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.
Welcome! We hope our blog is a source of inspiration for you, providing you with insight, knowledge and a vision for creating your brand. Think big, plan carefully and follow your creative ideas.
We love partnering up with visionary entrepreneurs and organisations to develop new brands in this industry. Our team are passionate and insightful professionals with years of experience – in strategy, branding, product development, buying, category management, global marketing, contract manufacturing – to help you to create, develop and grow your business.
Straightforward, positive, creative pragmatic thinkers, we believe in telling things the way they are. We work with you to develop a comprehensive strategy for your business by looking at the ‘big picture’ and then delving down into the details to create order and structure, neatly packaged up to deliver you commercial results.
Our founder Janet Milner-Walker has worked with leading brands and companies across the beauty, retail, travel retail and luxury goods sectors in the UK, Dubai and South Africa. She founded Bespoke Advantage as a beauty brand management company…
‘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 is one of the best people I have ever worked with in my career. She fully understands the whole process of product development, supply chain and marketing. Janet has in-depth experience of toiletries and international retailing. I would recommend her to any company or client.’
‘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.’
‘I highly recommend Bespoke Advantage to business owners across the beauty, spa and wellness industry. Janet has been a fantastic support to my business. Through her in-depth knowledge of the beauty industry she has provided me with strategies specifically tailored to my business needs, to help me to grow my business across the marketplace’.
‘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.’
‘Janet is extremely professional, knowledgeable and thorough, an expert of her field. This shone through from our first conversation, which instinctively led me to want to work with Bespoke Advantage. As a new skincare brand the expertise of Bespoke Advantage has been invaluable.’
‘Janet, absolutely fantastic to meet you today. Thoroughly enjoyed The Beauty Workshop. You definitely excel in your area and beyond.’
‘We have been really pleased to work with Janet. Through her 6-Month online coaching program she showed us exactly what we needed to do each step of the way. Really look forward to having future opportunities to work together.’
‘Many thanks again for all the help, support and words of encouragement, as I said before, best and most sensible thing I’ve done in developing my beauty ideas is to engage with you!’
‘It’s been inspirational working with Janet. We are in the process of launching a skincare brand however have received conflicting opinions from so many people we were really confused. I am so impressed by Janet’s knowledge and experience in product development, marketing and retail and the way she explains everything so clearly. She is very motivating and positive, and so much fun to work with. I have much more clarity and confidence in how to move things forward.’
‘Bespoke Advantage helped us to bring our brand to life creatively and strategically. We have a clear strategy in place, with a distinctive brand message that enables us to articulate our brand to retailers and to journalists.’