Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line?
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Discuss the process of getting your t-shirt line into brick and mortar stores and selling offline. Topics include industry tradeshows, events, line sheets, sales reps and other retailing tips and advice.
Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line?
Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line?
Not sure if this would be better suited for the marketing section but here i go anyways. I started getting serious about my clothing brand about 6 months ago and everything has been going well. Sales are ok and a lot of people in the area recognize us. We sponsor local athletes, teams, and events and are preparing to set up booths at some pretty major wakeboarding and motocross events this summer. On top of all this everyone seems to like our designs. Here is the problem. My business partner and I have to sell everything ourselves, minus the help from a couple reps, and we would really like to see some of our product in stores, even if that takes a large chunk out of our income. When I approach a store the first thing they ask is, "which stores carry your product now?" and the answer is none. This seems to turn them off and question the brands popularity. I also get a lot of comments about how shoppers go for the brands they recognize first and that my product will be lost behind everything else. So if stores wont carry our product because other stores aren't carrying our product how on earth am I supposed to get this first store to carry our product? Haha confusing I know but this is a major wall we need to get over. Please post your honest opinions, no need to be gentle. I am still young and have much to learn. By the way our product can be seen on the facebook group titled "Metab". The site is currently down for maintenance
Thanks
Have you gone to any stores and offered your shirts on memo? Memo is like consignment. You drop of say 20 shirts that the stores cost would be $10 apiece on. They sign a receipt saying the shirts were received. You return to the store in two weeks or a month and collect your money if any of your shirts have sold. It may be your only way to get your shirts in the store by letting it cost them nothing. Obviously if your shirts sell well, then they will want to stock them. You can do this at a few stores, then you can tell other stores that they carry them, and leave out the memo part.
Stores won't take your clothes because they're in no other stores -> But you can't get them into stores because you're not already in any.
So basically you just need to try and break the chain, if you've got confidence, and invest time and money into your business, you're smartly dressed, know what you're talking about, once you get that one placement, everything will fall into place, like a dominoes effect.
Re: Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line?
I've tried to do the whole consignment think and I have had some interest from one store but the deal hasn't gone through yet. Even though consignment isn't costing the store money directly, it is costing them space, which in turn costs them money. In their eyes my product will be taking up space for another product that they already know will sell. I am confident that my product will sell, especially if it is advertised in the store as being a local brand, I just need to find a way to convince store owners of this. I am from a smaller city of around 70 000 people and believe some shoppers would be happy to see two local companies working together.
This is a discussion about Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line? that was posted in the Offline Retail and Tradeshows section of the forums.
Store placement - what to do if stores want to see prior placement before carrying your line? 
