Building Relationships with Retail Buyers? Whether you’re a multinational company with a large portfolio of brands or a small start-up specialising in a single product, as a supplier the key to ensuring your product range remains listed in-stores is to develop a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with your retail partner, generally the retail buyer.
A healthy relationship extends beyond having a strongly differentiated product range that is well priced. Buyers are the gate keepers to a retailers’ brand perception, profitability and competitive edge. The nature of their role is to keep retail stores optimally stocked with profitable products that turnaround quickly. Entrepreneurial in nature, buyers thrive in a fast-paced environment where they pull upon their creative, analytical and commercial skills.
Their success is measured by their ability to predict cutting-edge trends that deliver year-round sales, keeping the retailer one step ahead of its competitors. This doesn’t come without challenges.
Understand their priorities by placing yourself in their shoes. From their perspective, why does your product deserve space on their shelves, once you have identified this, help them to deliver this. Consider the benefits your product adds to their portfolio and all the ways in which you can support them in driving their sales.
A typical buyer who is sourcing beauty brands as well as developing private label beauty brands for a retailer will be juggling several seasons stock and plans simultaneously. Their time is spent on analysing the current seasons’ sales and promotions, whilst working on developing the range for Christmas 2018 interspersed with buying trips, range reviews, trade shows, supplier performance reviews and sourcing up and coming brands. It is understandable just how precious time is to a buyer and why you can never schedule in a meeting or track them down on a phone call.
Ultimately, a buyer ‘s goal is to serve their customers as best as they can. After securing space on their shelves, as a supplier you will need to demonstrate that you understand your retailer’s needs and requirements. This includes delivering stock on time, growing sales in-stores, and ensuring that your product range stands out and provides a point of difference versus your competitors, delivering a health margin.
Just as suppliers are dependent on buyers, retailer buyers are dependent on reliable, commercially minded suppliers. Buyers have no interest in one-sided relationships. As a supplier your credibility is everything, so don’t give your buyer reason to doubt your commitment.
As a supplier, you should be defining your buyers’ expectations, and exceeding them. Monitoring your product performance in-stores on a regular basis, analyzing what your competitors are up to, what promotions they are running, what products they are launching and ensuring that you stay one step ahead of them.
Successful brands understand how to tailor their strategies for omni-channel retail. Today’s consumers are savvy and demand an immersive shopping experience that provides theatre and entertainment across multi-channels. They expect brands to be consistent across all touch points, with regards to price, quality and product availability. Positioning yourself as the retailers’ brand partner who understand their needs, will stand you in far better stead, cementing a solid long-term relationship. Essentially what I would call a win-win situation all round.
Need some help with developing your retail strategy? Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you.
As a beauty and wellness consultancy, we develop a comprehensive strategy for your business by understanding your vision (and the marketplace) and then delving into the details to create order and structure neatly packaged up to deliver you commercial results. We design brand identities and visual elements, manage your product development, build your go-to-market strategies to help you to engage with your ideal customers.
We are proud to support our clients from different regions of the world – from Saudi Arabia, to Dubai, Sri Lanka, Africa, Australia, the US, Canada, Europe and the UK – from entrepreneurs, to multi-award-winning beauty and wellness brands, retailers, investors, distributors, embassies and trade bodies. And we work with you across the retail sector, and the professional sector, including the hair care market, professional nail care market, spas, salons, hotels and the aesthetics market – here’s a snapshot.
If you would like to discuss your ideas with us, get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
As an international beauty and wellness consultancy, we are proud to work alongside clients from different regions of the world – Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Africa, Australia, Canada, US, Europe and the UK . We love collaborating with entrepreneurs, multi-award-winning beauty and wellness brands, retailers, investors, distributors, embassies and trade bodies across the retail sector, and the professional sector, including those selling into the hair care market, hotels, spas, professional nail care market and aesthetics market.
If you need support with devising a new strategy, developing a new product range, designing your packaging or rebranding your current product range, managing your PR, or with planning your market-entry into international markets, get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
Bespoke is a brand management expert with deep industry knowledge, extensive experience and a comprehensive understanding of the beauty and personal industry in the UK and Europe, complemented by an extensive network of contacts in the relevant market segments. Bespoke’s expertise, experience and contacts significantly contributed the success of the UK/Europe project with the companies that Bespoke assisted successfully entering or well on track to enter the UK and European markets. The Bespoke team was very professional, responsive and obliging and always delivered within timeframes. It was a pleasure to work with them.
Working with Janet over the past year has been a real pleasure, she has fantastic industry experience and knowledge of the UK beauty market. She has delivered a number of webinars for my clients looking at how to enter the UK market, providing an overview of the market and how to build a strategy. She took the briefs we provided and added real value to them, included key insights and information that my clients have found incredibly useful. Feedback on these sessions has been very positive. Janet is a clear communicator and has always delivered as agreed and on time. We are continuing to work together on other projects and I very much value the conversations we share.
‘Janet has a wealth of experience across retail, buying and marketing. She conducted a full strategic review of our cross functional business and the travel retail market to develop a comprehensive buying and quality control strategy that was signed off at board level. I highly recommend her as an asset to any business.’
‘As a Queensland-based company, we were determined to tap into the European market and establish a strong presence. From the very beginning, Bespoke Advantage demonstrated a deep understanding of our export goals and objectives. Their comprehensive knowledge of the European market, coupled with their extensive network of contacts, enabled them to connect us with key decision-makers and influential stakeholders in our target countries. Their strategic guidance and insights were invaluable in shaping our export strategy and positioning us for long-term success.’
‘Through Janet’s management skills, expertise and proven track record on the job she successfully managed the purchasing of our retail operations and ensured the integrity of our brands in-stores. Her enthusiasm and total dedication, delivered results in any project she was involved in.’
‘Janet has excellent beauty market knowledge. Level headed with clear vision, direction and the ability to drive business forward, Janet led the teams through a complete product design change advising on what the key marketing messages should be, incorporating her technical knowledge and beauty expertise.’
‘Absolutely fantastic course. Condensed learning from Janet, an expert in developing beauty brands. Also, valuable introductions to expert professionals, in the Masterclass sessions. In 12 weeks, you will learn from Janet, what would take years to learn by yourself. A very worthwhile investment’