ONCE you have decided upon the service or product you wish to sell and are ready to start, the problem of merchandizing it immediately arises. Strong men and robust women who have spent months developing a product or service until it is as perfect as they can possibly make it have been known to grow weak at the thought of trying to sell it.
If you have carefully read the specialists' introductions to the chapters in this book, you have already learned of many ways to sell your product, but the main thought to grasp and to cherish is that the men and women whom you are trying to sell are only human beings who get up in the morning, dress, eat, think, hope, and worry, even as you do. Buyers, whether they be housewives or business executives, are not superhumans, waiting like vultures to turn you down or to show you how poor your product is. Retail store buyers are not hired to turn away a good item, and they are just as eager to find excellent merchandise as you are to sell it.
There may be many possible ways to sell your product; there is no one way that is suitable for all products.
If your only need is for pin money, the chances are that your product will be sold to neighbors and friends by word of mouth. Many a little enterprise has grown without any advertising other than having one person tell another of the superior qualities of the service or product.
You may set up a retail shop in your own home. But is this wise? It is time-consuming and you may find your profits will be much greater if you spend all your time in the production end, and sell at wholesale. Some businesses, such as a knitting shop that sells yarn and lessons, lend themselves to a shop at home, but here you are selling not only a product but a service as well.
By utilizing your own home as a shop, you will realize the entire profit and you will be able to get customer reaction to your wares at first hand. But, you should give considerable thought to the problem of deciding which method pays you the most for your time. Remember that time is money.
If you start a shop in your own home, be sure that your location is suitable before you invest any money in remodeling and buying necessary equipment or fixtures. You must first check on zoning regulations to make certain that there are no laws against your type of business.
You can sell by the house-to-house method. Most of you will be horrified at the thought. Actually this is the best way to begin selling anything, whether it be a specific item or a service. If you personally will put in a few days making these house-to-house calls, the criticism you may get from prospective buyers will immediately show you, while you are just getting started and before you have made too heavy an investment, not only how you may improve your product, but also how you may improve your selling technique. Up to the time you start actual production, the chances are that the only reactions you will get to your commodity will be those which come from your family and your friends. Go out and get comments direct from the man who is going to spend money on your goods.
You should keep track of the number of calls you make per sale, as later on you may decide to put on door-to-door salesmen, and you will be able to know in some degree what to expect from them.
You may sell your product through an agent. An agent's commission ranges from 10 to 20 per cent, and this must be taken into consideration when you set your wholesale price. An agent assures you a much wider distribution, and in some cases he will handle all the details, such as billing and collections, and pay you after he has taken out his own commission. You may obtain an agent through the wholesale houses handling your type of goods, or if you wish to sell to gift shops you may obtain a reputable agent through the wholesale department of America House, at 485 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y.
You may, without an agent, sell direct to large department stores. There is seemingly something so formidable about these gigantic edifices that I wonder how many of you will have the courage to approach them. It is really very simple. (See Buyer Approach, page 242.) I once designed a simple worsted belt and took it to Jordan Marsh and Company, Filene's, and White's in Boston. Within an hour I had sold an order of a dozen to each store. The buyers were all courteous; two were men and one was a woman, and none of them hesitated to give an order once they had seen the belts. I was lucky in that I didn't have to wait a long time to see the buyers, whom I found in the belt departments, but it was not just sheer luck to sell the belts. Anything good and new will always sell. The belts were to sell for a dollar, and I received fifty-three cents for each belt.
If the belts had been complicated and time-taking to make, I would have been very foolish to approach a department store unless I had a great many already made up. As Mrs. Peake says in the introduction to the chapter on sewing, the department store is the last place to approach until you can produce in quantity. Incidentally, by the time I had finished the three dozen belts, I knew making belts was not for me. Actually I had wanted merely to find out if the belts were salable. My next step, had I wished to continue in this line, would have been to design other accessories and put other people to work making them. Only then would I have been able to produce in quantity.
No department store buyer will hesitate to tell you if there is something wrong with your product. It may be too expensive, too ornate, too impractical. Forget your nervousness and listen to their advice; then go home and improve your merchandise. Once you have sold a department store, you have only to deliver the goods to them (see page 243); for the store does the advertising, packaging, and mailing. Also, they are good credit risks, even though they do sometimes demand thirty to sixty days for payment of your bill.
Continued.....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You may sell your wares to one or more of the mail-order companies. There are hundreds of small mail-order houses in the country, all anxious to find exclusive gift items. Your own mail must have brought you many of these gift booklets to which you could offer your own items. Most of these small mail-order houses buy their products direct from manufacturers, but the home industry that has a product of excellence can easily get its goods displayed in mail-order catalogues. Even though your product is a regional one, typical of the area you live in, it does not mean that you must concentrate on catalogues in your own state. In fact, any catalogue will be mailed out on a wide distribution, covering more than one state.
In some cases the mail-order house will send the orders direct to you for filling and mailing, instead of buying and storing your goods for future sales. It may be possible for you to make up the orders as they come in, thus keeping your investment to a minimum. One man makes Christmas roof decorations of Santa Claus and his reindeer. He works so quickly that he can complete, out of plywood, a whole set in one day. He is the worrying type. "I'll never sell another, I'm sure," he frets. Yet all through November and early December the orders pile in. But he is always so afraid that he will not have another order that he refuses to make any ahead.
Mail-order houses don't usually demand the exclusive rights to a product, but if you are lucky enough to get one to take your entire output, the chances are they will push it harder by giving it more space in their catalogues.
You can contact and sell your product direct to one of the large chains, such as J. C. Penney, W. T. Grant Company, Kresge's, J. J. Newberry, Ben Franklin, Woolworth's, and the like. There isn't a chance in a million of selling a food product to these, nor to the A. & P. or First National Stores; they are interested only in mass-appeal foods. But if you can produce other products suitable for sale in the chains, do not be afraid to approach them through their regional district offices of which you may learn the location by calling at your local stores.
You might have to take a lower price from these outlets, but you will have no distribution problems nor any credit risks. You will, however, have to be able to produce in great quantity. Study the type and quality of goods sold by the chain you wish to approach, lest you waste your time and theirs by offering them a product unsuited to their business.
If your output is decidedly limited, your outlet may be your local women's exchange, gift shops, and retail stores in your vicinity.
If you leave your goods on consignment (don't, unless it is demanded, for the storekeeper is naturally going to push the goods he has already paid for) there will be about a 20 per cent commission for you to pay. If you sell them outright (except for foods) there will be a markup over your wholesale price of from 33 to 50 per cent. This may seem unreasonable to you, but stores do have rent, salaries, and overhead expenses. In the case of food, even if you sell outright, the grocer usually takes only a 20 per cent markup, as his goods move more quickly than do those of other retailers.
If you sell your goods close to home, don't forget about the prophet being not without honor save in his own country. For the local outlets that know you personally may not appreciate your goods, and your community may be one of limited vision. You may find yourself not as stimulated as you might be if you sold your wares through a jobber and/or agent.
You may reach retail markets—other than those in your own home town—by contacting wholesalers and jobbers. Either your own or a city classified directory will list those in the line you have to sell. These wholesalers will, in turn, sell your product to retailers. It is best to find a jobber who does not already carry a line similar to yours. If he has similar lines, yours may be lost in the shuffle. Unless a jobber thinks your proposition is "pretty special" he is not very likely to push it.
You may sell your product by direct mail. Many mail-order operators earn from a few to several hundred dollars every month, devoting only their spare hours to selling by mail. In mail-order work, as in other lines, there are scattered cases of success out of the ordinary; for example, the St. Louis man who was a door-to-door salesman selling raincoats. Since he could cover only so much territory in a day, he started selling his raincoats by mail. His sales letters were so powerful that he sold in one mailing more raincoats than he could have sold in five years of door-to-door calls. He retired, a very wealthy man.
Almost everything that people want or need today is being successfully sold by mail. The problem is to find the right product and then develop it successfully. No one can tell you what you should sell, but don't try to sell by mail anything you don't like to handle; the mail-order specialists stress this over and over.
In making your selection, pick out something that is not too common and that will permit you a good margin for expenses and profits. There should be an element of the unusual in it, and preferably you should control its manufacture so that you can offer it as an exclusive item.
If you try to sell something commonly found in stores, you must sell it cheaper than the stores do, and as a rule this would not be very profitable.
It may be that you know exactly what you wish to sell by mail, but you may wonder if your product has mail-order possibilities. Find out. There are a number of mail-order counselors whose names you can easily obtain in the mail-order trade magazines found in your library. These counselors will advise you, at small cost, as to the practicability of your product, and their competent advice may enable you to explore and to develop a business based on your pet idea.
It is wise to recognize the fact, right from the start, that few mail-order houses offer only one item. You may find that a "line" of four or five items from which your customers may choose will be necessary.
Some mail-order businesses thrive on newspaper advertising, others on a combination of magazine and newspaper ads, while others use only direct mailing lists that they purchase. These lists, often selling for as high as five cents a name, bring good results if they are specialized. For example, if you wish to sell a food product, you should purchase lists of persons who have bought food by mail within a year.
The Farm Journal, published at Philadelphia, Penna., sells a record book that would be of inestimable value to anyone selling by mail and advertising in newspapers or magazines. It has spaces in which to record the number of replies you receive from each medium in which you advertise; don't do any advertising until you have one of these.
One of the best of the government bulletins is a 113-page booklet called "Establishing and Operating a Mail-order Business." This may be ordered from the United States Government Printing Office. It will answer almost all of your questions on a mail-order business, from how to choose a product to how to secure prospects for it.
Post a Comment