Getting into Big Box Retail Faster

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey, everybody. Tim Bush here from TLB Consulting. This is my first solo expert office hours. And whether you're watching this live or whether you're watching it recorded, it is going to be just as good no matter what. So the information we're going to talk about, I think that you'll be able to put into practice, or at least it's going to give you some really good things to think about if you have a product or you're thinking about a product, or you're just in the wondering whether you should even create a product to go to retail. The number one question, the reason I wanted to start with this question, because it's number one question everybody asks me constantly, the first thing that comes out of their mouth is, how long is it going to take? How long is it going to take to get my product into retail? And I think the reason that people ask that question is simply because a lot of times they've already done all this work, right? So they've created and thought of the product, they've figured out how to make it, they've had it fabricated, they've, they've actually produced some product and they're super proud of it. And now it's completely stacked in their garage. They can't move and their spouse is all over them. When are you going to get rid of this? And so once they get to me, then that's their biggest question. Listen, I already think that this product should be selling in retail. Really, buddy? How long is it going to take? And so we try to address that and we try to, I guess, be pretty transparent when we do, just so there's no false hope over there. There's nobody thinking, hey, this thing is just the red carpets going to roll out, the velvet ropes are going to part and I'm going to be welcome with open arms into big box retail and all will be well. And I'm not here to tell you that that's not going to happen because I have a story later on that that did happen. And so there's a wide range of how long it could take you to get your product into retail and a lot of factors that go actually into it. And so I have, I think 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Like, 13 things, right? Just a small list. 13 things to talk about that could be factors for you and your product and your company that will affect the time it's going to take to get you into retail. So if you don't know me, and if you don't know who I am, I would say immediately after this recording, go back to the Meet Tim Bush recording that I did with Tracy, and that will tell you everything that you need to know about me and probably some things that you really didn't need to know. So if you want to know more about me directly after this, go over there and everything you're going to need to know about Tim Bush and TLB Consulting will be there. All right, this is, like I said, our first one. And I want to let you know, please join me on my office visits because we're going to get deep into it. We're going to get deep into everything that you're going to need to know to be successful in launching a multiple product or single product campaign into big box retail. And I am going to give you the recipe to Coke, okay? That's just the bottom line. So don't miss one episode. Don't even miss one episode. But if you do, you can find the recording. All right? First thing that I take into account, when I'm talking to a client and they're asking me, how long is it going to take? I take a look at their product and I ask myself two questions. One, what type of product is it? Now, me personally, I have categorized all my products into two categories, okay? And almost I haven't found a product yet on the market that doesn't fit into one or two of these categories. And they are groundbreaking products and enhancement products. And so the first thing that we want to do, and the first thing you're going to want to do is try to figure out, hey, which one of these categories does my product fit into? So let's talk about them a little bit. Groundbreaking. Okay? This is a product that nobody has ever seen before. You found an issue or a problem or a niche, and you created a product just to fill this niche or problem or issue. And nobody has ever seen it before. Nobody even knows what it is. But when they see what problem it's going to solve, they'll probably go, oh, my gosh, I totally get it. However, it's never been on the shelf before. There's no category for it. It's completely new to consumers and to buyers, okay? So a groundbreaking product is Something, it's your brainchild, it's something that you came up with that nobody has ever seen before. Alright, second enhancement product, by the way, I'll tell you about how these affect buyer decisions in a second. But enhancement product is just what it sounds like. It's a product that is an enhancement over something else. So there was a product out there, you saw it, you said, yeah, you know, it's okay, but it's kind of missing the mark in these different ways. So I am going to enhance that and create a new product that's better, faster, easier, cooler, all those things. Okay? And the big difference between an enhancement product and a groundbreaking product is an enhancement product does have a retail category. It does have some sales trend behind it, it does have some pricing history behind it. So when buyers are looking at these two types of products, they will more easily get the enhancement product. Because first of all you're going to know that that's the right buyer because they buy that category. So they're not going to be wondering, is this my category? Should I be taking this on? They're not going to wonder any of that. They're going to know it's their category, they know where it goes, they know what the trend is in the category, they know what the pricing trend is in the category. They just have to now find some room for it. If they like it, if they think that people will actually pay for this enhancement that you created. So there's a quicker, easier, more defined path for enhancement products compared to a groundbreaking product where buyers will generally or could potentially pass it around thinking, no, this is not mine, no, this doesn't fit into my category. And so you will have to spend some time thinking, finding out who the buyer is and who's actually going to take ownership of this product, then you're going to have to help them figure out where it goes. And you're going to have to talk to them about pricing and the pricing is going to have to make sense because there's no trend on it. There's no trend in this category or pricing. So your job with a groundbreaking product is really to sell the product because. And sell the need and the uniques, because without that you're kind of dead in the water because there's nothing else behind it. So you're really going to have to sell this product, whereas on an enhancement product you really have to sell the category, okay? And the category already exists. So if the category starting to die and you have this unbelievable enhancement that's going to pick the category back up. That's going to make sense. That's going to make sense to a buyer. So the road with these two types of products could be quite different based on what type of product you have. So number one, ask yourself, do I have a groundbreaking product or do I have an enhancement product? And how you approach the buyer with those two different types of products are going to be very different. Okay, so groundbreaking enhancement. Figure that out. Pricing. Okay. Now I always recommend no matter Whether you have one product or 10 products or 100 products, if you're just hitting the market and for the purpose of this talk, we're going to say that you're just hitting the market with these products. Okay. And I would recommend that you do a pricing strategy that goes across all categories. So if you're selling to, let's say big box, I still think you need to do a pricing strategy for club store, for grocery, for specialty, for E commerce, for Amazon. And the reason I recommend that is because you don't know where you're going to want to sell your product five years from now, three years from now, six years from now. You don't know. You haven't thought that far ahead or maybe some of those opportunities haven't presented themselves to you yet and you just have this idea like, hey, this product is perfect for Bed, Bath and Beyond and Target and the like. And so that's where you're going for. And so a lot of times new entrepreneurs will just price for that medium. Or let's say you're online, you're on Amazon, that's where you started. We have a lot of clients that we're bringing off Amazon now into regular mainstream retail and they only ever price their product just for Amazon. And so a lot of times we try to price it for big box and it doesn't work. So before you get your product on the market, no matter where you're going to get it on the market at, it's key to price it out in all of those different categories. I know, I know, I'm doing this. I'm not sure what that means. I'm not sure you're getting it to each one of these things is a category. So I would say price it out in each category that you can so that you know that it works across a multi channel of different and actually it's not category, sorry channels. So like I said, grocery, big box, E commerce, specialty club store, even drugstore could go in there as its own channel. So sorry, I didn't mean department, I mean I meant channel. And so make sure that it works across all of those and happy to. Down the road, we may do just a deep dive into pricing and I can bring up some of the TLB consulting pricing worksheets that we have that will help you with that. In the meantime, if you have an issue, you know, go ahead, type it out and send it to me. And that's why you're in this program, right? That's why you're taking advantage of this opportunity. Because you have access to us, you have access to me. You can just ask the question. Guess what? You can just ask the question. It doesn't cost you anything more. Alright, so current sales, do you have any sales on your product? That's going to be a big factor a lot of times in retail today. Retailers, they don't want to be first, I don't know why, they don't want to pull the trigger and take a chance. And so they're going to say, well, where are you selling now? Well, we're selling here, we're selling here. So if you have some sales data that's going to be better, that's going to help. So even if that sales data is just Amazon, at least that's FaceTime with your customers. Okay? I'm going to tell you something that you may not be aware of. Just because your family and friends have bought your product doesn't mean that that's all you need to do to before you go to big box retail. Okay? Facetime with your customers is not mom, it's not dad. So what I suggest is even if it is just your own website, even if it is just Amazon, those are still customers that you don't know. They're buying your product on its merits and they're going to tell you very honestly if it's good or if it's not, or if it's good but it has this issue, or if it's bad, bad, bad, they're going to be brutally honest. And this will be hard for you because this is a piece of you, right? You birthed this product. It's going to be hard for you to take that information.

Dispassionately. I want you to detach from the person that birthed this product and sit up here and look down at what these people are telling you so that you can act accordingly. Because it's a mistake not to listen honestly to the feedback that you're getting. So I digressed a little bit. But what I'm trying to say is when you're talking to a big retail buyer, if you can't say that you have actually have sold hundreds of these online or there's hundreds of people other than your relatives that have bought this product and kept it and liked it enough to type some review and talk about how it was great. That's key. That's better than not having that at all. Okay, so what we're talking about, and when I say I'm going to say this is better than not having it, that doesn't mean if you don't have it that you're dead in the water. If you don't have it, go out and get it. If you don't have an Amazon account right now, when you're done with this, go get an Amazon account. Let's get your product started selling on Amazon or set you up your own website. So if you don't have it, hey, that's just an opportunity to go get it. Alright, so current sales, current distribution kind of falls into current sales too. So where is your product distributed at? Who's distributing it? Do you have a distributor? Are you selling direct, what retailers are carrying it and then who's buying it and are they liking it or are they keeping it? So I kind of put those in there, but now that I'm looking at it, distribution and sales, kind of the same thing. Category, what type of category are you trying to sell? If you have chocolate, right? Let's say you have some great. I had a big flash on my screen that said your Internet connection is unstable and then all of a sudden it went away. So apparently it's now stable again. So coffee and chocolate, very commoditized products in the us so if you're trying to bring chocolate to market, I'm going to tell you that you're going to have a tougher time simply not because your chocolate's not good, not because it's not the best chocolate in the entire world, but simply because chocolate is the most sold product in the U.S. and then there's coffee after that. And so believe me, I've sold coffee before and there's like a million people out there selling coffee. So you're in that big sea of people and it's going to be more difficult for you to stand out. It's going to be even more important for you to talk about some of the things that we're going to talk about in a minute. So category is key and only in context of how long is it going to take you. Not that you're not going to get there, but the question we're talking about today is how long is it going to take? So I'm going to tell you that if you're selling chocolate, it could take you longer than if you were selling, let's say, yoga socks, earthworms, something like that. That's not, I don't know, the most commodified product in the US So it could take you longer. So category matters what category you're selling in, and it helps you prepare your strategy and your overall assault onto retail. Understanding full well that you're up against a tremendous amount of competitors. It helps you arm yourself. Okay, if you already know that you're going up against, I don't know, hundreds of other vendors trying to get chocolate into the market, it helps you understand. Well, I already know this is going to be tough, so I'm going to arm myself with this, this, and this. Okay? So just understand that at the beginning. Again, if you have questions about tough categories, two things you can do. One, you can reach out to me, or you can just go on to Amazon and take a look. If you pull up a certain type of product and it has 137 pages of that one item, you're going to know that's a deep category. There's a lot of people getting in there. But feel free to reach out on that. All right, so category competition falls right into category. Who are you up against? And right underneath competition, I have uniques. And if you've ever listened to my podcast or we've ever spoken personally, you know that I talk all the time. If you can't speak to your individual uniques of your product, then you need to get that down. That's part of your elevator pitch. That's part of what's going to set you apart, and it's going to set you apart from your competition. One of the first things a buyer is going to ask you is, okay, well, I have this, this and this. These are the things that we're selling in your category. What makes yours different? Why should I carry it? What's going to set it apart? Those are your uniques, and you need to have between three and five solid uniques so that you can fire right back. Okay, well, this, Boom. We have this. We have this, we have this. And again, I'm going to caution you here that pricing, okay, and saying you have a better product for a lower price is not necessarily a unique. Why that product is better is a unique. Not that. It just is better. Because that can be an opinion, right? Of course. It's your baby. You're going to think it's better. But why it's better? Can you quantify that? Can you speak to it? Can you explain it? And let me give you a good example. I have a client right now that makes a cover for a soda can, okay? And that's not a unique product, right? You can go on Amazon and find 100 different covers for a soda can. But his clips onto the soda can and then inside the little ring, it pops open. So you don't have to take the whole thing off and on when you want to drink from the soda can. So that's a unique. Secondly, if you like to drink with a straw from a soda can, that straw can actually be closed in the lid so that when you're ready to drink it again, the straw is still there. You don't have to toss it and then go find yourself a new straw. Unique number two, number three. I sent him before we even showed it to anybody or even put it on Amazon. I sent him to an independent lab because I wanted to know with his lid on there, how much longer the fizz lasted compared to just not having anything on there. Well, guess what? 58% longer. Now, there may be other lids on the market that do that or better, but they don't say it. They don't have an independent lab tested white paper result. We do. So now he can put everywhere on his website, on his listing on, I mean, just anywhere you want. And especially with buyers, fizz lasts 58% longer than if you use nothing. Okay? Unique number three. And there's a couple more uniques, but those are some of the key ones. And I tell you what, it makes a difference. And so if you have to go out and get an independent lab test, I say do it. Especially when you already know that it's going to be good. A lot of people don't go to the effort to do it. It wasn't that expensive, actually. Okay, but it's a white piece of paper from an independent lab that says something that makes people's eyes go, oh, 50% more. That's crazy. Okay? And we can back it up. So that's what I'm talking about. Uniques. It's not a guess. It's not a unsubstantiated statement. It's actually fact. It's a fact you can close a straw in there. It's a fact that you don't have to take the whole thing off before you can drink. It's a fact that fizz lasts 58% longer. Those are all facts. They're not guesses. And a lot of times, I think when passionate people about their product get questions, they tend to throw out thoughts. And they may not be substantiated with facts. So your uniques have to be substantiated. They have to be something that you can actually speak to. They can't just be, oh, well, it's better, so understanding. Oh, and it's a better price, okay? If it was always better price that retailers were looking at, they'd be constantly switching out products. Because anybody can get to another factory somewhere in the world that can make something cheaper. That's not what's most important. And this should be a really good key to your understanding of how you're going to stay in retail. Retailers will not just kick you out because somebody showed up with a better price. Okay? That should give you a lot of comfort, okay? Because everybody, anybody can show up with a better price. Somebody will always take less margin than you are and show up with a better price. It's not just that in order to get you kicked out one, you have to be greedy. So your price was so high that it was just ridiculous and somebody's coming in so far lower. But it's also product unique, different things about your product that make it stand out. So be that person. Go find those different things about your product. And if, by the way, it's just the same product as all other products and maybe you have it a little bit cheaper, I would challenge you to make it better, to give it something that you can hang your hat on. Okay? So we were talking about competitors and unique retailer targets. This is a big important category, too. One of the very first things that we do with our clients after we do pricing, which I think we do first, number one is pricing. So that we see if we have any pricing issues is we make a retailer target hit list. Who are we matching up for this product? What retailers do we want to go after for this product? And I have my client do a list, and then I do a list, and then we match those lists together and we see if we're kind of on the same page as far as what demographic of customer would actually really buy this. And is this retailer a good place to enhance your brand? Remember, the retailers you choose right now are going to affect your brand for a long time. And here's an example of how that might work. Let's say you're at a trade show and a buyer from Home Goods or TJ Maxx or Marshalls stopped by your booth and they were super excited about your product. And you Guys decided on a price and you shipped them like two containers and you're like, yeah, I'm in retail. Okay, you are in retail, but you're in discount retail. You're in closeout retail. And if that product is a closeout discount product, well done. But if you were at some point hoping that that product was going to be in Costco or in Bed, Bath and Beyond or in even Target in mainstream non discount retail, you're going to have to have a different product for that. Now, you're going to either have to enhance it or change the packaging or do something different to take that. Because you can't have. Well, I shouldn't say you can have. It's not ideal. And retail buyers won't generally want to have the same product being sold at regular retail in Bed, Bath and Beyond and then sliced and diced over at TJ Maxx. That doesn't work. So it's important to find out where you're going to sell your product, what retailers are right to, and here's the key word, enhance your brand. What retailer is going to help grow your brand, and that's where you want to go. Okay. And also in the topic of, hopefully we didn't get too far off it, in the topic of how long is it going to take? And I'm going to wrap all this around and tell you how long it's going to take. Don't worry. Going to answer your question. But buyers that connect with your product based on their consumer demographic are more likely to buy. Okay, so if you're coming after a retailer that's not really right for your brand, that's like trying to sell, let's say a $69 dog collar to Walgreens probably is not a good match. And they're going to say no. Nobody shopping at Walgreens going to pay $69 for free. Well, maybe a couple people, but in general, no dog collars at Walgreens. 999, 1999, 1499, not 69. So do you see what I'm saying? So who you pick to go to also will determine how long it's going to take. Yes. Got it. Okay. All right, last. Before we get into a couple stories and then wrap this whole thing into a tight bow for you, but social media involvement, and again, if you listen to my podcast or you've ever spoken to me or seen me speak, you know that I am a big proponent of social media. This, people, is what's driving products today. This is your free advertising platform. Well, it's not always free, but it can be free. It's way less than putting an advertisement in People magazine. This is how products get out and go viral. Okay? The biggest demographic in the entire US Millennials. This is how they communicate. So if you're trying to sell your product, but you're leaving out the biggest demographic in the entire U.S. probably not a good idea. So get yourself involved in social media right now. Don't wait another day. Don't wait till you pass. Go start it right now. Because I tell you what happens. A lot of my clients will reach out to me during the fourth quarter and say, hey, I want to put some promotions out through social media. You don't have any social media followers because we haven't done anything with that all year. Hmm. So can't really drive promotions through social media if you don't have anybody to drive it with. And how does that affect buyers? How does that affect your ability to get into retail? For the first time ever in the last maybe 18 months, buyers are consistently asking, what are you doing on social? How can we tie into what you're doing on social? How are you driving your product on social media? And what platforms are you on, and how can we tie into that? Are you hearing me? Social media? They're asking, and you don't want to say we're doing nothing, because then they're going to understand that you're not up to speed, you're not up to par. This is not somebody we want to do business with. All right, make sense. All right, two stories for you. Both complete sides of the spectrum. I went with a client to sell his jalapenos to Costco years ago. A couple of years ago. And we sat with a buyer, and the buyer loved the product. It was a totally unknown brand. And they said, look, we're going to have to cut these against some of the other people we're looking at. And if you don't know, cut means they're going to try them with Del Monte and whoever else they're looking at. So a couple weeks later, they say, man, we tested them against all the people we're looking at, and your guys just were the clear winner. Boom, we're the clear winner. My expectation was, you know, so we're getting a PO tomorrow. Let's do this. Let's get this thing done. I didn't hear from the buyer again for nine months. Nine months. And we had already passed almost a month and a half since our. Our visit when they called us to tell us that they loved it. And they wanted to do it nine months. And I'm not saying that nine months. And she was. Kept emailing me, saying, oh, hey, just a little bit longer. No, zero, zilch, not a word. And I kept following up, kept following it up, kept following up. Nine months later, get an email, we're ready to cut a po. And so what happened? Why nine months on a product that they loved? Priorities. She was busy. She was launching. She was in the middle of this. She had to visit to China. She had to go here. She had a bunch of vendor visits. It's hard to know what she was doing during those nine months. She didn't give me her schedule, but I know that it was more important than bringing on new jalapenos. It had to be. And so she at some point got to it and sent me a po and off we went. So you sometimes you can do everything right and they can say yes. And then it's still from start to finish, from the time that he got the appointment to the time that the products were on the shelf was just over a year on a product that they absolutely loved. All right, now, so imagine on a product that you're actually having to sell to them and they're considering it, they're wondering about it, they want to test it, they want to do this, they want it. It can even go further than that. Now contrast that with a driver's ed company that we wanted to do a gift card promotion for on the floor at Costco also. So apples in apples here. I emailed the buyer early in the morning, maybe 10 o'. Clock. I received an email back from the buyer at 2 o', clock, and that product was on the ground in Costco in just over 32 days. Okay, that, my friends, is what you call boom. That's a mic drop right there. 32 days in, on the floor in Costco. So can that happen? Yeah, I've been there. I've seen it happen. I rode that roller coaster. But average. The average time. And here it is, folks. Gonna come out of my mouth right now. The average time, I would say from start to finish, it takes to get a product into retail. If the buyer's interested. Keyword, if the buyer's interested. 18 months. 18 months, I think will be average. Some will be less, some will be more. But here's the good news. You're going to need. If you're just starting out, you are going to need all of that time to get yourself ready. I always let my clients know, be careful what you wish for, because if what you're wishing for happens all at the same time, you can't handle it. It's not right. Things unfold kind of how they're supposed to unfold, I think. And if you've never sold to big box retail and somebody you're like, and you hook it to the big guy, you're going to want all that 18 months to get yourself prepared and really knock it out of the park. Because the last thing you want to do is get your products in there and then have something go wrong, have some kind of issue with your packaging or your product that's not what you want. So I think you can take the stuff that we talked here, groundbreaking enhancement, product pricing, current sales, distribution category competition, uniques, retailer targets and social media. I think you can take all of that information to make yourself as ready as you can possibly be. We're going to talk about so many different aspects of taking your product to retail. We're going to talk about buyer meetings and how to set up the room. We're going to talk, I mean just a million things. Everything you need to know about how to really get it done is going to be on this office hours. So I know you're excited, I know you're thinking, hey, this is a great start. And it is. I want you to take all these things here and I want you to be honest with yourself and put yourself and really ask yourself, where am I at with all these things? Where am I at? How's it, how's it, how do I really stack up? And if there's areas that you're weak in, that's a good thing to find that out right now. Let's sure those things up, let's get those things taken care of. I'm here to help. All right, Any questions out there, anybody at all? Okay, no questions. I don't see any questions as long as I'm looking in the right place. Alright, well, look at that guys. I think we actually got that thing done in just about 30 minutes. So not taking up too much of your time, but putting out some good information. Again, you know where to reach me if you want to ask me any questions you have, any things that you might not be sure of or you want to find out or ask additional questions from the meeting. But other than that I think that's all I have. So how long is it going to take to get my product into big box retail? It could take 30 days or it could take 18 months or it could take somewhere in between. But either way, the time it takes is what's going to be right for you. And if you want to make it quicker, take a look at some of the things that we talked about here. Those are going to help shorten that time frame. All right, thank you for watching.

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