You did it! You opened up your dream account. You put up a celebratory post on Linkedin and wait for the reorders to come, but the orders come in slower than expected. A few months pass and your buyer who was your biggest fan tells you that you are underperforming. You have a few more months to scramble and hit your numbers, but it’s too late, and when your category review comes up, you’re out...
This happens like clockwork in the retail industry. Brands get excited about getting into a new store, but don’t understand the processes and financial commitment it takes to push the product off the shelf.
One of the hardest things to do is to re-open a store that you have been pulled from. Most brand’s have one shot, so you want to get it right.
Creating a successful trade spend doesn’t start when you snag your first retailer, instead, it begins the moment you create the pricing structure for your product. You need to have the % built into your price for trade spend so that your margins are healthy enough to support your retail partnerships with various programs.
We broke down pricing your product with Sarah Delevan below:
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From the moment you get into your first retail door, you want to be testing the best tactics for your brand to move off the shelf. Below we outline the key tactics that make up a brand’s trade spend program:
Merchandising
Merchandising is key to any brand’s success. You want to make sure that you are in your retail locations constantly and ensuring that your product is on the correct shelf, with the correct pricing, and fully stocked. Customers can’t buy your product if it’s out of stock or in the wrong area, so you want to have the appropriate boots on the ground strategy to avoid this. Whether it’s yourself, a team member, or a third-party company, you want to make sure that you have a plan in place to have eyes on your product.
Promotions
People like promotions, duh! But when it comes down to which ones to pick, it can be a nightmare. Do you pick OI or an MCB. What’s the difference between a TPR and a IRC? You have found yourself in an acronym maze and you can’t find your way out. Luckily we put together this acronym cheat sheet for you and covered this topic in our finance chat with Alice Zhang below. The truth is that you need to find the promotions that work best for you, identify which ones produce baseline lift (% lift increase the week after you’re on promotion), and stick to your playbook when entering a new retailer. Retailers will try and push their own promotional programs on you, but if you have historical data on what works, you can easily justify your decisions and feel confident in your plan.
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Demos
Demos can be a critical piece to your trade spend plan. Some products don’t need a lot of demoing because the value proposition is clear. Take
for example. They have a very clear value proposition and they execute on their other trade spend initiatives, so they haven’t had to rely on demos to increase velocity. If your product needs to be demoed or the value proposition is not as clear as some (i.e., a healthier chip), then you definitely want to prioritize this tactic, but you also want to be intentional about it. Demos can be expensive and you rarely want to opt into the store offered option. You want yourself, a team member, or someone trained on the brand to run the demo. Demos can cost hundreds of dollars for just one demo, so you want to make sure the person behind the table represents the company well and speaks with confidence about the product and brand.
Owned Campaigns
Similar to our conversation in the previous module about first-party data, most brands don’t understand how much influence they can have on their retail success by engaging their online community. Through tools like WeStock, you can drive your followers, customers, and subscribers in-store through email notifications and SMS promotions. This way you own the entire process, can follow the redemptions, and have transparency in the customer journey. We would love to chat with you about owned campaigns and how they can help drive same store sales for your brand at
Now that you have created your trade spend game plan and know exactly how your product is going to fly off the shelf, let’s touch base on the distributor’s role in all of this and how securing distribution first can often be a distraction.
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Velocity, Explained
