Posts filed under 'The Tools You Need'
I innocently mentioned in a morning meeting that I was having trouble (ee gads, BIG TIME) keeping up with wholesale requests and vendor needs. This led to questions about how the process works right now. Which in turn led to immediate clarity that the wholesale account setup and ordering process for retailers was a mess, or in other words, doesn’t really work right now. We identified three main areas that are in need of serious help - the online shopping function is not completely implemented on our site, there is a major lack of links to the wholesale pages on our site (yikes), and we have way too manual of a process for keeping vendors updated.
Which means, basically, the whole process needs an overhaul. The first thing we are tackling is streamlining the ability for vendors to login and place their wholesale orders online through our secure ecommerce site. This will enable vendors to track orders better. We do have issues with an inability to set wholesale prices for some of “add-on” prices for the blankets. But we are very close to having online purchasing setup for the apparel collections. I know that when I have to order supplies, I LOVE being able to login and place my order online (should be standard right?). So why wouldn’t our customers appreciate this same convenience?
The next portion of our wholesale account setup process that needs attention is to make it very obvious to visitors of the site that we have wholesale options for retailers. Right now, there isn’t even a link to the wholesale page from a lot of our pages. HUGE oversight. Our retailers are a big part of our business, so the site needs to be informative to wholesale customers as much as it is to our direct retail customers.
Finally, we had to tackle the manual email response process and how to keep things from slipping through the cracks. In order to clean up this part of the process, we have to rewrite the content on our wholesale page, with clear directions on how to create an account. The biggest change will come from the creation of our wholesale docs page, which contain links to the current line sheets, product images, and other important information for our vendors. And, newsletters, newsletters, newsletters. We will send out a monthly newsletter (no, we’ve just never been able to get on top of this) to keep our wholesale customers updated on new product releases, blanket prints, pricing changes, and everything else that matters to their bottom line.
We have only been able to clean up small pieces of the process so far, but I’ve already noticed improvements. We are crazy busy these days, but are getting better at scheduling time to fix things that will increase customer confidence and relations.
October 19th, 2009
Oh bla dee - oh bla da, life goes on, la la la la life goes on. I’m sure that’s a trademarked phrase. We just got an email letting us know that Gerber® has trademark rights to the word “Onesies®”— we honestly had never even looked into it. So, we will be spending the next couple of days making sure that we are no longer infringing on their trademark. I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve been told that. I thought it was as generic as “t-shirt”, but nay.
Fall items are shipping
How in the world is everyone doing? Preparing to ship / already shipping your fall items? It’s already hard to find summer stuff in the stores around here. Well, I shouldn’t say hard, but there isn’t a huge selection. Stores are working on clearing out their summer items and bringing in new fall stuff.
Time to pitch gift guides
And in the PR arena, it’s gift guide pitching time. Remember to target your pitches to your audience. Visit magazine’s websites to find their editorial calendars. The editorial calendars will tell you the closing date and topics of upcoming issues. Magazines plan and complete their issues months ahead of the release date - so to get featured, your product / pitch has to be in their hands long before the closing, or completion, date.
Make re-ordering easy
Here’s a tip to increase business: make it easy for your customer’s to re-order. We just FINALLY created a wholesale quick order form. I love it! I love it! I love it! More importantly, all of our vendors were very excited to hear that we are making it easier for them to place their orders.
Have a great week!
July 20th, 2009
This post is in response to all the emails I get from buyers wondering where they can find unique products, and vice versa, from manufacturers wondering how to find buyers. So I wanted to share with all of you a great resource, no matter which side of the coin you’re on - the boutiqueup.com newsletters.
Lisa, from CreativeWritingStudios.com, has put together an bi-weekly email, similar to HARO, but aimed specifically at connecting buyers with manufacturers. There are two separate emails that go out - one where manufacturers list their product offerings and another where buyers who are openly buying list their product requests and contact information.
This is an invaluable resource for all of you who are looking to target your pitches at buyers who are actively seeking new lines. If you’ve been involved with any of the sales aspect for your company, then you know how hard it is to get the buyer’s attention, and even harder to find buyers who are looking for exactly what you’re offering. BoutiqueUp! is a free service (yes, I really said that and yes, it’s really true!), so make sure you sign up to receive the updates (sign up is at the bottom of the page).
Boutique UP! has a lot of additional services that you will want to look into - including a wholesale directory and wholesale catalog, and unique product reviews (she’ll create an amazing one-pager for you to send to retailers).
You should also contact Lisa if you are in need of writing services - she has incredible rates and I am familiar with her work, which is outstanding. She can write you web copy, your marketing materials, your press releases, etc. And like I said, the rates are reasonable for start-ups. Visit her at creativewritingstudios.com.
Keep on moving on!!!
January 24th, 2009
Ok, here we go ’round the mulberry bush. New regulations, new regulations, new regulations, we…all…fall…down. No, not really, but this stuff will make your head spin and that being the case, I’m not writing any advice about this - except for this one part:
**You must now issue a certificate of conformity with all of your shipments**
That should raise enough questions in your head. Start at fashion-incubator.com and keep your eyes there. I saw her sending out a request for more info from experts, so if we’re lucky, she’ll be posting even more information soon. Here’s the post to start on:
New product safety regulations that affect all manufacturers (fashion-incubator)
This is all due to the passing of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act.
Here’s the link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission page that deals with this topic.
Make sure you do your research on this one and that you have all your bases covered. Also note that there are extra special regulations for manufacturer’s of children’s products.
November 12th, 2008
I can’t believe I finally did this - I’ve uploaded a sample template of the sales cycle tracking sheet that I’ve been promising for so long!
This is the system that I’m using right now (template has generic names and private info removed). Of course, I just found a scratch piece of paper from when I originally had the spreadsheet idea and it has different columns. Now I can’t decide which is better, but I’m sticking with the one I’m already using for now.
The current system (which is a simple Excel file) works for me because it always has the next action I need to take for each prospect, and when that action should take place. As long as I visit, follow, and update the spreadsheet during my sales calls each day, then I’m keeping the pipeline full. There are always prospects to call, follow-up emails to send, and existing accounts to upsell to.
The scratch paper I found had each of the following bullet points as a separate column, in case some of you might find this way more useful:
- Prospect (store name)
- Contact Name
- Contact Number & Email
- Send Pitch (enter date occurred)
- Call (enter date occurred)
- Follow-up email (enter date)
- Appointment (enter y or n and date)
- Contact again on: (always have a date here)
- Signed PO? (enter y or n and date)
I hope that didn’t make it more confusing than not!
March 24th, 2008
Where did Amber go? It’s been a crazy time in my business-owner life since I last posted. We had a fabulous celebrity gifting event in January. I will do a post soon on what a difference our “spinning cake” display made for exposure during that event. (You can see the display cake pretty good in the photo to the right, follow the link above to view more celebrity photos).
I did a great follow-up job of coming home and writing up a press release. I even stayed up late to perfect it and get a bunch of images together to send to one big-traffic site. I got that sent and it paid off. We were featured the next morning.
Then I tweaked it a little for the other media outlets, put my computer on stand-by and never saw its happy face again. That was it, my computer crashed completely. I did an ok job of backups, except for my emails and email lists. Oh what a mistake that was - what a nightmare it has been catching up.
Get an external hard drive and set up automatic scheduled backups for all of your files. That’s my big duh-I-should-have-already-known-that lesson for the day. And I wanted to say I’m back and I really have a lot of posts coming up to share about press releases, affiliate programs, preparing for the next cash-and-carry events, creating a “wow” display, and all sorts of other things I’ve learned since the great crash of ‘08.
February 15th, 2008
My husband emailed me this link to Mind Tools-Essential Skills for an Excellent Career. Specifically, he sent me to the “Time Management” pages (I won’t get into whether or not that was a hint ! ha ha), which is the section I’ve gone through.
I found the site to be an incredibly great reminder of ways to ’stay on track’. I’m already great about To-Do lists, but now, I’m applying the priorities and then re-writing the list so that only “Important” items are at the top. And then I work down the list.
What I saw immediately is that some of my most important tasks have stayed on my To-Do list the longest. By having them buried somewhere in the middle, I’m able to excuse them by not really ’seeing’ them. Now these things are at the top and have to happen first. I can also see that I “skip” over them lightly because they are tasks I don’t like doing.
We’re working on tracking how long all of our tasks take, and that’s also a real eye-opener. I spend a lot more time dilly-dallying during the day than I thought I did. But this is good news (and not to be mistaken with IMPORTANT brain breaks and kid-time). It’s good news because it means I really DO have more time in the day to get stuff done. A lot of emails can be accomplished in a “found” 15 minutes.
The best by-product of this is that by the time I reach my night, my stress levels are down because I know I took care of the most important stuff for that day. If I keep working after the kids are in bed, it gets to be on some of my more enjoyable tasks - like DESIGNING!!!!
By the way - Project Runway is back on Wed. nights!!
November 30th, 2007
Finally! A picture of our booth at the ABC Show. Takes me forever to get pictures off our camera and uploaded and even
this picture cut off the top of the booth. But that was our booth at the show.
I see so many things that I would change already. We’re not at the point of having a hardwall booth yet, which I would love. I don’t know how much of a difference that would make. It is definitely different to do a show that has low (3′) sidewalls, vs. a show that has full 8 ft sidewalls.
Someday I’m going to come up with the perfect way to display our blankets. They need to be spread out so the name is eye-catching, but I also want to show that there is a variety of options.
Like I said in a previous post, all we can do is get better each time. Can you tell that I don’t like this booth anymore? Almost sounds like I’m trying to make excuses, but it is HONESTLY leaps and bounds above our first trade show display booth.
But you know, it’s a reminder that you have to just start somewhere and go for it. No matter what, you’re always going to want to make it better; there is always a part of you that will feel like if you just change this or that, THEN you’ll be ready to launch; THEN you’ll be ready to show off. But really, you have to just leap, you have to give yourself permission to have room for improvement. Make sure you believe in the quality of your products before leaping, of course. Quality matters a lot.
Basically, if we expect it to be perfect before we go for it, we’ll never start, we’ll never meet our own expectations (=misery), and we’ll miss the whole journey. Someday I’ll have a great trade show booth - for now we’re doing the best we can and trying different things each time.
October 4th, 2007
In all honestly, I don’t have all of our line sheets lined up right. I hate them and I hate doing them. As if I like any of the admin aspects of running the business. I think my problem is that I haven’t found a great template that I am happy with. I’ve had a couple of versions of a catalog, a look book, and previous line sheets - but I’m not satisfied with the look / feel of any of them. Now we have new styles and need new line sheets and I think I just don’t want to do them. I keep letting it fall farther down my to-do list and it’s so crucial for our sales. I can’t put them off any longer.
I’m working on the line sheet for our graphic tees and onesies. Not a big deal because all the images are finally done - including the new styles. I even started hashing out the layout for the line sheet. I’m going to be so happy when it’s done. Its getting to that point that annoys me right now.
A line sheet should be simple: technical sketches of the style, the fabrication, sizes available, colors available, and care instructions, pre-pack combinations. This is the main sales tool - the piece of paper that shows what you have, you could say they are as important as your samples, they are what prospective buyers can keep in their hands, what they can walk away with, what they can peruse and review at their will. Which reminds me that contact information needs to be on every line sheet.
I guess it’s making the line sheet look good that has me hung up right now. I do know, with 100% certainty that all of our line sheets and sales materials are going online to make sending them to people a lot easier. I need to simplify the wholesale inquiry process, so I need a simple link that I can email to potential clients.
Note that the line sheets do not have the prices on them. We maintain a separate price list. Create a pdf, upload it our site and send that link out like mad to wholesale prospects. It’s so easy Amber, just stop talking about it and do it already.
September 30th, 2007
I have to learn not to be so reactionary. I have to learn to implement some standard operating procedures and then follow them. We’re starting with standard status meetings. Pop, pop, fizz, fizz, what a relief that is. We’re all on the same page. I never realize how much I’m keeping in my head ALL THE TIME.
I kind of expect everybody else to just know what needs to get done because I do. I kind of expect everyone to hold everything as a high priority, because I do. But no one can read my mind. And if I’m keeping it all inside, I’m getting frustrated at what’s not getting done insted of just making it happen.
I catch myself thinking that just because I’ve mentioned something in passing at one point in time, the person I mentioned it to will know that means it’s now a to-do for them. Sounds totally ridiculous when I write it out, but it is something I’m recognizing.
We’re now documenting everything. So that all the to-do’s are visible to everyone and assigned to someone. We’re setting deadlines for all the little tasks. I can’t believe how big the big picture is, how important it is to sit down and re-visit everything you have on your plate. You’ll find out what is really a priority and what can maybe wait for the zillion other things in front of it.
We’re gearing up for the holidays, so we’re trying to add as much sanity as we can before the insanity slams us.
And concretely - we’ve planned a marketing / sales campaign that we’ll realistically be able to launch by the end of next week.
September 26th, 2007
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