THE PROCESS
Come Sell or High Water’s 4-Step Process:
STEP ONE:
A FREE INTRODUCTORY MEETING
Every new brand that comes my way starts off with a free introductory meeting. We talk about your strategy and your goals as well as what I do and how I can help. But, perhaps most importantly, we get a feel for each other. This is the perfect time to see if we gel as a team. Assuming things go well on the call, I’ll put a proposal together for you to review. This will basically be an outline of how our partnership would play out. Once we are in agreement on the “what” and the “how” of how we are going to focus our attention, then we are off to the races.
STEP TWO:
RETAIL LAUNCH PREPARATION
Founders are often at different points in their strategy and thought processes when I enter the picture. Some may have already thought a lot about who their consumers are and what their competition looks like. Meanwhile, others have been spending all of their time and energy on things like online sales and social media marketing.
Wherever you are at in the process, together we will dive deep into getting your brand ‘retail ready’. We can answer all of the questions from ‘what price should we sell at?’ to ‘how many followers does your brand have online?’ We’ll also discuss product readiness and gather all of the appropriate information and retailer requirements to arm ourselves for every possible scenario when we do start approaching retailers.
STEP THREE:
SALES STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT
Once we have all of your retail launch information compiled, then we can go about building a strategy for approaching retailers. Again, this is where my experience can really assist in avoiding those potholes and roadblocks as you start gaining some momentum. We can build out your sell-in materials inventory and hone your pitch. This is also where we identify and can discuss brokers, too. All of those sayings about ‘it taking a village’ apply here. No emerging brand can do everything with just their founders. All brands need assistance. The key is identifying the right ones for you.
STEP FOUR:
POST LAUNCH SELLING
One of the most common mistakes emerging brands make is thinking that simply getting onto shelves is the end of the process. When, in reality, it’s more like the halfway point. Once we have successfully gotten your product into stores (and adequately celebrated the heck out of that!), then we have to get people to buy it. Because if they don’t then you could be off the shelves in less time than it took you to get onto them.
This is where we will identify and build promotions, figure out the best ways to advertise, learn how each retailer does their business. In short, this is where we will figure out each and every way to take your product from ‘just getting on the shelf’ to ‘being one of the mainstays’ on that shelf.