Selling to Retailers
Jump 7 is a product sales agency, based in the UK, helping clients sell their products into the retail and distribution world. They have a passion and focus on products that offer at least one of these factors:
- Offer something innovative, unique or fun
- Solve a problem
- May benefit from being explained or demonstrated
We partner with Jump 7 to enable to complete service from sketch on a napkin to product on the shop shelves.
Our Process
Preparation Working together with Nick, you can establish your pricing for your products and also establishing some kind of sales or marketing material to help with the sales efforts. Nick will also learn all about your product(s) and brand, with guidance from you, so he understands all the Unique Selling Points, features, benefits, any competition to know about etc. so Jump 7 can do their very best to sell your products effectively.
Selling your products and getting feedback Nick will then act much like an outsourced Sales Director, reaching out to prospects – retailers, distributors and others – with the aim of getting orders for your products from these businesses. It is just this sort of work that enabled Jump 7 to get one if its client’s products (a kitchen accessory called SIFTR) selected and purchased by retailers such as Lakeland, mail order company Scotts of Stow, and QVC in both the UK & USA, leading to over £500,000 worth of orders in the past 12 months. For another client, Physicool, who make consumer medical products, Jump 7 have sold into twenty countries around the world through a range of distributors, hospital, sports and retail contacts, with order values typically ranging being between £2,000 and £30,000 per order. He will also keep you informed of progress, feedback about your products – good and bad – and help you on the journey as the brand grows.
Once an order is received, either you will have to send the goods to the purchasing company, or they may instead pick up the goods from your factory or warehouse. If you manufacture goods in China for example, one normal option is to get the purchasing company to pick up the goods from China using their own shipping company. Depending on whether you have stock of your product available or not may alter the timelines for delivering goods. It’s quite normal for many of the medium to larger sized retailers to place orders a considerable time ahead of requiring stock. So, if you receive an order in February for example, you may not need to deliver the goods until June-September, depending on the retailers. Thus, you do not necessarily need to have stock ready there and then before going out selling. If you do have stock ready when receiving orders, some retailers may take it within a few days or weeks, but equally it’s ok to explain the stock will not be ready until many months later. Throughout the process Jump 7 will help you manage and work through the process of receiving the order, guiding you on the logistics and useful contacts to help with that and sending goods out to the purchasing company.
Outsourced, on demand sales expert
Rather than have to do the sales yourself (or hire an expensive employee to do it) use Jump 7 to go out into the market and sell your products on your behalf. They have the contacts, the know-how and the understanding of the retail market to do this for you, saving you the very considerable time that would be needed to do it without help. Jump 7 will be in contact with you throughout the process so you are kept well informed on progress.
Experience and Contacts
Jump 7 have sold hundreds of different products into the retail world over the past decade, from gifts, toys, pet accessories, sports products, kitchen and home accessories, medical products, travel products, and health & beauty products to name but a few. By using Jump 7 you will be able to tap into the key factors to ensure success, make sure you are selling at a price that makes it work profitably for you and the purchasing retailers, and avoid expensive and unnecessary pitfalls along the way. Most people find this invaluable, especially if it’s your first foray into selling / launching a consumer product.
No Obligation
At the very least, do have an initial chat with CEO of Jump 7, Nick Christie, who was in your shoes 15 years ago, and has been selling consumer products since then, both for his own business, and then since then helping many other brands follow the same journey.
Nick will be able to talk to you openly about the opportunities and challenges ahead, tips on how to succeed, how to price up your product to make sure you are profitable, what to do about selling direct to consumers on your own website or Amazon, and many other things that will be helpful to know. You are also free to ask him any questions that you want and that may be puzzling you, however brilliant or simple they may seem.
You are under no compulsion whatsoever to take things any further with Jump 7 and of course Nick will explain how it all works if you did work together. You may not be in a position to work together when you talk, but it’s good to chat through things anyway to help you plan for the future.
If you did want to spend a day together it can be a great help and as one client who did this simply said:
FAQs
What is a distributor?
Whilst a retailer is more straightforward to understand – so a shop such as John Lewis or Tesco for example, sometimes people are less clear on what a distributor is, or how they might fit into things.
Most often Jump 7 will sell straight into retailers, but sometimes it makes sense to use a distributor. The easiest way to understand how a distributor would fit into the equation is to imagine you are trying to sell into Brazil for example (from the UK). If you don’t speak Portuguese, live in Brazil or know the retailers there directly, it can be very difficult to sell into the Brazilian market. So instead, you could choose to sell to a single distributor, a company who might be in Rio for example, and they already import goods from around the world – which they sell onto the retailers in Brazil that they already know and supply with other goods.
As such, you simply sell to one company in Brazil, and they then sell onto the retailers there. You tend to have higher MOQ’s (Minimum Order Quantities) to sell to a distributor – as you have to give them a cheaper price than a retailer would need – but in turn they pay for all shipping of goods, they warehouse the goods in their own country and they also have to translate any sales & marketing material into their own language.
How long does it take to get orders?
There is no single answer to this very fair question. Sometimes it takes only a few days, sometimes it can take much longer. It can depend on the type of product, what time of year it is and when buyers (the decision makers at retailers) make their decisions.
Do I need to have manufactured stock to go out there selling?
The simple answer is no. As long as you have got an understanding of the price of your product and some kind of sales or marketing material to help explain your product (it doesn’t need to be printed), that is enough to get out there selling. Samples are a “nice to have” but not essential.
Is it ok to sell directly to consumers as well as selling to retailers?
Within reason, the earlier the better, so you are equipped with the knowledge about what you will need to go out there selling, to discuss how it would work if working with Jump 7, and to be best prepared for the journey ahead. An initial chat can also be of great help to you – Nick can act as a good sounding board for any ideas you may have, or questions you may be pondering.
At what stage of my product development should I speak to Jump 7?
Within reason, the earlier the better, so you are equipped with the knowledge about what you will need to go out there selling, to discuss how it would work if working with Jump 7, and to be best prepared for the journey ahead. An initial chat can also be of great help to you – Nick can act as a good sounding board for any ideas you may have, or questions you may be pondering.
Overview of Selling to Retailers
What are the pre-requisites for the service:
A professionally produced product presentation of a concept that has been designed for cost-effective manufacture is a basic requirement. Often samples or prototypes might also be necessary but not always. We also suggest that you have considered IP protection before we start promoting your idea as retailer buyers are often willing to sign NDAs and requesting this can prove to be another hurdle to getting your product in front of the right people.
The cost of producing your product that is also close to essential, as of course when speaking to potential retailers and distributors – both here in the UK and overseas – one of the first questions they may ask is, “How much does it cost” (for them to buy off you)? We can help you price up the product correctly, so you make the profit you need, but yes some good indication of likely cost of manufacturing is useful.
You do NOT need to have manufactured stock to head out there selling, getting feedback and hopefully receiving “Purchase Orders”, but certainly at least one or two samples are very helpful, even if they are not in finalised form yet.
What is likely to come next after we’ve delivered this service:
If we are going out into the market to sell your product then the ultimate aim of course is to get you orders for your products from retailers and distributors, or other companies who might purchase your goods. Along the way Jump 7 will also get your feedback on your products, may uncover other revenue generating opportunities (e.g. it might work as a Corporate gift) and can guide you to succeed as your brand and products hopefully take off.
Jump 7 also offer a one day Consulting/masterclass session, focused on your business, giving you all the information you need to help launch your business and make it a success (with top tips to succeed and how to avoid expensive pitfalls etc). This can be done before starting to sell / market your products, and as such can be done without manufacturing costs and samples in hand.
Why use you to deliver the service:
We have been selling consumer products into the retail word for the past 15 years. In fact 15 years ago we were in very similar shoes to where you are probably now – we had a product idea, but were new to the world of making and selling consumer products. We often think, “If only I knew back then what I know now, life would have been so much easier!”
Back then our first retailer we sold into was Marks & Spencer and our first order was for 30,000 units of our product (worth around £250,000 to our business) and since then we have sold into a huge variety of retailers including: John Lewis, Tesco, QVC TV Shopping Channel, British Airways, Robert Dyas, Lakeland, P&O Ferries, Halfords, mail order catalogue companies such as JD Williams and Coopers of Stortford, and internationally to the USA, Canada, Australia and across Europe for example.
We have helped a number of brands who have appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den and its USA equivalent, Shark Tank.
If you don’t have the time, the contacts, the knowledge, or possibly even the urge to go out and sell your products to the retail world then Jump 7 could be your ideal partner to help you do this.
What are the limitations of the service:
We strongly believe we can help you on your journey, especially having followed the same path many times over the past 15 years. However, it’s important to note that Jump 7 do not buy stock off you, and instead sell your products on your behalf, in bulk, to purchasing retailers and distributors. It is impossible to guarantee success, but working together we will do everything we can to ensure a successful outcome, and a brand that goes from strength to strength.