What are the best-kept secrets to finding new wholesale accounts?
2010/02/03 5:08 PM
Okay I hear you! You want to know creative ways you can find new wholesale accounts while doing it all yourself! This is still exciting for me because when I started my first handbag line 13 years ago…..there was no social media, no google and barely anyone had a website and stores were not on email yet. We had to snail mail all our catalogs – no zip it and email back then…….and this was not that long ago.
In my company we are always looking for new stores. It is something we (well my sales staff to be honest) do every day. Even if it’s only for an hour, we find at least 5 new stores a day to contact. They don’t all bite, but we make the effort……every day! To keep all this organized, we use Palm desktop. Just google it and you can find a free download. It’s a great program and keeps all our stores organized by prospective customer, current customer, website, etc….
1. So my favorite thing to do is to look at my competitor’s websites. You know by now that I don’t really see people as competitors, but rather as a minor challenge to overcome and surpass. Everyone likes to brag and show off how many stores they are selling to so the pickings are there for the taking. Just go visit a few and you will be jumpin’ for joy when you hit the jackpot. Just download the list and start calling to get the buyers name and be sure it is the right store for your product. YES – this takes time, but Rome was not built in a day and neither can your business flourish overnight. This is blood, sweat and sales baby!
2. Another fun one is to google google google. Give these a whirl and see what comes up. Get the picture? Try it 
with and w/o quotes around the phrase. You get different results.
Boutiques Atlanta (or whatever city)
Dog Boutiques Boulder
Lingerie shops Baltimore
Citysearch + city of your choice
City/shopping ex: Charleston/shopping
Chamber of commerce + city – some of them have a shopping tab
3. Check out magazines on the rack or other online resources. Magazines list retailers either on the page with the item or in the shopping guide in back…..really useful to check those out.
Here are two online resources we use:
http://www.luckymag.com/shopping/stores/index/store_directory
http://live.storeadore.com
4. One more recently discovered tip is to use Tweepsearch. Enter in specific search terms and see if anyone on twitter has boutiques that are right for you. You can also build your twitter followers this way and reach your target market faster.
Here are some examples of things we use to search for stores:
Clothing boutique
Baby boutique
Gift Boutique
Email me back with any suggestions you have or tips I can share with everyone!
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There are 5 comments
Sheena Edwards says: Sarah, Once again your blog is awesome. I have been doing this with twitter, but the search engine you recommend is 120% better than the one I was using. Thanks again for some valuable information for a start up company like Lizzie Lou Shoes.
Thank you for all the amazing tips & suggestions. Going to try Palm desk right away! I agree with Sheena, this is wonderful information for start up companies. We do a lot of pavement pounding for sure!
Sarah,
Yep, I totally agree with you. Back when I was pitching wholesalers, Google was my best friend. Armed with websites and email addresses, I pitched to my heart’s content and landed most of my first stores that way.
I’ll check out Palm desk – I used to just create my own wholesale pitch tracking sheet using Excel.
Thanks for the tips! As always, you rock. ;D
Heather
One idea we use is to subscribe to some trade magazines (yeah, those funny things using paper that require only light to run). Many of them do review of stores in different regions or emerging stores. For example, Women’s World Daily. Also, the US Department of Commerce is a great resource if you want to expand internationally.
This was awesome! Thank you so much. I have been struggling with this as well as getting the re-orders from existing retailers.
I was also just thinking about the twitter thing and wondering how I could increase my tweet peeps.
Thanks,
Rhett
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Building an email list can be tough, I totally agree. But an email list is just as important as social media in my opinion. Social media is fleeting. Your customer might not see your post flash by, the FB or Instagram algorithm changes all the time so you never really know if anyone is seeing your posts (as much as you hope at least), and unless they purchase, it’s hard to tell if it is driving traffic or not.
When I started my handbag line, the internet was just getting started, and people were just beginning to get online for the first time and the biggest thing since sliced bread was www.match.com.
Note the www…… everyone used that back then so you’d KNOW it was a website. LOL.
And to get on the website, even just to learn more about it, you needed an email address to get past their “paywall”. The Paywall was a pop up of sorts that asked for your name and email in order to “grant” you access to see what was behind the curtain. They built a list of millions in a few short weeks and that was more valuable than anyone just “knowing” about their company because they could market to them incessentanly.
Daily. And I mean sometimes multiple times a day. I’d never seen anything like this.
They were the first company that I knew of who “collected” emails, then turned around and marketed to you to get you to sign up for their services. And they were relentless……
I’m not saying you need to send emails daily, or emails multiple times a day, but if you don’t email your list at least weekly, they will forget about you and end up buying something similar chez someone else who is sending them emails.
So Why are Pop ups so important? Pop ups are a way to collect emails via your own “Paywall” and continue to market to potentially interested customers. If they take the time to sign up (first baby step) then they are showing you that they are on the first step of the staircase and want to keep walking up. It’s your job to keep enticing them to the top! AKA buy something.
Step 1: Sign up with a content management system like Active Campaign, Mailchimp, Klayvio or whichever one you like best. I like Active Campaign and have been using it for over 10 years. Some people choose to use the forms that come with these programs and I have too in various situations, but I also recommend Privy if you use Shopify, and Ninja Pops if you use Wordpress. They can easily be installed and connected to these CMS systems.
Step 2: The first and easiest way to collect emails is to have a homepage pop up with an offer for a % off the first order. That is a way to ‘collect” emails and give something in return. It’s the first step in building rapport with your potential customers. It’s like saying, let’s be friends, I’ll give you something you want, and you give me something I want, your email.
Step 3: Make sure you have an automation set up in the CMS system. This is an automated email series that will be sent to anyone who gives you their email address on your pop up. I call it the Hello Series. The idea of this series is to again, build rapport, and tell the customer a bit about you and your company over a 2 week period. This series has nothing to do with your regular email marketing emails. This is a sole and separate email series to build rapport so just set it and forget it. Yes customers will probably get some of these on the same days as other marketing emails but just don’t worry about it.
This is how it works:
a: The first email to go out immediately is the one with the coupon code they just signed up for. Add something about your brand and photos of your products linking to your website.
b: The second one goes out the next day and asks them if they had a chance to use the coupon yet, and then tells them to whitelist your email so they don’t miss your promotions and special offers for people on your list. Always have images of products that link to your website.
c: The third email goes 4 days later and in this one I like to tell a story about how I got started with the business. Add images and links here too.
d: The fourth email shares something cool about your business. Could be some nice stores you are in, a press placement, a celebrity who has your stuff or perhaps posted about it on Instagram. It can also be a tutorial about how to use your products, or a blog post you wrote on a topic they’d be interested in. Share something that will make them feel happy for you, and encourage them to hang with you.
e: The fifth and final email in this sequence encourages them to follow you on social media. I like to entice them with “doing” something in exchange for a gift. Could be something like “post your photo using or wearing our product, and be entered in our monthly drawing for a free X”.
Step 4: Now that you have collected more emails with a pop up, your ongoing marketing efforts will start to pay off faster. As the list continues to build, you’ll have more people to market to, invite to events you do, and share your good news with. Hopefully they will become loyal customers, share your site with friends, and continue to be an active part of your social media channels. Keep sending emails weekly ( at least) to your list so keep them active and engaged. I’m sure you’ll see a big difference.
If you want ideas to help you fill in the blanks about the above, drop me a comment below and I’ll be happy to help out.
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