#125: Why Consider Retail Wholesale?

Unknown Speaker  0:03  

Hey everyone, it’s Norman Farrar, aka the beard guy here and welcome to another lunch with norm, the rise of the micro brands. mantra.

Unknown Speaker  0:22  

Okay, for today’s show, we’re gonna be talking to you about something a little bit different. And that’s retail, and wholesale. And we’re not talking about retail arbitrage. And we’re not talking about wholesale on Amazon. We’re talking about bricks and mortar, how to get into them. So I have an expert today, Tony Levy, and she is the co founder of omega net. And she just happens to live in one case in my hometown, but I’ve I’ve lived in Kona for a while and really love it. So anyway, she’s up early in the morning to talk to us. Let’s see Kelsey, where are you? Hey, Kelsey, and how are you doing? Good. You’re back at home.

Unknown Speaker  1:04  

That’s right. Welcome, everyone. Welcome Manny. Steven red. Mark is joining us from LinkedIn. There we gonna share that? Yeah. So we’ve got a couple things going on right now. We’ve got two big contests happening. So the first one is an air pod pro contest. So highly recommend. I’ll put the links in the comments. And it’ll be in the YouTube descriptions, Facebook descriptions, but follow that link. I believe you just got to enter your email. And you can just the more places you share it to the more entries you get. So I think you get up to like 35 entries. So this is airpod. Pros, that gets a retail value of like 260. us. So it’s crazy dollars. Canadian. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And then we have our second contest. So this is only for the beard nation in our Facebook group. If you’re there, you’ll see it. Basically, you take a fake picture of yourself using like a beard app, and you post the image on your timeline, and you use that hashtag anyways. Can’t say too much. But that’s for the Facebook group only. If you’ve seen it, you’ve seen my picture. And I’ll probably send another one in there. So highly recommend you guys go over there. That’s for an hour consultation with me and norm. So yeah, it’s a it’s a pretty good prize. And yeah, we’re looking to have some fun too. So and welcome Dr. Cars, nice coffee and smiles. Very nice. Alberto Simon. Welcome, everyone. Also, yeah, so I’ll put the links in the descriptions. So please join our Facebook group. It’s great to meet the community there. And let me see smash those like buttons? Of course. Yeah. Just about to say that. That’s right. Today, if you’re watching them in the YouTube channel, please hit that subscribe button and ring that little bell. You’ll get all the notifications for videos. And yeah, I think that’s about it. Very good.

Unknown Speaker  3:03  

Okay, so once again, if you do have any questions, just put it over to the the comment section and we’ll try to get to it. I think this is gonna be very informative. So sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee and enjoy the show.

Unknown Speaker  3:20  

Well, Aloha, Aloha. Tony Kona Hawaii, doing absolutely wonderful. How can you not be in Kona Hawaii. I know I miss it. So you can convince it as a business trip now. Now it’s tax deductible, you can come visit.

Unknown Speaker  3:41  

Yeah, but I can’t even leave my bloody country. So. Yeah, thanks. I’ll just take that knife out of my back. But

Unknown Speaker  3:51  

you’re teasing.

Unknown Speaker  3:54  

Tony, please give everybody a little bit of information about who you are and what you do.

Unknown Speaker  4:02  

Well, I’m Tony IV, my husband and I own omega niche. The creator of the cameo easy’s stone that we work with for 23 years, we’ve been working with manufacturers in the gift toy apparel industries, getting them into stores. So we’ve been doing this in the very beginning. It was a hilarious I would go talk to people and say you know we’re doing a website for you for your password protected website so stores could actually in place or to place orders with you and they’ll take stores will never place orders on the internet. That’s crazy. So we were one of the very first to to start working with stores getting the stores together with manufacturers and importers. You know, in this gift, toy decor channel.

Unknown Speaker  4:57  

What’s, what’s the reality I get? If you have a micro brand on Amazon, and you want to get into a retail store or wholesaler, what are the chances of you doing that?

Unknown Speaker  5:10  

Oh, it’s very good. Very good, very good. Especially especially since, well, there’s several ways to go about getting into a store. But for brick and mortar stores, it’s just getting your product in front of them. In the very beginning, there’s only two ways that you could really get your product in front of stores, you would either pay for a booth at a trade show when there were major trade shows all over the country. A lot of regional shows, in the Atlanta America’s Mart, they’ll, at a trade show, there’ll be 8000 exhibitors, and so you could pay for a little booth and about 40 to 50,000 stores will come from all over the world. Take a look, they’ll actually right orders right there. It used to be like a 10 day show. Huge. It’s the it’s the largest, there’s one in New York, there’s Dallas, there, Las Vegas, high point there all over the place, depending what type of product you have. So in the beginning, it was trade shows. And then you would hire a sales agency that had road reps that would go actually into the store with a bunch of samples and catalogs, and write orders. So in the beginning, that was the only two ways that you really could get into stores. Then came the internet. And when it took me six hours, Okay, first of all, let me start by saying I started in this industry in the early 90s, with a product line that I was importing from China. And so I started selling as an exhibitor. So I would do like 20 trade shows a year. So I was gone like every other weekend, setting up a booth writing orders. And when it took me six hours to reload my van in Biloxi, Mississippi, in August, after they had turned off the air conditioner, and I was soaking wet. And I said there has to be an easier way. At that point, I had actually started adding other lines. So I was a sales agency also, because I wasn’t making enough money with my little bitty line that I was bringing in from China. So you know, I tried to expand my offerings. So when I drove back, when I hopped in the van, pack to the Hill, and headed back to Atlanta, I said there has to be an easier way this was in 1996. There has to be an easier way to get products in front of stores. And an easier way for manufacturers to just show and display their products. And that’s when I got back to Atlanta and bought a domain called gifts wholesale calm. And people would just say manufactured would say I want to be on gifts wholesale, but I don’t have a website. So I hired a guy from our Sunday school class that only touched websites if they were $100,000 or more that he was willing to teach, we paid him to teach my husband to do little websites. And then we just grew and grew and grew, I ended up spending about a million dollars to develop a system so that the manufacturers and importers can update their own websites. So they’re not constantly coming back to us. Then we started advertising those websites to stores and our business just, you know, took off tremendously. Because it was like we were the first people to think about doing that. And not because it was a late 90s and so early on, probably a lot of early on.

Unknown Speaker  9:06  

So now let’s let’s talk a little bit about the difference between retail and wholesale. So just to get we have a lot of people that are either new to selling online, or even being in business, and we’ve got some advanced sellers. I mean it’s it’s everything in between. But so what is the difference between retail and wholesale sites are not sight sales.

Unknown Speaker  9:33  

Well, stores and manufacturers have rules when they want to wish when manufacturers and importers want to sell to stores there are certain rules. totally different. It’s not a you sell one item. What you’re doing is you’re selling a case or you’re selling a minimum order, like let’s say a jewelry line. They may have 100 items, but a store is not good. by one or two items, they’re going to do a minimum order of about $500 or $250, a minimum opening order, then the next time they come back, they’re going to order like $150. There’s most, most wholesalers don’t want the products immediately. They may not want it until September one or right before Christmas, like in November. So there’s different rules when it comes to reach up with retail, if a customer says, Oh, I love that backpack, yeah, order that backpack, then it’s set to them. But a store, they want it to be packaged properly, they want this jewelry to be, you know, able to be put on a display and easily sold. So some of the things we do with people that are in retail, and they’re selling on Amazon or various things, and they want to get into stores, we take a look at that we do some consulting with them. And we help them understand how they need to be packaged. And we might say, okay, walk into a store, just imagine your products there find other products, and how are they display? How are they, you know, what kind of Sonic signage are you providing. And, again, back to the business rules, there’s just certain things that are required, because most of them, especially on the web, if you have a wholesale side of the web, most of the stores are going to place orders via credit card. Okay. But they may not want their orders shipped until much later in the year. So it’s important that they get the credit card number securely, but that it not be processed immediately. So yeah, so in those cases, that we make sure that that manufacturer has set up a little square or, or authorized, you know, some way of processing the card later. So it’s quite a different scenario. And even if they’re not on the web, I mean, they they we teach them to how to go into a store, how to present their product. And there and whether or not they want to get into trade shows, you know if the awesome trade show in Toronto, norm Do you ever go? Which ones that? Well, it’s it’s a gift in home trade show?

Unknown Speaker  12:38  

Oh, yeah. That gives you a home show. Sure. Yep. And I have been I don’t go every year, but I have been Yep.

Unknown Speaker  12:45  

It’s quite different. I took at least to the Dallas market. One. She had never been to the trade show. And it’s amazing. I mean, like the Atlanta show, when you go there will have 8000 exhibitors. I mean, you will walk and walk and walk. What are the reasons why I started helping why we started helping manufacturers been on the web is that people say why did you start gifts, wholesale calm, and omega net. And I said, because my feet hurt. And so my first little tagline was shot discreet and save your feet. And people would laugh because whether you’re a store walking for eight to 10 days, or you’re a manufacturer standing there, writing orders all day long for days, your feet hurt. And so it’s a it’s a different scenario, and you walk in there and and so I took another guy to the Vegas show, the Vegas, the Las Vegas show is really growing. And they’re starting to take over a lot of the West Coast stores will go there and they’ll have about five or 6000 stores that will come. I’m sorry, there will be five or 6000 manufacturers that will be set up exhibitors, and their show was like four or five days, four or five days. And they will probably have 20 to 30,000 stores walk through. So it’s a it’s a different world.

Unknown Speaker  14:21  

Yeah, it definitely is. Now let’s go back to the packaging. If you’re selling on Amazon, do you recommend or is there two different types of packaging? You’ve got your retail packaging, and then you’ve got what I would call your online packaging. Online packaging it. Let’s just say would you recommend doing both or just one

Unknown Speaker  14:48  

I would highly recommend that if when you’re developing a product that you go ahead and try to package it in a way whether or not it’s going directly to the consumer or if you’re going to be In the store, going to a store, the reason why I would recommend that is you’re building your brand. And having the tag, having the label identifying your brand. You know, many people I’ve talked to that, that have sold 1000s on Amazon. But if they’re the empty box, I mean, if they’re in the box, and they really don’t, you’re not, you’re promoting Amazon, but you’re not promoting your own brand. Okay, so having it nicely packaged in a nice box with a nice label header, you know, I would, I would recommend that they go ahead, and but you know, sometimes having that done is a little more costly than they want to make it. If they’re only going to do it on Amazon, if they’re not ever gonna ever get to try to get into a store. They may not have to worry about that. But again, you know, if they plan to someday get into stores, they need to be promoting and building their brand. Because that will result into sales.

Unknown Speaker  16:09  

And right off the bat, you would be getting a GS one UPC code rather than your speedy barcode or whatever they’re called, you know, just to make sure that they can get into the stores. Is that correct?

Unknown Speaker  16:23  

So some of the smaller brick and mortar stores don’t require UPC codes. box stores will definitely the larger stores that are the chains like the Hallmark chains and the various you know, big box stores will require UPC codes, but you’ll be surprised how many of those, like let’s say again, these exhibitors in Atlanta with 8000 exhibitors, probably half of them don’t have UPC codes.

Unknown Speaker  16:51  

Wow. That’s, that’s surprising. But the bigger ones and the bigger retailers, you’ll need to have a proper, yes. Yeah, UPC code. All right, before we go forward, I forgot we do have a giveaway today. And it’s a really cool giveaway. So why don’t you tell everybody about the giveaway?

Unknown Speaker  17:14  

Okay. Yes, if Eddie, if the giveaway is an email blast. Now one of the things that we do, you know, a lot of people have probably seen the movie Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come? Well, immediately when we started doing websites, back years, you got a weapon, you know, years ago, all you have to do is put up a website, you can sell a ton. Now there’s so many million websites. We started doing email blast out to specific types of stores, we developed this system where, where not only could manufacturers update their own website, but stores can very easily register one place. And they can use that same log and then pass code to hundreds of other of the websites that we’ve created. And they can just put their login and passcode. And they don’t have to re register at every single site. Okay, what part of registration is they have to say what kind of store they are. So they can put up to three different kinds of stores. So they can say I’m a pharmacy, but I’m also a florist. And I’m also a gift basket company, let’s say. And so we started doing email blast out to targeted stores that have said, Okay, I’m a gift shop, or I’m an apparel, but I’m also a bridal shop. Well, we started really, you know, putting up that now we have like 53 different categories that people have to drop down when they register and they have to tell us what kind of store they are. So one thing that we’re doing is, is if any of you have a desire to show your product to stores, we’re doing an email blast, a 20,000 store email blast is usually would cost you about $1,000. And we’re doing that free for a giveaway. For norm for normal people. 20,000 email blast, we have an open rate of somewhere between 10 and 15%. At least that was pre COVID. Right now it’s more like 10 to 12% open rate. So that’s a good number of eyes that will be shown on that you will be showing your product to and it will click through to your wholesale website. If

Unknown Speaker  19:54  

that sounds fantastic. So if you’re interested in this giveaway, which is 20,000 In emails going out to retailers and wholesalers just put in hashtag, I want Judy, Judy, Tony. Oh, I did I say, Judy, just pulled that out of the air. I want Tony. And if you if you tag, Judy, or if you tag any people, you’ll get entered twice. Okay, how’s that? So I think that’s fantastic. Thank you for that giveaway is awesome. What a great prize. I gotta tell you, like our family, we’ve been in the manufacturing business for years, my dad was a manufacturer. And we use reps, and our family, or our business and our products, were able to get into all sorts of stores, we, you know, into Walmart’s eckerd, CVS targets. And it was all due to distribution or distributors. And, you know, if you can find those people that can help you out, you know, it’s incredible what you can do, and it’s not you having to do that you are providing your your product. And then, you know, basically, Judy, you’re doing the heavy lifting, right,

Unknown Speaker  21:11  

Tony? Maybe I just looked like a god, you know, you forget, I mean, you know, I know people are really focused on the big box. And it’s awesome to get into big boxes. But let me tell you, I learned a little secret from Timothy bush that that helps people get into Costco and different things. He says many times, Costa wants to see how you’re selling and other retail stores in the mom and pop smaller stores, you know, and then they want to give good value by lowering the price, you know, for Costco. And so that’s that’s one advantage of doing a wholesale website, which is also what we do. Now, it’s interesting that there are 1 million retail establishments out there. I think that’s the figure I got. Yeah, there are over 1 million retail establishments. So we think of that post about we think about the Costco in that Walmart in the bigger brands, but there are, you know, hundreds of 1000s of stores, mom and pop stores, and all the various cities. And around the around the country. countries, including Canada, we’ve got big clients, and we’ve got a lot of stores in Canada as well. That need that need products, a lot of the shows were either cancelled or postponed during the COVID 2020. A lot of the reps were not able to go out into the field and promote products during 2020. So as the stores many of the stores went online, many of that exhibit and many of the exhibitors manufacturers importers decided they had to go online to if they weren’t already online, they needed to get online because that’s the only way they were going to reach these stores. So the COVID 2020 really has changed our industry a lot, sending more clients to us, you know, more clients to people that provide online services, because some of the reps are still not able to go out into the field, use phones, a lot of the lot of the trade shows either they have postponed or cancelled or very few of the stores are coming out of fear, or whatever reason. So it’s it’s it’s a it’s a change in the industry. You know, another big change in the industry is in the in the beginning when we started. See, we’ve been doing this for 2023 years, over 23 years in the beginning, no manufacturer importer would dare put up a retail website. Oh, they would not dare sell. There wasn’t an Amazon. I mean, you know, they’re like it is now it would not dare because they said the gift stores would not purchase from that manufacturer, if that manufacturer sold direct to the consumer. huge change in the industry now about, oh, I would say about 1015 years ago, some of our clients come to us and say oh, we also want to retail website but we want to hide it. We want to call it something else. We don’t want our stores to know we are selling direct to the consumer because they’re they’re a competitor to the store, you know, and now there’s Amazon and so now a lot of the manufacturers a lot of the manufacturers are selling on Amazon too, and wayfair and some of the different ones So we really love to help manufacturers and importers that are just starting to get into the, into the arena into the industry, whether it be gift, toy apparel decor, we love to help someone start, you know, maybe they only have one product now, but they plan to have hundreds of products. We have, we have clients that have two, one or two products, and we have product, we have people that have 10 20,000 products. So it’s it’s quite a span of types of clients that we have.

Unknown Speaker  25:44  

First of all, Simon, you’re too funny. I saw that hashtag I want Judy.

Unknown Speaker  25:52  

Alright.

Unknown Speaker  25:55  

Okay, so if I mess up again, no. Okay, so when we’re thinking about selling on, into retailers, wholesalers, there’s some there are definitely different terms and conditions and ways that you have to deal it’s not you’re not selling, you know, one item going out, or you’re not bringing in 140 units or 140. For two cases into Amazon, there are some, there are terms that have to be met. Who is who would should get into the retail wholesale model, who should not get into the wholesale retail model?

Unknown Speaker  26:39  

Well, the first thing I talked to people about is margin, do you have the margin, because if you’re selling on Amazon for $20, okay, the stores are going to want to buy from you for $10 or less, because the store is going to want to double their money, they want to be competitive, whatever. And some people just don’t have the margin. here in Hawaii, there’s a lot of manufacturing going on. And I talked to people all the time, let me get you into stores on the mainland, and they either don’t have the margin or they don’t have the ability to produce, which is not necessarily a problem for you. Another thing that they need is they need good packaging, like we’ve talked about, but they also need a fulfillment house or some some place where they can be shipping out 12 instead of you know, most a lot of your clients probably ship pallets all the way to your Amazon fulfillment center. And so, you know, they need to be able to ship out items, because a store may only want you know, they they only may may want 12 in and whereas normally you’re set you’re sending set to several 1000 to Amazon. So it’s a different, it’s a different, you really have to look at somebody and sometimes I work with people for a while and they just say, you know what, I can’t sell I don’t have the margin, I don’t have the productivity availability. I mean, I can’t, it’s just me manufacturing this. So, um, so they have to really think about it. And yes, the terms that the terms are important to learn, like, like, a store’s gonna want a purchase order, though a lot of times want to be able to put a purchase order, they want to ship date, they want to cancel date. They want to know what your minimum opening order is, what your reorder is, what your item minimums are, because maybe a particular item, maybe they can order a bunch of items from you, and maybe a particular item they can buy one at a time. But maybe your client wants to only sell it in our boxes of 12 of that item. Okay, so there’s a lot of things to think about. And make sure that a product line is able to go into the brick and mortar stores we know especially coming from China and so a launch itself tell them the right deal ask them are they currently in inner cartons? And they’ll say no and they’ll sit outside we’ll check with the factory and see if they’ll how much extra they’re gonna charge and sometimes it’s very minimal, you know, to put them in inner cartons because and then you’ll sell that dinner carton to them to the store. Now we do have cases that that people are ordering pallets, okay of things as some stores are ordering pallets, but usually they’re wanting to order it in a box or a case.

Unknown Speaker  29:56  

Yeah, so we’re talking smaller stores here. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And now, what are the terms when when somebody, what are the typical terms. So you know, when Amazon, you get paid pretty much right away?

Unknown Speaker  30:12  

Well, typically, the stores are going to, I would say 95% of the orders that you get, are going to be a credit card. Especially if you have a wholesale website, you’re going to be credit card, if you’re working with rep agencies, it’s still probably going to be a credit card, but you’re not going to process that credit card until right before you’re ready to ship.

Unknown Speaker  30:42  

So this is a completely different experience than what we were we experienced with larger retailers. So you know, going into the Walmarts of the world where, you know, there were there was, there was so many different clauses in those contracts. It got pretty scary. So this is an Kelsey, we want to make sure in the title of this podcast, that we mentioned this, because this is completely different. Being able to deal with tons of retailers that are going to pay you with a credit card that you can process when you ship out the product. Before you ship. Before you ship. People aren’t talking about this. People are talking about the big ones where you send out pallets and pallets and pallets, and you get paid 90 to 180 days or whatever it is, I mean it you can be a real cash flow sock. And yes, this is a different way of doing things. I just wanted to, you know, bring that out. The other thing I wanted to, to talk about, so you’ve got the you’ve got a small, it could be a small order going out there, you’ve got your terms, which are pretty good. What about, are there any issues with if you’re selling to smaller retail? If you run out of inventory? Are there any penalties for that? Or are there any penalties for delivery issues?

Unknown Speaker  32:11  

No, not really. Um, now they will, they will give you a ship date, and a canceled date. Let’s say they’re having a big event coming up. And they’re saying I got to have these immediately. You know, and if I don’t receive it by such and such a date, I’m canceling the order. You know, that that can be the case? But no, you don’t have all those clauses and various things. 50 page contract? Yeah, like, okay, and many of them will, will do returns, I mean, you know, like, but some of them do a thing called guaranteed sale, where they will guarantee that the products will sell or they’ll exchange them for other products. Something like that. And once you’re once you’re an established account with some of the stores, let’s say you’ve you sold to stores real regularly and now they’re asking for terms. So now they’re asking for a 30 day turn, you know, where they’re, then they’re going to pay you in 30 days it is it is very common. You know, if you have an established client that you have vetted, and you know, they’re real, and everything.

Unknown Speaker  33:37  

One of the other things that I was wondering if you could do this as for marketing, so let’s say you sell the store soap, okay, and it’s XYZ soap, natural soap, and they like it and they might have 10 stores. Well you can also approach them and say how would you like us to private label this for?

Unknown Speaker  34:01  

Exactly I’ve got clients that do that. Definitely. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  34:06  

that’s awesome. So definitely we did that with all of our products when we got into RETAIL IS JUST Hey, how would you like private label and they love that idea.

Unknown Speaker  34:16  

So one of my clients is kiss me and garden. She’s out of California. She does a lot of private label. She did a skincare line. Yeah, that’s very very Yeah, and a lot of you know the signage like another client of ours is sincere surroundings and they’ll do you know personal you know, like in your location like Stone Mountain Georgia, on you know, on their products. And a lot of the manufacturers are doing that in stores love that. So you can manufacture that offer something like that they can actually target resorts and theme parks and things Like that we have stores, we have quite a few stores that that say that their theme park or resort in our database that we market to.

Unknown Speaker  35:09  

Nice. Alright, one other thing that’s very important least it’s important to me is a reseller agreement. So if if we’re reselling the product to a retail store or to a store, I might not want them to be competing on Amazon with me. So I build that into the reseller agreement that it can’t be sold online on Amazon or wherever I want to define that. Do you provide any types of reseller agreements when you’re targeting these retailers?

Unknown Speaker  35:43  

I don’t personally, many of the manufacturers do. Many of the manufacturers do. And let me tell you a sad story. One of our clients has very beautiful expensive nativity scenes. And he had sold it to a store. And he had I mean, he, you know, he had all kinds of stores. Anyway, one of his stores put it on eBay, at a very, very discounted price. And a large buyer, a large store chain that was buying from him regularly was worth, I mean, they bought $100,000 worth from him every year, they saw that that product was on eBay at a very discounted price, and they canceled their orders with him. So, he and many of the manufacturers do they say you cannot, you cannot put this you cannot undercut the suggested retail price, you cannot put it on there. And many of the vendors Now, many of the manufacturers and importers now having to are having to really monitor, you know, to make sure that it’s not under sold. And, and so that’s that’s very important. Some of the manufacturers and importers don’t mind at all. resellers we have some really great online web clients. I mean, not clients, but stores, stores that are in our system, buy a lot from clients, of ours, so but every every manufacturer, that’s really none of my business, you know, what we provide is a wholesale website and marketing to stores, that the relationship that that manufacturer has with their stores, their database of stores, is not really my, my business, you know what I mean? If he has set pricing for them, if he has special, I’m just the facilitator, getting them together.

Unknown Speaker  38:03  

Got it. The The other thing I think we should talk about, which is tied into the reseller agreement, is map map pricing. So you know, minimize minimum advertised pricing. And this protects the brand. This protects everything you were talking about eBay, for example, and on Amazon, Amazon doesn’t protect map, but as long as you have it in your reseller agreement. And if you have that retailer, come on to Amazon, at least can go back to the retailer and say that, you know, hey, this is the clause. This is the sub section in the contract. And at least you have a foot to stand on. But map pricing is so important because and I’ve experienced this this year with a brand who sold to wholesalers, the wholesaler sell sold to retailers, and the retailers came on. And on one listing, I’ve talked on the podcast about it before, they’re not gonna say the brand, but 23 sellers were on this brand. And what they did is they took the product from like a $27 price point, all the way down into the teens. And what does that show you all of a sudden now the brand is competing with lower end product. So it’s it’s deemed a lower end product because it’s so cheap. And it’s very hard for the brand to come back and establish the high perceived value. So map pricing is very important. So if you are going to be talking to retailers or wholesalers, make sure that you talk about map Yeah, interesting enough. Now guys, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. I was doing something with flat files in our Centurion league training the other day, and I have never seen map pricing in a flat file. So I don’t know if Amazon’s changing their mind on things. I do have one of my other one of the people that are working with me I’m checking with our Amazon person to see what this is about. I haven’t done a lot of flat files, our team does do a lot of flat files. And they have seen, they’ve said that they have seen map pricing in flat files before. So I don’t know, if you have seen it, let me know, because I was a new one for me.

Unknown Speaker  40:22  

Okay, it’s

Unknown Speaker  40:23  

very easy to predict your brand to make sure that Oh, yeah, people are not, you’ve got to protect your and that’s why it would be a good idea to have that kind of a reseller agreement don’t undercut, you know, your, your stores, because the stores, you know, they’re, they’re out there. Especially, I mean, if you concentrate on your retail store, that’s your bread and butter, you got to protect those stores. And if those stores are paying $10, you better not put it on your website, or in Amazon or wherever for 12. You know, to me, because the stores are going to cut you off. They’re gonna say, you know, because the stores have got to double their money.

Unknown Speaker  41:08  

Yeah. So and we do have a delay in the video. So just to let you know, the audio and the video. It’s just a slight delay. So I’m sorry if I cut you off, or I interrupt. But anyways, yeah, you’re 100%. Right, you’ve got to protect that. We have a bunch of questions. And before we get to them, just wanted to remind everybody, if you are interested in our giveaway today, Tony is providing a really cool $1,000 valued email blast to 20,000 retailers. Now, like we’ve been talking about this whole time, we’re not talking about, you know, huge, we’re talking about people or retailers that you don’t have to wait 180 days to get paid. You know, these are people that they’re all over the map. But these are people that you can go and it could be the mom and pop store. It could be a variety of different reasons, but 20,000. So once again, Tony, thank you for that. That’s a really great probably one of the best prizes we’ve had, since we’ve done the podcast. So thank you. And to get into it. Just I want Tony. And if you want an extra entry, just take two people. Now let’s get into some of these questions. And there’s so many I’ve got like a bunch of things I wanted to ask you, but I think we’re gonna run out of time. But let’s get into some of the questions. Cal’s.

Unknown Speaker  42:36  

Yeah, for sure. So let me see. Okay, first one is from Simon. trade fairs and rep groups have been the main route to market for decades. COVID has killed that what is the best route to market today? And how do you see trade shows reps recovering?

Unknown Speaker  42:55  

I think that trade shows will always be necessary. Okay. Although where we used to have 50 1000s stores come in Atlanta. Now, it’s more like 30. So many stores are not coming to the trade shows. Many of the stores don’t have time to sit down with reps anymore. But I think they still will be some out there. But I think it was a small segment at first, but I’m telling you, it’s become more and more of a huge segment for people to sell online wholesale direct to stores. These are not consumer websites, these are websites password protected websites, where stores register them to put their sales tax id their federal ID they have to identify what kind of store they are. That is how, and we can reach out actually to the store type that that particular manufacturer is looking for. That’s so valuable. So I think the channel, the online channel is becoming a bigger and bigger factor in our industry. Yes, trade shows are still there, reps are still there. But now there’s that third channel that is just, it’s just going to grow, it’s just going to get better.

Unknown Speaker  44:17  

Yeah, this is crazy. But LinkedIn. Reaching out on LinkedIn is incredible for me. So we’ll just reach out to somebody that you think you’d never would be able to reach out to. And all of a sudden, you’ve got a dialogue going, which is kind of cool. Like, you know, you could reach out to now just check out your niche, do some research. I mean, that’s it. That is definitely another way of doing this. So it’s just kind of cool that you can reach out. I just did this I reached out to eBay actually. And just wanted to talk to somebody in the business development department. So I contacted three people and you know, we’ll we’ll wait and see I’ll give you an up data on Friday.

Unknown Speaker  45:04  

So our next question is from Dr. Cause, I, Tony, if we don’t get the free prize, what is the cost of being in such an email blast? What services do you provide?

Unknown Speaker  45:20  

Okay, if a client has a website, or needs a website, read, we do wholesale websites. And if we do the wholesale website for clopton, with norm any buddy I get from him we do at half price, okay, and we give you $5,000 worth of advertising, at no cost that includes two email blasts that would normally be if you weren’t a client of ours, if you weren’t a website client of ours, it would be five cents an email. If you’re a website client of ours, it’s two and a half cents an email. So if you do a 10,000 email s, it would be $575. If you do a 20,000 email blast, it would be $1,085 if you’re not a website client, a wholesale website client of ours. So does that answer your question? And we do all kinds of marketing, gifts wholesale, we now own choice wholesale.com did for wholesale comm accessories wholesale calm us made wholesale calm? Oh, I think we have Anyway, those are advertising portals where manufacturers and importers by banner and lates that link their website, we offer a lot of different advertising services, as well as web development and hosting with them.

Unknown Speaker  46:54  

Okay, perfect. Alright, and our next question is from Oleg. They’re extremely higher logistic costs in small shops, even if it’s easier to get a shelf space, how do you solve it?

Unknown Speaker  47:10  

That’s very, very true. Very, very true. And more and more stores are starting to set up retail websites to expand their reach. And if there’s no reason also, I didn’t say that, just because you have a map pricing, you just don’t go below that. I am, I am a jewelry store here that triples his prices. So I mean, if he buys something at $10 each, or he puts it in his jewelry store for 30. You know, so you can go up. Also check in with your checking with your chamber of commerce in that store, to see if there’s any, if they know of any landlords that can give good discounts, because there’s going to be a lot of empty spaces coming up, at least there is here a lot of businesses have gone out of business. So there’s gonna be a lot of availability. And I would say negotiate say, I will pay half what you’re asking for, for the first year, three quarters for the second year, and and by the third year, I will have you know, the industry will have recovered and they’ll pay full price. What the heck, the worst he can say is no. Right.

Unknown Speaker  48:36  

There’s also a term that we should explain that people probably hear, you already talked about doubling, you know, $10 to 20. The term is keystoning. And you probably will hear you know, if people are talking about that, a store will ask you, you know your price and that you might hear them come up with the word Keystone. If you hear that, all it means is you’re going to be doubling, they’re going to be doubling your price.

Unknown Speaker  49:04  

And that’s when you really need to be careful. Again, if you’re offering it someplace else for for a certain price, the store is going to want to know that you’re not going to be competing and undercutting them. Right? They they plan to Keystone.

Unknown Speaker  49:23  

Okay, from Simon, in Europe, we have strict TNCs that wholesale customers cannot sell on third party marketplaces. Is that okay in North America,

Unknown Speaker  49:38  

it all depends on that particular manufacturer and importer. Some Some are already selling. Some of the manufacturers are already selling on Amazon and wayfair and various things that they don’t want anyone else selling. So it’s all up to Getting a relationship going with that particular manufacturer or importer. Now, a lot of people, I think, make the mistake of just sending out these mass emails that say, do you have a Excel of your pricing, you know, of your prices, and stuff like that, and immediately a manufacturer is going to shut down. So if you’re want, I mean, a store or manufacturer is going to shut down. So if you’re wanting to approach a manufacturer, about selling his product on Amazon, go ahead and establish your relationship first, you know, place an order a small order first, and then come back to say your products sold, I want to put that, you know, again, on Amazon, or something that you’re going to turn people off? I’ve been a lot of times people call me and say, dude, I mean, they’ll, they’ll forward the email to me, you know, like, I know. And they’ll say, is this person real? Is this is this a person I says, you need to contact them, establish relationship with them, Go and search for their product, their name, and see if they’re real, because I think a lot of Amazon resellers waste a lot of time and energy sending out these mass emails, requesting an Excel and their images and everything, when first they need to establish a relationship, they need to have gone to their website, they need to find out who their contact information should be. Because yes, a lot of them will let you sell them on Amazon. But unfortunately, a lot of them, you know, are selling direct to the consumer on Amazon or Ebay and they don’t want competition. Although a lot of your clients know how to get a better listing on Amazon, you know, get up there because they’re more experienced and they’re trained. And and some of the manufacturers they’ll try but they won’t go through training, like, like so many of your clients offer. And they’re not getting good listing and they’ll say no, you know, and but but if that person can contact them and say I’ve got a good reputation. I’ve got a good listing, I can get you higher up on Amazon. Let me give you a try. But don’t just mass mass email. That’s not gonna work.

Unknown Speaker  52:43  

My buddy, Todd Todd Snively, who, by the way is now sporting a do like mine. He gets started while he works with Amazon, wholesale. He’s been on the podcast before and he, he talks about out we’re in a different direction here, we’re going into bricks and mortar. But if you do go and you do try and do that test run, you can get larger, sometimes really incredible exclusive agreements in wholesale, if you impress these manufacturers who are not on Amazon, or who doing a poor job on Amazon. So that’s one step. Next step is you know, talking about what we’re talking about today. But there are two really viable models here that you can work with. And if you you know, go back, I don’t know when the episode was, but Todd gates dropped a lot of great information. And what is his name? Todd? What? Todd Snively? Yeah, him and Chris Keefe, have a course out there. I forget what it’s called. But I Kelsey, if you could just post that maybe in the comments, and that could help out some of the viewers today. If you want an intro, by the way, Tony, I could definitely do that for you. Oh, good. I’d like that. But one

Unknown Speaker  54:09  

of the stories that have registered with us that are on the list of our database, we’ve got 902 of them that say that they’re FDA, I mean, FBA Amazon resellers. Okay, we’ve got 12,000 of them that say that they sell on on the web. So if someone wants to really, you know, this is the kind of list that you pick your store types from is one of the things in the in the drawing, you know, you can actually pick your store types that you want to target with your product. You can also select your states. So let’s say you want to really target northeast, or Northwest or the south, whatever Southwest or you want Contact all the coastal stores because your item is more of a beach type item, you’re able to do that with your blast, but also with our, our advertising.

Unknown Speaker  55:17  

Yeah, and you can also help build your own authority there. By geo targeting, it’s so easy to do it with press releases. So let’s say that you do have a really great way if you know your demographic, okay, that’s the key, but if you know where your products are selling, and let’s say it’s in Fort Lauderdale, and the surrounding areas, you can target those surrounding areas, do your blast, Target, a press release with geo targeted whatever the you know, the suburb is anything under 325,000. And you will get a ton of exposure out there. So that’s that’s a way of marketing. We do that quite a bit. Just see where the products selling on Amazon, target it with a press release, and try to get some more. Just more authority there. People are looking for bully sticks in Fort Lauderdale. They’ll see our product. All right, cause any more questions?

Unknown Speaker  56:17  

Yep. We have a couple more. For Marsha. Do your stores carry about made in the USA?

Unknown Speaker  56:26  

We have several I mean, I I know that we have a few stores that exclusively exclusively. Work only only offer Made in America, we have a lot of clients that are made in America. And we actually help manufacturers that are made in America get grants. With the that will actually help them a lot. There’s a there’s grants that came out in the 1970s that continued to be renewed, you know how the government is. And that helps man us manufacturers be competitive. But I do know that there’s a lot of one, there’s a lot of stores that are really focusing on and buying Made in America products. Yes. Okay, very good. Okay, we

Unknown Speaker  57:25  

have about four more questions, and well, we’ll cap it at that. All right, Doctor, cause I Tony, I have some resellers in USA and EU due to my Amazon brand recognition to pursue this path more aggressively. What top three action items would you recommend?

Unknown Speaker  57:45  

As I tried to read that, but three action, okay. Um, I’d love to talk to him individually, so he has resellers? In the US, I would ask Are these online resellers are they stores? And again, the action items is it’s important to if you’re in stores, that you have good, striking packaging, that makes it easy, and that you have personally I think you need good signage, maybe a display with good signage, because that store owner, they may have 60 to 100 different vendor lines. And when a when a customer walks in they they just wander around, well, if that store owner or one of their employees can you know kind of like say, Oh, this is a particular brand that’s really selling well. But if there’s good signage that customer that’s just browsing Oh, I’m just looking I’m just looking good sign. So those are the two things that if you’re in stores, good packaging, but also doing an event, if possible for stores, you know, doing a lot of stores are starting to have community events where a manufacturer like let’s say you’re an artist and you come in and you’re you do you agreed to sign some prints, or you’re a book author and you’re going to do a signage to get traffic. You know, help your stores sell more. If you’re online.

Unknown Speaker  59:42  

You know, doing helping, again, do do some demographic promotion for your product to draw into into a store. I know we had one client that did his email blast because we give some free email blast Last two clients for wholesale websites. And he had stores call him thanking him and say, do you have a rep in the area. So the email blasts, opened up some stores for reps that weren’t able to get into stores. So doing an email blast, if you’re if you’re a product line, and having a website that maybe even list some of your stores in certain areas that you have, or ways that you can get more traffic to those stores, you know, a manufacturer really needs to do everything they can to get traffic to retail stores, especially now, there’s so many of those brick and mortar stores are really struggling. And so if a manufacturer can do any promotion in that area, that’s smart that again, I’m not sure he says resellers if he’s an online reseller, or brick and mortar, so I kind of ran the full length.

Unknown Speaker  1:01:17  

Okay, so three more laps we got. Simon specialty stores usually push for free shipping for orders around $500, the cost of freight has increased a lot in the last 12 minutes. How do you deal with this?

Unknown Speaker  1:01:37  

Well, I would definitely, for a manufacturer, if you’re going to offer free shipping, make it be for a lot large orders. Yeah. And that’s sometimes but have it be a special not all the time. Have it be, you know, like we do that a lot in our email blast that our stores will say. If you order $500, you get free shipping. But if you order $1,000, you also get 10% off, you know giving them incentive. So if those email blasts that we send out to people, we encourage our manufacturers to to you know entice them with some kind of a like, like you do some kind of a prize, some kind of special. And another thing that you can do instead of offering free shipping, a thing called Baker’s does, you know a baker’s dozen was the old time to turn where someone bought a dozen, you gave them an extra free one. Well, that, you know, if you offer a free product, okay, you get you get $100 worth of free product, if you buy $1,000 order, rather than the free shipping. You know, just some ideas, added value.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:08  

And then we just have two shorter ones from Gideon, do you have to be an LLC company? Or is an individual find?

Unknown Speaker  1:03:18  

An individual is fine. Yes. You do need a sales tax ID. But you be a sole proprietor.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:32  

Okay. And our last question from Brad, what is your cost for a website store?

Unknown Speaker  1:03:43  

Normally, our websites are a by the way, we spent about a million dollars developing this whole system that helps manufacturers and importers sell to stores. And so normally our costs are anywhere from $5,000 mostly 5000 6000 $7,000. Right now, we’re offering with with this special with norm, half price. So that would be 20 $500. If it’s attached site if it’s attached to your retail site, if you have a site. And so the if you don’t have a retail site already, it adds about $750. Okay, so that’s about $3,000 and then we include $5,000 worth of advertising totally free. And that gives you banners and links in gifts wholesale.com and whatever portal your product line would go into. And it gives you 220 1000 free email blasts. To select stores of your particular brand, focus.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:07  

Okay, very good. So, to get a hold of you, this is actually perfect timing because we’re gonna go over the wheel of galaxy, but for people to get a hold of you, how did they do that?

Unknown Speaker  1:05:19  

Tony at omega net.net so our website is make it eat.net and it’s Tony but with an icon, okay and not Judy. No, Judy. You need us to add that we probably could.

Unknown Speaker  1:05:41  

Okay, so let’s get over to where are you? Start? I’m back. Okay, so Kells.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:03  

Yes. Just let me share my screen. Okay. And here we go. All right. Yeah, let’s people shuffle the names. And here we go. 321 is a great prize. Okay, saying, yep, singing Yes. Congratulations, sing. I will reach out to you. You can email me at K at lunch norm calm. And I’ll connect you with Tony. also reach out and message you. So check your messenger, Facebook inbox, and yeah, we’ll connect and get you your email blast.

Unknown Speaker  1:06:52  

So that’s fantastic. Okay, congratulations. And yeah, just feel free. If you like what you heard today, if you want to get in and start looking at retail or wholesale, you know, contact Tony. And just let it just let her know that you listen to the podcast. And again, she’ll she’s got that great deal of 50% off. So thank you, mahalo. And hopefully you can come back on.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:23  

I’d love to you bet. You’ve been stuck with a few questions, but I love it try.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:33  

Alright, Tony. Well, we’ll see you later. And thanks again and enjoy your day. And Aloha. Yep. Aloha. Okay, kelce.

Unknown Speaker  1:07:44  

All right. What a great episode. Yeah. Okay, Tony, thanks a lot. You open my mind for new ideas. That’s awesome to hear. That’s what the show is all about writing all these different topics. And now this isn’t the average. Amazon. We don’t just talk about Amazon on this podcast, we kind of touched on everything. And yeah, to grow your micro brand. So awesome. Thanks, Tony. No, thank you guys. Thank you for watching everyone. Just to let everyone know, we do have our contests happening, we have two contests. So if you see this going the bottom here, we have an airpod Pro giveaway contest. So you can find the link either in the comments here. Or you can go to norms, Instagram, and it’s the link in the bio. That’s an easy way to just enter the contest. Also, we have our exclusive beard nation consultation giveaway that is only available in the lunch with norm group. So that’s the lunch with norm Amazon FBA in e commerce collective group. There. You can all the instructions is pinned to the top of the group do that. And yeah, you can win an hour consultation with me and norm. So there’s some great prizes there as well. So there’s lots of lots of Giveaways happening. Lots of good stuff happening. So we got a special show tomorrow. Right? That’s right. We So yeah, that’s something we haven’t really mentioned. But we have a surprise show. Tomorrow. for Thursday, we have Josh Marston. Yeah. So that’s gonna be a fun show.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:23  

That Yeah, john. Look, if you’re still tuned in, you got to check out Josh. This guy is incredible. Another partner at snow. So grew this company from nothing to nine figures. So it’s going to be really great. Okay, and then on Friday, we have Michael Kurtz on and he’s from scratch concepts and we’re going to be is, again, we’ve got a couple of really cool shows coming up in the next over the next two, three weeks. So stay tuned and what You’re going to interrupt, I’m just going to

Unknown Speaker  1:10:01  

pop in one more time. If you do see your name looking like this during the show, Facebook user, there is this URL. I tried to put it into whoever was commenting, but you follow this link one time. This is only for the group members. It’s a privacy thing and perfect. So if you follow this link, you go from here to here, so we know it’s Alan now, okay, so if that ever happens, that’s what you do for that. And, and Alan, we love your chocolates by Yes, we love you. Alright.

Unknown Speaker  1:10:35  

So tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Friday noon, Eastern Standard Time. And thank you, everybody for for watching, being part of the community and enjoy the rest of your day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai