Evan Carmichael explains two ways to get products into Target and Walmart: contact buyers directly through databases and trade shows, or hire consultants and representation firms to make introductions. Either way, you need existing sales, media coverage, and proof you can scale production.
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How do I get my product into mainstream stores? For a lot of entrepreneurs, that is the pinnacle of success. They want their product on the stores at Target, Walmart, everywhere. That's how they want to get known. They realize that, you know, you don't have the distribution, you know, you have a great product and you want to get it out there. How do you do it? So it's a great question I got. It came in from Evan Carmichael. One of my Facebook readers, Avery, and Avery is a 17-year-old artist. She's got some mad skills and she wants her art to be sold in stores like Target and be seen in lobbies of stores. And she wants to know, how do I get in? How do I get into the stores? There's a few ways to do it. Okay, I'll share some of the experiences that I've had. The first way is you connect with a buyer. Okay, all of these stores have buyers and they are out there looking for products to to feature on their shelves. You can find the buyers online if you use websites like Jigsaw, or if you see that any of the buyers are commenting in any news articles. You're basically doing your research online through Google and through websites like Jigsaw to find out who the buyer is. Two, you can go to trade shows and events that are industry-specific because you'll have the buyers walking the floors looking to find new products. And three, a lot of times these buyers will have open calls. So you go to a hotel room or their location and you pitch them what your product is all about. I've been to one of those. I had a salsa DVD, instructional salsa DVD, for one of the businesses that I've invested in. And there were, I don't know, 1,000 people there who lined up to try to pitch their product. It was a crazy day. And I got to speak to one of the buyers who was in kind of the lifestyle fitness category. And he loved it. And the thing here is you want to be prepared because most of the people who pitch to these guys have no idea about the business side. They just say, hey, here's a great product, what do you guys think? You have to have a story. Why did you start this business? What do you stand for? What are you all about? And you have to have done some market research. Who is interested in this product and why is it a good fit for that store? You're creating a little mini business plan for them. Nobody does that. If you've done that and you show you understand their target audience, you're way ahead of most of the people who are coming. You're going up against inventors and artists who have a capacity to be business people, but it's not ingrained with them. They don't have any skills or experience or training. It's not how they think. And so you, you give yourself an edge by being more prepared. So that's the first way, is going out and finding the buyers and connecting with them to help get you in. Okay, the second way that you can do it is to find somebody who's already done it and have them help make introductions for you. I remember when I started my first business, I didn't know anybody. I had no connections, no network, nothing. It was me and my business partners, and my family wasn't in the entrepreneur, you know, they didn't have their own companies. And so I talked to my bank as a way to get started, and they put me on to somebody who put me on to somebody who put me on to somebody else, and I eventually found somebody who became one of my best mentors and made a lot of introductions for me. And it's starting with the intention of you want somebody to help you get into these stores. If that's your goal, you'll find a way to make it happen. Everybody you talk to, you're looking to find somebody who can help you do it. There are consultants who help rep brands and help them get in. They may take either a fee or they may take a percentage of the sales that are coming in. Basically a hired gun. And again, if you're going to talk to these guys, and you can find some of them online, you can also find them by just starting to talk to people in your community, you still need to do the same research. Because these guys are getting approached all the time too by artists and inventors who want to get in but have not done any of the research or background information on how your product is going to help that Target store. How that's going to help Target. You gotta have that information. You have to be prepared. It makes all the difference in the world. And if you have some momentum, any momentum, you need to bring that to the table. If you've been in any kind of media, if you've made any kind of sales already. A lot of people have made zero sales. They just have a concept, right? Show that you've made sales. Show that you can ramp up. If Target comes in and says, I want 50,000 of these pieces, how are you going to ramp that up? Are you making everything by hand or do you have a process that can be replicated, right? These are the important questions you need to be able to answer and answer quickly and have thought out because if you're unprepared, The buyer is gonna say no, and the person who can help make introductions for you is gonna say no too. So have it thought out. Show some momentum. Show that you've made some sales. Show that people are following you on Twitter and YouTube and Facebook. You have some momentum, you've got something, because that's how you need to stand out against your competition. When I was in the venture capital world, people were pitching me their business plans. Most of them again just had an idea. They had nothing. They had no track record. They just gave me a business plan that wasn't well thought out. They couldn't back up any of their numbers. They had no management team. They had no advisors on board. They had no media. They had no customers. They had nothing but an idea. And that's what these guys are used to getting pitched. So you have to come to the table with more than an idea. You have to have some momentum. That's going to help make you stand out and bring that right front and center so they know from the beginning, this person is professional, this person is a business person, this person has thought this thing out, they have a product that fits my market, and I want to do business with them. That's gonna help you stand out. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, give it a thumbs up below, it always makes me wanna do more, and please leave a comment under the video. I love seeing them come in, they really make my morning every day when I'm eating my lentils and checking out what's going on. Leave a comment, if you have a question, leave it below, I'll make a video response just like I did today for Avery. Thank you so much, and I'll see you soon.
