·By Linran YU
Before You Hire a Rep, Walk Into Three Stores Yourself
The script you hand a rep has to come from somewhere.
Small brands hire somebody to get the product onto shelves, and then nobody tells that person what to say, which terms to offer, or which shops not to bother with.
The reason is simple. Nobody at the brand has ever done it.
So the rep invents an answer at the counter, and whatever they invent becomes your offer.
When I was placing a pet brand in Los Angeles, I walked into the stores myself. This is what that taught me.
Build the list before you leave
An hour with AI gives you the independent shops within driving distance, grouped by neighborhood, with what each one already carries.
Note the competing products on their shelves. A shop with three of them is a different conversation from a shop with none. Then order the list by route, four or five in an afternoon.
Put the terms on one page
Consignment or wholesale, and the split.
Your price, the suggested retail price, and what the shop makes on each unit.
What you supply: price tags, a shelf talker, restocking, taking back what does not sell.
One sentence on what makes the product different.
If it does not fit on one page, the owner cannot repeat it to her staff after you leave.
Be able to say why it earns the shelf space
The owner is not deciding whether your product is good. She is deciding what comes off the shelf to make room for it.
So the answer has to be about her shop, not about your product.
Who walks in and asks for something like this.
What it does that the ones already on her shelf do not.
What she makes on each unit, next to what sits there now.
Why the same customer comes back for a second one.
Four sentences, said without notes. If it takes longer, you are listing features. And getting onto the shelf was never the same as selling off it.
Go in person, with the product in your hand
An email is easy to ignore. Somebody standing at the counter holding the thing is not.
Bring a sample the owner can open, turn over and put down on the counter. Shelf decisions get made by people who touch things.
Dress like the brand
For the first few minutes you are the only part of the brand the owner can see.
She is deciding whether your product will look right next to hers. Make that an easy call.
Leave with an answer
Ask what terms would get a yes. Not whether she is interested, which is free to say and means nothing.
If it is a yes, write it up before you leave. If it is a no, thank her and ask whether she knows another owner who would be a better fit. A no with a name attached is worth the visit on its own.
If you leave product behind, leave a record
A consignment is your inventory sitting in somebody else’s building. Print the form before you go. Nothing written on the back of a receipt while the owner waits.
One page, two copies, signed by both of you.
Shop name, address and date across the top.
A printed row for every product, with a box to write the quantity.
Checkboxes for the terms: consignment or wholesale, who pays for what, when you come back.
Name and position of the person taking delivery.
Your name, and a signature line for each of you.
Filled in at the counter it takes two minutes. Anything longer gets skipped, and the shop you skip it at is the one where the count goes wrong.
Write down what you heard
Three things after each shop, in the car, before you forget.
Why she was interested.
Why she hesitated.
The question you were not ready for.
After three shops, those notes are the script. Not a guess about what shop owners care about. The actual sentences that came out of them.
The bottom line
A rep can do this work. A rep cannot invent your terms, your answers and your standards for you.
Do it yourself three times, write down what happened, and then hand it over. After that you never have to walk in again.