1. Choosing the wrong retailer for your brand
- Getting your products into any retailer can seem and is a big win for any small, upcoming brand, but picking the wrong retailer to position your product can sometimes affect the integrity and ethos of your brand.
- “Where does your customer expect to see you?” Listen to Ally Ross’ advice on positioning your brand. Ally has over 13 years experience in FMCG industry and has held roles at Nestle, Aldi and Vegan Kind.
2. Biting off more than you can chew & growing your brand too quickly- yes there is such a thing.
- It is a good idea to create a checklist of everything you need in order to be ‘retail ready’ so to speak. These points can include things such as: Do you have manufacturing capabilities to deliver on large orders to mass retailers? Do you have the team to manage your accounts if you are in several retailers? If not consider using a retail management company like our business to support you.
- The Good Food Group often see brands make the mistake of wanting to be in every single retailer within the very first year. We highly recommend and strongly believe it is better to establish your brand in one major retailer and succeed in getting the brand noticed by utilising investment within marketing and promotions.
- Brands should utilise the opportunity of any listing and work as hard as possible to maximise visibility and availability within that retailer to drive performance and prove internally that the strategy works, before trying to get ahead of themselves, so they can replicate the successful strategy in other retailers.
3. Not properly planning/ preparing for retail margins and budgets.
- Retail listings can often come with pretty hefty product margins, so make sure you have carefully considered and achieved an optimal cost price of your product, to ensure that the retail listing is making profitable sense for your brand, after all you are a business too!
- Also, ensure that you have an adequate marketing budget for Above-The-Line activities, retailers who stock your product will expect you to have a clear strategy on how you are going to drive customers to their store and purchase your product. Planning and having substantial budgets is vital, and is a mistake we see regularly with new brands looking to get into retail, who don’t have this planned out.
4. Not supporting the retail listing outside of stores.
- Brands often believe that just having the product in retail shelves is enough to drive sales and use their other channels to market their D2C online business as they see better end margins through their own channel and own the customer. This is completely understandable, but in fact ensuring you are pointing people to the retailer to purchase is JUST AS IMPORTANT.
- For example, imagine moving your product from 200 stores to 2,000 stores in the same retailer, the increase would be a massive jump for your business, so improving sales with outside activity is just as important to ensure sales exceed expectations.
5. Not having the right product branding
- Choosing the right design for your packaging, that appeals to your market and not just you and your team is so important in having success in retail. Don’t make the mistake of just picking a design you like, if you are not your target demographic.
- Think about what is going to give your brand and product shelf appeal, be competitive and shout of the key unique selling points. Do your research.
Have you made any of these mistakes? Don’t worry! It is so normal and launching your products into retail for the first time can be a really daunting prospect. That’s why here at The Good Food Group and Buyer’s Discovery Club, we are dedicated to developing, nurturing & growing innovative brands of the future.
Contact our team today, if you think your brand has all the ingredients to be successful in retail.
