How to Get Your Product Onto Retailers' Shelves
As an entrepreneur with a new product, Doug Foreman, founder of the Guiltless Gourmet snack-food firm, learned that retail shelf space is scarce. His advice: Start with small stores near you and work up to bigger stores while you "create consumer demand" for your goods.
First, you should be able to show retail-chain buyers that your product is unique. If you make ketchup or soap, says Foreman, a buyer will likely ask you why yours should go onto the shelf when the store already has 10 other ketchups or soaps. "If the buyer can see what the consumer would go for," he says, "you can expect to get in without big bucks" spent on positioning.
For Guiltless Gourmet, based in Austin, Texas, Foreman had consumers' health concerns in his favor—the Guiltless tortilla chip contains no oil. A recent grocery industry study found that most consumers rank nutrition as their top priority when buying food; their preferences are for reduced salt, fat, and cholesterol.
Push your product at local festivals, especially if stores are slow in picking it up, says Foreman. While Foreman sold tortilla chips at fairs, "we would tell [customers] to go into the store and ask them [to carry the product] at the same time we'd be working the store." Then he would try to persuade the store to stock his chips, he says. "It's an approach we still use."
Foreman also aims his marketing at registered dietitians, fitness experts, aerobics instructors, and anyone "in the know who is telling people what they should be eating," he says.
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