Product Reps.

While we're waiting to meet with another graphics designer, I made a phone call to a store that we were trying to get our product in. They had gone to our website and decided our product wasn't a fit for them. Bummer! The good news is while I was talking to them, I found out that they were Product reps. I was able to get a lot of information from them as far as how Reps work.

First you have to find a showroom that handles products like yours. Then talk to them about handling your product or line. The showroom charges between 10-15% commission typically. The reps work for the show rooms and get paid out of that 10-15%. There are a lot of stores that won't talk with a manufacturer directly, they only deal with reps. So if you want any chance of hitting a wider market, you will have to find a rep.

The other thing that he told me was that if I wholesale to the show room an item for $10.00 then the retail price would typically be $20.00. If I am selling on the internet with a website my price has to be no lower than $20.00 or I will have a difficult time selling to the stores. If you need to bump up your wholesale price to take care of the commission charged by the showrooms, you need to make sure that your price on the web is at least double your wholesale price.

My next venture when we go to the Seattle gift show in Feb. is going to go to a show room and do some investigating. One of the things I want to find out is, if we sign on with a showroom, how much inventory do we need to have available to ship? I mean if they can sell to 500 locations and each location wants 10 units to start with, then I should have 5000 units ready? Don't know but will find out. Stay tuned for the exciting developments!!!