People think of the pet store market as primarily Petco and PetSmart and then a large number of small stores, but pet products are actually sold in many other locations including convenience stores, big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, and even grocery stores. So the market is wide open, and the interest in pet products is sky high as people are spending more and more money on pet accessories. So now is a great time to proceed with a pet product.

Trade Magazines

I always like to recommend that people start their marketing and sales program early, even before a product is completely developed, by subscribing to the industry trade magazines. These magazines tell you about the industry, often give you names of key buyers, distributors and manufacturers reps, and provide an outlet for your new product announcements when your product is ready to sell. The pet market has three strong trade magazines:

Pet Age:  http://www.petage.com/
Pet Business:  http://www.petbusiness.com/
Pet Products:  http://www.petproductnews.com/

When you start reading trade magazines be sure to look closely in the new product announcement sections for pet businesses near where you live. You might be able to make some contacts at that business just by showing up and talking to the marketing and sales people. Send away for literature on products in your category as you might get letters from manufacturer reps in your area who could later turn into key contacts.

Trade Shows

The industry also has a major trade show, the Global Pet Expo, held this year from February 29th to March 2nd at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando Florida. The show is a great place to meet possible buyers from all the major companies and many buyers of smaller stores. If you are not quite ready to exhibit it is still a great show to attend, just tell the show you are planning on introducing a product the next year and that you would like to attend the show to see what it is like.

Pet Distributors

Pet products are often sold through distributors and there is an active distributor association: the Pet Industry Distributor Association, www.pida.org. Their site also includes a list of all the distributor members at http://www.pida.org/memberdirectory/index.cfm#product.

This is an excellent site with a great deal of information about the industry and it has many useful links. You can sell directly to the distributors or sell to distributors through manufacturers’ representatives.

Manufacturers Sales Representatives

There are a large group of manufactures’ sales representatives that sell pet products.  Often the reps concentrate one market, such as convenience stores or Petco and PetSmart so you can end up with a large network of representatives to sell your product. The best way to find sales reps is to attend a trade show. If you don’t have a booth, you can still meet reps by talking to people at tables in the snack area, and by going to small booths and asking who the sales reps are for your geographic area. If you can find one or two reps in your area to support you, often they will help you set up a strong rep network.

If you can’t get to a show, the best way to find reps is to get subscriptions to the trade magazines and send away for literature from every product remotely connected to yours. When you receive literature, often it will contain the names of local reps. Contact the reps and arrange to meet him for lunch or a late afternoon coffee or drink and then see if he will represent you.

If those two approaches don’t work you can also buy a sales rep list from One Stop Invention Shop by going to the site http://onestopinventionshop.net/books/sales-reps/ and purchasing a list on pet market sales reps for $24.99.

Selling to Petco or Petsmart

Often your best bet on selling to these companies is to use a manufacturers’ representative that has purchasing contacts. But you can approach either company on your own too.

Contact the Petco corporate offices by letter: Petco Animal Supplies, Inc., 9125 Rehco Rd., San Diego, CA 92121; or by fax: (858) 784-3489. The company’s main phone number is (877) 738-6742.

Petco also has a web site where inventors can submit their idea,
https://partners.petco.com/cs/vportal/custom/not_doing_business.htm  explains how to submit and idea and the web page http://petco.mysourcingcenter.com is the page you go to when you are ready to submit your idea.

Petsmart is a little more difficult to get into.  You can try mailing a sample to the company headquarters: Petsmart, 9601 N. 27th Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona 85027 Phone: (623) 580-6100.  I found you have a better approach by locating a Petsmart buyer on LinkedIn and then sending information through an email or mail to the buyers, who are mostly located at the companies Phoenix headquarters. These two pages will help you find a buyer: www.linkedin.com/title/associate+buyer/at-petsmart/ and www.linkedin.com/title/buyer/at-petsmart/.  If you don’t have a LinkedIn account you will need to set one up.

Related posts:

1. Sales Reps for Pet Products
2. Selling to the Outdoor Retail Market
3. Selling into the Kitchenware and Gourmet Food Market

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Most inventors need to sell their product through sales reps primarily because they don’t have the market contacts they need to sell the product on their own.  Reps are always interested in finding new lines, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to sign them up. Reps are only interested in your line if they will make money from it and your product will add to their reputation. So don’t take it for granted that you will easily land reps.  Instead be prepared to create your best opportunity for success.

Points to Know About Reps

• They want to be sure they can make at least $10,000 a year off your product
• They will want an exclusive agreement in their territory for the markets they serve
• For most consumer products they will want a commission of 10 to 12%
• Reps consider their customers to be the keys to their business, so you must realize that the reps will take the customers side on most issues
• If reps aren’t being successful with your product they won’t spend time on it.  You need to be prepared to change reps when they don’t produce revenue for you

Generating Interest

Whether you develop you own list of reps, (http://onestopinventionshop.net/blog/2011/02/setting-up-a-sales-rep-network/) or buy a rep list (one stop invention shop has a large number of rep lists for sale http://onestopinventionshop.net/books/sales-reps/), you have to start by getting the reps interest.  Often, even reps in your area, or reps recommended by retailers in your area will ask for some information prior to talking further with you. The best way to respond is through email. But don’t load the email up with a lot of attachments. Instead put everything in the body of the email, including the pictures. Remember your goal in the first email is not to sell the rep on the idea of carrying the product, the goal is just to get them to talk further with you. I found the short simple email gets you the best results. Try to cut down the file size of all the pictures so that the email opens as quickly as possible.

Your email should include:

• A short statement that you have a new product and that you are looking for reps to sell into a market, state what you market is
• A picture of the product, outside the package in use if possible
• A picture of the product in its packaging
• A picture of the product on the store shelves
• The product’s suggested retail price
• A short list of the products benefits
• A list of major sales achievements to date
• A statement that if the reps would like to know more or would like to receive a product sample to call or email you

Follow-up

Once you have a representative interested start by checking them out to show your professionalism.

Ask the following questions:

• What are you target accounts?
• How many products are in your line?
• What are those products?
• How many sales people are in the organization?
• How long have they been in business?
• What was the last new product the you took on?

If the rep looks promising then you have three options.

1. Give out additional information on the phone and through email and send a sample.
2. Answer all his or her questions and the send a complete package of information that they can then use to decide if they want to carry your product. The package should include a sample product, pricing packages, store displays and brochures, both for store owners and to be used at small regional shows or literature the reps can use to present products to retailers. Also include a list of frequently asked questions, and details about where the product has been sold to date, or if you don’t currently have sales show whatever research you have to done to date.
3. Offer to work with the rep to create a special package to launch at their three top customers. This package should be to help generate sales at the stores. It could be an in-store demonstration, as special interactive display, a contest of some sort with a meaningful prize, or a package sale where you offer a complementary product, either from you or from another vendor, to generate sales. You might also decide to guarantee sales, which means that you will take the product back if the product doesn’t sell at the first three retailers.

As you probably already know, the more steps you take to land a rep the better off you are. Reps can sell a product for you for years and the upfront costs to get them started is very important.

Personal Visits vs. Phone Calls

Most of this work can be done over the phone, but if at all possible I recommend you visit your first one or two potential reps in person. You may be doing something wrong, you may have items you have neglected, or there might be steps you could take to improve your chances. All of these items might come out in a personal visit while they might not come out in a phone call. The other reason for a personal visit is that reps are often reluctant to take on a product line where you don’t have any other reps or an established network of retailers. A personal visit gives you a chance to build rapport with reps and that rapport might help you land your first rep.

Be sure to visit the page http://onestopinventionshop.net/books/sales-reps/ to see what types of rep lists are available from One Stop Invention Shop for $24.99 each.

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Identifying the right target market can often be the difference between success and failure for new products. The right market will be more willing to accept, and ready to pay more for, the right product, and the wrong market will be slower to accept your product and will require more marketing efforts, cutting down on your profits. So choose your target market carefully. There are many factors that determine the right target market, and this part will cover two important factors: market size and pricing.

When you determine your market you need to answer these questions:

1. Who are your customers? (income level, gender, hobbies, etc.)
2. Where do they live? (city, state, region, or country)
3. How will they find you? (they belong to an online community, read a certain newspaper, go to certain stores, etc.)

Markets that are the right size for inventors

While many inventors want to enter a big market with lots of customers, this is most often a mistake. Your marketing efforts (unless you have a huge marketing budget) will probably be more like a drop in a bucket than a big splash and it is unlikely that consumers will notice.
You want to choose a market small enough that you can make that market notice your marketing efforts. As your budget grows, your market can expand, but you need to consider what funds and time you have now for marketing your product.

Your market maybe be local, or include specialty shops or boutiques. You may sell just through one retail outlet or through catalogs to begin with.

These Quick Strike Methods should give you a good start in bringing your product to market. Bringing a product to market is difficult, but also exciting and has potential for great rewards. At any point if you need help, let me know. Even if I personally can’t help you, the One Stop Invention Shop has a great team of associates that handle all aspects of inventing, from prototyping, patents, manufacturing to selling or licensing your product.

Pricing is aligned with inventor’s costs

Most inventors don’t realize all the hidden costs in selling a product. For instance, selling to retailers through distributors means both the distributor takes a percentage of the wholesale price (sometimes more than 30%) and then retailer often takes 50% of the retail price (double the wholesale price). So if you decide to sell products this way, which many inventors do, you need to make sure that your target customers are willing to pay a high enough price so that you can produce your product and still make a profit on only 70% of the wholesale price, or 35% of the retail price.

You need to do market research to determine what price consumers are willing to pay and if they aren’t willing to pay a price that allows you to make a profit, you either need to choose different target customers who are willing to pay more, find a different distribution channel, or rework your product so it is cheaper to make, but still valued by your target customers.

2: Generate Quick Sales

When you introduce your product, you want to generate quick sales because building a history of sales, even just in one or two outlets, helps you convince other sales outlets to carry your product. But once you start selling, you need to commit yourself to continually growing your sales. Stores, catalogs, reps and distributors look for hot, up-and-coming products, and if your sales are always growing, you will have a much easier time expanding your sales network. If your sales stagnate, people will think your product has reached its peak.

Look for Small or Specialized Outlets

Small specialized stores can be a great way to get sales going, but it can be hard to find these stores. Specialized stores often have a loyal clientele who are willing to try new products and pay a higher price.

Sell Local

Selling local is the most common way to generate quick sales. You can personally contact store owners who may take your product on because it is a local product. You yourself can do in-store appearances, demonstrations or trials to get people to buy your product. And local news sources like to carry stories about local inventors so you can easily generate publicity. Selling locally can help you cheaply generate interest in your product and build a history of sales to launch your product regionally.

Using Catalogs

Catalogs are one of the most inventor friendly sales outlets in that they don’t mind one-product companies, marketing expenses are very low and it puts your product on an equal playing field with all other products in the catalog. Also most target customer groups have their own catalogs, which allow you to reach a national audience with minimal expense.

Partner with Reps

Once you build your initial sales success, say in local stores, start expanding your sales by partnering with sales representatives. They will cover sales in other areas, while you can continue you serving your local stores. You can even continue to build your sales rep network to sell nationally.

3: Create a Strong Market Presence

As I wrote in part 1, you want your marketing efforts to be more of a splash than a drop in the bucket, but how do you do that? The following items are ways that help you build sales and generate interest in your product.

Tactics that Help Brand Your Product

Branding your product means creating a name, logo, slogan or anything else that creates a strong association with your product or company. This is used to create trust and loyalty which contributes to repeat sales and word-of-mouth advertising.
Some ways to create branding are:

• Point of purchase displays – these are special displays near your product in a store, almost like advertising. They come in different forms but are often cardboard and are on the floor next to your product.
• Clever product name – the name of your product should grab attention and be easy to remember. Sometimes having an edgy or funny name will get people to talk about your product, but having an edgy or funny name is not appropriate for all types of products.
• Slogans – slogans are almost a second name for some products and helps reinforce the brand.
• Endorsements – A celebrity can sometimes help brand the product by associating your product with someone customers trust or admire.

Packaging

In most sales channels, your packaging is your salesperson. Unless you provide in-store demonstrations, no one is going to push your product in a retail setting. That is why you need to create attention-grabbing packaging that effectively sells your product. Most purchase decisions are made in a few seconds, so if your package doesn’t quickly communicate your product’s benefits, your sales will not go well.

Publicity

Publicity is a great way to get a lot of attention. One of the great things is that publicity can be free. If you can interest news sources in your product, you, or in the story behind you and the product, there is a good chance they will do a story about you and your product.
You can also do contests, trials, and other events to promote your product and invite news people to the event. For instance, do you have a new bike product? You can organize a bike event, even for a favorite charity if you’d like, and have people try out your product.

Keep Marketing Expenses Below 10% of Sales

Marketing can be very expensive, but it doesn’t have to be and inventors, especially when they are just starting out, need to be careful of how they spend the limited dollars they have allotted to marketing.

Low Cost, Even Free Marketing Tactics

Publicity, like I mentioned above, can be a free way of exposing your product, but there are many more low cost tactics. In store demonstrations allow you to build sales by investing only your time. You can also see if bloggers or websites will review your product and post their review online if you send them a sample.

Networking with Others

Today’s social media world makes it very easy to network with your potential customers. There are probably Facebook pages for your customer group and by getting involved you can exposure yourself and your product to a large group of people. Social media also has a large potential for creating word-of-mouth advertising as people share things they like.

Select Small Markets with Easy Communication

By choosing smaller markets, your marketing expenses will be much lower. Smaller markets have fewer publications and websites, so you will need to place fewer ads and the ads are also inexpensive. Ideally, you want a market with publications and websites that have good readership, so you can be sure that your ads are reaching potential customers. Also, you can offer to write articles for these media outlets and list your web address and that you invented such and such a product in your bio info.

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1. Generate Quick Sales
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3. Selling Big: Finding the Right Marketing Partners

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The industry has three launch points for your business: Christian Retailing, The Association for Christian Retail, and the International Christian Retail Show. Christian Retailing, (www.christianretailing.com), is widely read in the industry, has a large new product section and also has a special new product called the Inspirational Gift Mart (www.christianretailing.com/index.php/about-us) which is published four times per year.  The Inspirational Gift Mart is given away both at Christian trade shows but also gift shows around the country, capitalizing on the fact that many gift shops also include an inspirational or children’s section.

The Christian Retail Association, (www.cbaonline), is hard-working site designed to help Christian Retailers succeed. It also publishes a magazine, Christian Retailers and Resources (www.cbaonline.org/nm/RRsubscription.htm), which has  many stories of interest as well as a new products section. The Christian Retail Association also has a resource section that lists many of the suppliers in the industry: www.cbawebsearch.com. The site allows you to find competitors and also complementary products that might work well marketing together with your product.

The Christian Retail Association also has a list of over 100 distributors that serve the market (http://cbawebsearch.com/results.php?search_type=keyword&term=distributors). You can choose to sell direct to retailers, or to retailers through distributors. You can also chose to sell direct to both channels through your own sales efforts or through independent sales reps.  The upcoming section on finding the right contacts explains how to find sales reps for your product.

The International Christian Shows is held in June/July of every year, and the next show is being held July 15-18th 2012 in Orlando Florida (www.christianretailshow.com). This show has about 410 exhibitors, 2400 attendees and is a viable place to meet customers, possible sales reps for your products, or marketing partners.

What Are Your Goals

You really have two goals, and this applies if you have a product to sell or it you are just getting ready to enter the market in the next six to 12 months: 1) find people in the industry to help you package your product right, have the right features and price your product so it will sell and 2) find people that will help you sell your product and get a jump start at major potential customers. You will increase your sales anywhere from three to ten times if you find some truly savvy industry people to help you.

Three of the best candidates for help are: 1) other Christian retail oriented companies that are in your area since local people are often ready to help you, 2) companies that have recently started, these companies’ owners and marketing people are often ready to help another new person in the industry and new companies might open to suggestions that you combine for a joint marketing effort to cut costs at trade shows and also to present a more appealing package of products to reps and distributors and 3) sales reps that are already in the industry. Reps usually are sales people for companies whose sales don’t generate income for the rep so they branch out on their own to carry four or five lines. These reps usually have a lot of market experience and can be a tremendous asset in selling our product.

Finding the Right Contacts

1. Attend the trade shows as a visitor before you are ready to start selling. Most booths aren’t very busy in the morning and late in the day and you can walk around and talk to people in the booths that appear to be from smaller companies. Some of the booths will be new companies where the principals will often be willing to give you advice on how to sell your product. Often the booths will be manned by independent sales reps who represent many companies. You can get their card and arrange to meet with sometime during or after the show to see if they will be willing to represent you. Finally check the show directory and be sure to visit the booths of any company in your geographic area. These companies often will help someone in their own area get started in the market.
2. Send for all the new product literature from the trade magazines. The information you receive will often be from an independent sales rep that is in your local area. You can also look up the company information once you get the information to see if the company is a small company where the company founder is involved in the business. You don’t want to solicit help from companies that are direct competitors, they probably won’t help you. But my experience is that at least 30 to 50% of people from non-competitors will offer you advice. Sales reps can be particularly helpful if you offer them a share of the business or make an offer that they can be your master rep (take a 1 or 2% on all sales in return for setting up a sales rep network).
3. Talk to the retailers in your area about who are the best independent reps that call on them. Talk to those reps and see if they will give you advice on setting up your sales and marketing plan and also if they will be willing to help you set up a program.

NOTE:  If you are having trouble finding reps One Stop Invention Shop does offer a list of reps for Christian stores on its web site for $24.95. (http://onestopinventionshop.net/books/sales-reps/)

Creating a Marketing Introduction Plan

If you have followed the steps outlined above you will have a large list of actions, but not an organized plan. You want to pull together an action plan of what you are planning to do before getting started. Include in your plan the following but be sure to add to the list any other actions you are planning on doing.

1. Determine pricing, packaging, discounts to retailers and distributors and commission structure to sales reps if applicable.
2. Determine distribution method, i.e. reps to stores or distributors, direct sales to stores only or another sales process.
3. Plan on acquiring sales people, either your own employees or independent sales reps.
4. Plan for shows you will attend.
5. Determine associations you will become involved with.
6. Create a PR campaign.
7. Consider possible joint marketing agreements with others
8. Target key accounts.
9. Target geographic market.
10. Set sales goals by quarter.

Once you have the plan you then you need to start executing it to get your product into market.

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2. Hardware Reps and Selling into the Hardware Market
3. Selling Baby and Children’s Products

Observational Research

Observational research consists of just watching end users use the product, noting each step a user takes and then asking why he or she takes every step. This is the type of research that many industry giants such as Proctor and Gamble use regularly. If you observe four or five users in action you will use notice they compensate for different drawbacks to a product, drawback that they might not even realize exists. When I was the marketing manager of a company selling dental chairs, we had an engineer sit in a dental office and observe dentists. We found that dentists had many elderly patients that did not like to lie flat.

Dentists were twisting and turning and struggling to work on these patients. In response to this need, we created a new chair with an articulating headrest that allowed the patient’s back to be at a 45-degree angle while the patient’s head was still parallel to the floor. The articulating headrest feature helped the chair become the number-one-selling chair on the market in just six months.

You should do observational research on your product, to find flaws, or ways it can be improved, as well as on competitive products, so you know their weaknesses. Outlining your observational research is a great way to explain the competitive advantages of your product.

Comparative Research

This process simply asks buyers or end users to evaluate your product against three to seven other products asking them rank them by their likelihood of purchase. It is useful to do comparative research for both direct competitors –products that achieve the same benefit with a similar device, for example comparing five garlic presses – and for indirect competitors, for example products like the garlic twist that mince garlic in a totally different way, but give the same result to the consumer. The ideal set up is have people evaluate all the ideas, #1 for most likely to buy, #5 for least likely to buy and then ask people why they ranked the products as they did. People will prefer a product for a wide variety of reasons, easier to use, easier to clean, one product has a feature they feel is important, or other products have features that annoy the end user. This research gives you information on how to promote your product, which features are important / unimportant, and how important your differential advantages are to the consumer. If possible, I recommend you do this research before you go too far on your product development as you might want to make product changes after the research.

Price Point Research

All too often inventors price their product based on their manufacturing costs, and they end up with a price that is too high. Instead inventors should worry about what price end users will pay, and then target a manufacturing cost that is 25% of the selling price. If you can’t hit those manufacturing costs, you probably shouldn’t introduce the product, or you will need to look for a bigger market where the increased volume will help drive the price down.

Comparative and observational research are primarily done with end users. For price point research, try to include as many industry people as you can: store owners, retail sales people, marketing personnel or sales reps that sell products to the store. If you need help finding sales reps look at this article: http://onestopinventionshop.net/blog/2011/02/setting-up-a-sales-rep-network/

Price point research is done just like comparative research, only you are looking for people to rank products from the most expensive to the cheapest. For the test, try competitive products that range from twice what you think your price should be to half of what you think your price should be. Then have people rank the products with # 1 being the most expensive to # 7 being the least expensive. You want to observe the products ranked just above your product and just below. If the product above yours is $7.00, and the one below is $5.50, then you know your product should be priced at about $6.00 to $7.00.

This price point will be important when negotiating with manufacturers because you can tell them the maximum price you can pay and important when you start to sell the product because you will have facts as ammunition when people try to get you to lower your price.

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Click here to buy.

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Inventors frequently have multiple ideas. The question is which one to pursue. Other inventors feel like they are creative and can solve many problems and wonder which ones to attack. Even in winning categories there are some products that are better than others. Recognizing winning categories and then the wining products in that category will greatly help you succeed. This article will help you recognize which ideas have the best chance of success.

Winning Opportunities

Some of these principles apply across the board, whether you are looking to produce your own product,    license it to a manufacturer, or strike a joint venture deal of some kind.

Across the Board Principles

• A new market is emerging — when the scrapbook industry started, many of the suppliers were inventors and small companies that have since become mainstays of the industry. Another example is that many of the accessories for cell phones were from small companies and inventors were the leaders in creating the pampered pet category.
• A product category is stale — there haven’t been any new products for a time, which results in companies having low margins. A few years ago wall paper had become a stale product, and then a flourish of activity developed with faux painting sponges, speckled paint for entertainment rooms and glazing print applications.

Licensing Opportunities

• Companies responding to competitive moves — companies move as quickly as possible when they are at a competitive disadvantage. Some inventors stay in a an industry, often one where they have worked before, and watch for opportunities created by new product introductions. They simply move to offer a product to companies who at a disadvantage in a product category after a new product introduction by another company.
• Companies with slowing growth rates — a company who has led the market in the past sometimes will run out of ideas and their growth will slow. These companies are very interested in ideas that keep their sales rates increasing.

Winning Products

Once you have an opportunity, you need to create a product with a high wow factor that will accelerate your product into the market. Follow these guidelines and you will have a much better chance for a successful idea.

• Appeals to customers with passion — people with passion know what products are available, spend freely, and will pay a premium for products they want. High income mothers with babies, people with beloved pets, dedicated golfers, and gourmet cooks are all examples of people with passion.
• Clearly understood benefits — products were people immediately grasp the concept have a strong chance for success. A cell phone that also does email is an easy to understand concept. A smart meter in your home to control energy is an easy to understand benefit, but how to install and control the usage is confusing and the smart energy meters is a concept that has been slow to catch on.
• Meets a total solution — customers prefer buying one product that takes care of their entire need. The concept of a total solution applies to new products as services. This is the core concept behind a catering business, but also the concept behind products like the iPad, the new generation of cell phones and the Swifter, the all in one cleaning product.
• Helps customers meet their goals — customers buy products for their own reasons, not your reasons, so always look for ideas that help people meet their preferred goals. Weedwackers were a big improvement over grass clippers, and the products are now owned by most homeowners. Granite counter tops help customers meet their goal of having a high end home look, even for modestly priced homes.

Are Successful Inventors Lucky?

Inventors who have yet to have success sometimes feel that winning inventors have had good timing or that they have been lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Truly, some do have luck. But inventors can greatly increase their chances of being the lucky ones by simply watching for winning opportunities and then create products that meet the criteria for success. Some inventors just fall into the right product, but you can succeed by planning and watching and creating ideas where the timing and features are right.

Related posts:

1. Create Winning Brochures and Flyers

Products that Work Best

1. Shopping networks are watched primarily by middle age and older women. Your product should appeal to the majority of those buyers.
2. The product needs to demonstrate well – the more exciting it is the better you chances of getting on the air.
3. You need a high quality manufacturing source, though it doesn’t need to be your own factory, and the product needs to be well made.
4. You want to watch the shopping networks to ensure your product fits into an existing category. The networks rarely carry a product that isn’t related to several other existing products they already carry.
5. Your price point needs to be at least $20 to $25. You can combine several products to reach the $20 price point, but you need a product or package of products with a high enough price to match up with the property potential of other products selling on the network.
6. Solving a common product isn’t required, as evidence by the large number of jewelry items sold on the networks, but solving a problem clearly helps your success.
7. Being a great on-line salesperson yourself, or having one within your company, will help you beat out competitors when two products are comparable.

How to Sell to the Networks

Selling to the shopping networks isn’t easy. Many people try to sell to the network and they only take on a small percentage of the products they see each year. Nevertheless many inventors are successful getting on, and many sell on the network for five years or more. The cost of pitching to the networks is low, and I recommend every inventor with products targeted at middle age to older women at least give the networks a try.

There are two options to selling to the shopping networks. First, through a direct approach to the networks, both QVC and the HSN have an easy way on their web page to submit ideas, and QVC also has vendor fairs around the country where you can pitch your idea directly to the buyers. A second approach is to use sales agents that specialize in selling products to the shopping networks. They have contacts and know the routine to get your product before buyers. They can also help you get a good pitch person if you aren’t comfortable doing online sales. They will charge a 10 to 15% commission so you might want to try to sell to the shopping networks on your own first and then if that doesn’t work you can then switch to a sales representative.

Vendor Sites for the Shopping Networks

QVC: http://wwwqvcproductsearch.com
HSN: http://www.hsn.com/become-an-hsn-partner_at-4682_xa.aspx
Sales Representatives
Kim Babjack
KimCo LLC
970-663-2382
F 602-926-0443
kim@kimbabjak.com
Kristie@kimbabjak.com

Dave Daley
Direct TV Impact
620 Hacienda Drive, Suite 104
Vista, CA 92081
619-866-9620

TV Sales Direct
225 S Church St. 3rd Floor
West Chester, PA 19382
610-696-6238
F 610-696-8231
info@TVSalesDirect.com

Patline Products International
1003 Kimberly Lane
Downington, PA 19335
610-269-3991
F 270-638-6929
patlineproducts@aol.com

The Miletti Group
10 Bellgrove Drive
Mahwah, NJ 07430
201-327-4837
F 201-712-1984
mark@themilettigroup.com

National Marketing Direct
1030 Summerfield Drive Suite
Roselle, IL 60172
630-380-5060
F 630-380-5065
howard@nm-direct.com

Side-Kick International Inc.
1157 Phoenixville Pike, Suite 108
West Chester, PA 19380
610-918-8666
F 610-918-9827
stan@sidekickintl.com
ben@sidekickintl.com

Related posts:

1. Types of Distribution Networks Used By Inventors
2. Selling on TV
3. Selling to Mass Merchants