothecary” on Yelp.
This is your primary market. Don’t try to look for anything else like gifts, museum, even if you feel you might be losing out on some part of the market.
A quick search reveals 85 stores. That’s a lot!
Filter by “moderate” to “high price” because handmade is considered luxury.
That filters down to 55 stores.
This is manageable.
Now you might be thinking, what if I could just scrape this list with a web scraper like webminer.
Now hang on, Elon, before you go high tech, you need to use some old school editing. This part is really important. A script cannot replace your judgment.
You should be able to scan this list in 10 minutes and make a list of 30 stores you can approach.
From this list, you probably want to filter out the low rated stores, or stores outside your market like Chinese parlors (unless you make soaps with Chinese ingredients) and big box stores like Kiehls.
You should be down to about 20 stores.
Look for an Aesthetic Match
From the list of stores, who do you think is best for your brand? Take a look at their websites. And find out who matches your style.
Scanning 20 stores should take about an hour.
Contemporary, Boho chic, Traditional and so on.
Now it’s down to 15 stores.
Should you just send everyone your line sheet and buyers pack?
Nope.
On SKUE we’re starting to make this process a lot easier by doing the hard work up front. But you have to do the next step on your own.
Look for Common Ground
You want to find the opening line of your email. Personalizing an email means less selling.
Maybe they already have many soaps.
While most people will give up, you can find an opportunity within it. Markets get saturated pretty quickly. Stores are always looking for new vendors and that could be you.
If they have a brand of soap that’s similar to yours, it’s possible they might want to replace it with a new maker like you.
“A shop wanted to try my soaps because a competing brand was everywhere”, says Lauren Shun of Yuzu Soap.
So your email might sound something like this:
Hi Laura,
Love your store, and have been following you on Instagram. I noticed you already have several brands that are similar to mine. I was wondering if your customers would be opening to trying something new. My soaps are fragrance free and also come in giftables packages.
I’d be happy to send a fully paid self sample pack. See my attached line sheet.
I’m currently selling at 5 stockists in the city but none are close to you.
Would you be interested?
Thanks,
Jill
Founder,
Son of the Sea Soaps
If you have a good product with decent photos, you will get a response.
Repeat
Go down the list and send messages. Sure it’s a lot of work. But you’re looking for a partner. So it’s worth it.
So to recap:
-Search by Category
-Filter by style
-Find common ground. Use that as the opening line in your email.
Repeat
You shouldn’t have to spend more than a couple of hours on this exercise per week.
On SKUE, we do some of this work upfront. You can also reach out to the most requested buyers and get a response. Guaranteed.
Whatever you do, do some work upfront to narrow down the list of stores. You’ll be off to a much better relationship.
If you are a member of SKUE you can always reach out to us if you need help with the strategy or crafting the right pitch. If not, you can apply here.
