Getting your product onto a retail shelf is the holy grail for many emerging brands. However, the journey from a finished prototype to a national retail partnership is paved with challenges, miscommunications, and steep learning curves. What do retailers actually need from the brands they partner with?
This was the topic of a recent roundtable discussion held at ECRM’s Convenience and Impulse Sessions that was moderated by Fresh Scent’s Andrew Allen. The roundtable, which included two rounds of discussions with a mix of brands and retail buyers, took a deep dive into the core of what builds a lasting, profitable supplier-retailer partnership.
Following the roundtable I interviewed Allen on some of his learnings from the roundtable discussion. The key takeaway was that brands need to focus on three crucial pillars to win at retail: Transparency, Service, and Expertise. In this blog post, we’ll dig into each of these pillars and how brands can deploy each as part of their buyer engagement.
To watch my full interview with Allen, check out the YouTube video below!
Radical Transparency: The Foundation of Trust
In the rush to secure a purchase order, many brands feel pressured to present a “perfect” version of themselves. They highlight every strength and gloss over every potential weakness. While this might land an initial meeting, it often leads to a breakdown in the relationship when the brand cannot deliver on its promises.
According to Allen, honesty about what your brand can’t do is just as important as what it can. “Brands get points for being transparent,” he says. “It creates a trust with the buyer when you say, ‘Hey, I’d love to help you out with this initiative, but what you’re sharing doesn’t really line up with our capabilities. Are you open to flexing or should we table this for another time?'”
This level of discipline is difficult for new founders who want to say “yes” to every opportunity. However, being a yes man can lead to out-of-stock issues, logistical failures, and burned bridges.
“The more transparent we are about our product, about our capabilities, what we’re great at and what we aren’t as good at delivering, the feedback from that buyer is very appreciative and they actually lean on you as a supplier partner,” says Allen.
Transparency is A Two-Way Street
Transparency isn’t just for the brand, however; it’s a requirement for the retailer as well. To succeed, brands need to know which lever the buyer is trying to pull. Is the retailer looking for the highest possible profit margin, the fastest turnover (velocity), or a unique item that sets them apart from competitors (differentiation)?
Allen suggests that brands should proactively seek this clarity. “I like to sit down with my buyer and ask them, ‘What’s the most important to you? Is it margin? Is it velocity? Or is it differentiation?’” he says. “Because a buyer is naturally going to say they want all three of those things. But the reality is most products excel really at only one or two of those.”
When a retailer is honest about their priorities, it allows the brand to either align its pitch or realize they aren’t the right fit for that specific goal – saving both parties valuable time.
High-Level Service: Treating the Buyer as the Customer
For CPG brands, particularly those emerging brands that may have started direct-to-consumer, it’s easy to focus solely on the person who eventually buys the product for consumption. But for a brand to get to that point in the brick-and-mortar world, they must first serve their immediate customer: the retail buyer.
Buyers are often overwhelmed, managing hundreds of accounts and sitting through dozens of meetings a week. In this environment, service translates to responsiveness and patient persistence.
“The message from retailers was, ‘I’m busy and if I said I’m interested, I do want you to continue to follow up. And maybe just because I didn’t respond to the first, second, third email, don’t give up on me, keep me in the forefront,'” says Allen.
Respecting the Buyer’s Time
Beyond just following up, brands need to provide the right information at the right time. Buyers aren’t just looking for samples; they are looking for data they can use to sell your brand to their own internal leadership.
“The better service you offer, the better chance you have to create a relationship and earn their trust,” he says. “And it can be frustrating. At times, it can feel like a one-way street, but patient persistence does pay off.”
How to Follow Up Without Being a Nuisance
The best way to manage the follow-up process is to simply ask for the rules of engagement during the initial meeting. Every buyer has a different preference for how they want to be contacted.
“Your meeting here at an ECRM is a great opportunity to point-blank ask your buyer, ‘How would you like me to follow up? What if I don’t hear from you in the first three? Do you want me to keep going?’” says Allen. “Then even just for peace of mind, you get that verbal affirmation, and then you know you can deliver them what they ask and that’s all you can do.”
Allen also notes that it is vital to give the buyer an out. If they aren’t interested, you want to know as soon as possible so you can focus your energy elsewhere. “We like to say, ‘Does this make sense to follow up on at all?’ And just leave it there,” he notes. “We’re going to stop that question right there and leave it open-ended and let them answer.”
Deep Expertise: Category Dynamics & Incrementality
The final pillar is expertise. While you must be an expert on your own product and consumer, retailers now expect you to be an expert on their entire category. They want to know how your product affects the rest of the shelf.
“It’s no longer enough to just know your consumer,” says Allen. “Retailers want you to help them connect the dots on how that grows their category. Brands need to put the time into understanding how categories grow, what adds that growth, understanding that that’s the buyer’s goal, and then helping them connect the consumer dots as well. Especially as e-commerce continues to grow and products get more and more specific, that niche expertise is becoming more and more valuable for emerging and challenger brands.”
The Concept of Incrementality
A common fear for retailers is cannibalization, where a new product simply steals sales from an existing product they already carry, resulting in zero net growth for the category. To win a buyer over, you must prove incrementality: that your product brings in a new customer or solves a problem that current products don’t.
Allen uses his own brand, Fresh Scents, as an example. Fresh Scents makes scented sachets for use around the home, particularly for spaces like closets and drawers. When pitching to a buyer who already stocks scented plugins and candles, he uses data to show that his product doesn’t replace those items; it adds to them.
“Forty percent of the top indexing products along with Fresh Scents are also continuous scent action air fresheners,” he notes. “What that means is that Fresh Scents is additive to the category, it’s not replacing. Nobody stops buying Glade plugins because they discover sachets. They just find a new way to add fragrance into their home in a space where they didn’t have a solution before.”
By showing the buyer that your product fills a “white space” rather than just competing for the same dollar, you make the decision to stock your brand much easier.
Conclusion: Playing the Long Game in Retail
Getting on the shelf isn’t just about having a great product; it’s about being a great partner. By leading with transparency, providing impeccable service to the buyer, and offering deep category expertise, you move from merely being a vendor to becoming a true partner.