TOY DISTRIBUTORS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Today we’re going to be talking about Toy distributors, how to find them, how to manage them and what to expect. We’ve been working with Toy distributors for about a quarter of a century. Today, our company is in touch with about 500 or 600 Toy & Game distributors around the world, and we have about 5,000 of them on our databases. So what we’re going to talk about on this video comes from a position of hard-earned experience.
Anyway, here’s the key things to know about distributors:
1. You can work with global, regional, national or local distributors. The main point as far as territory is concerned is to make sure that your distributor can actually reach all the markets you grant them rights for. They may be No. 1 in one market, but only have a marginal footprint in some other markets, so don’t blindly grant them rights they won’t use.
2. Distributors will inevitably always let you down eventually, or in some cases, instantly. But you need to understand the structural reason for that. In order to stay in business and provide some stability to their operations, they HAVE to work with multiple partners. They might distribute for a handful of Toy manufacturers, or they may work with hundreds or even thousands. As a result, they will never, ever put as much focus on your products as you do. I can think of one example where a distributor I rated highly insisted on having Amazon rights in their country, but then routinely failed to have our products in stock. This meant we were losing revenue on an account that we could manage as well as them, but where they were not paying attention to our products.
3. Distributors choose from literally thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of products. So in order to persuade them to sell your products and to put any energy into selling them, you need to develop a really strong and compelling proposition. Be very clear on what your products are going to do for them – are you giving them something they can use to compete against their own competition, are you giving them something that’s a real safe bet? Work out what’s in it for them. If you have a range of nothing special, me too products, then you had better be very good at developing relationships, because you have a lot of competition!
4. Don’t just rely on an annual Toy trade show meeting to manage your relationship. If you really want to get your distributor working maximally for your business, take time & spend money on going to see them at their offices, do a retail tour with them, listen to what challenges they express they are facing and help them to solve them. Don’t be a passive office dweller on this and you will get much more from your distributors.
5. You also need to have some patience and to be realistic. It’s not uncommon for Toy & Game companies to sign up with a distributor, sack them before the end of year one and try to move onto a new distributor. It takes time to build up a product or brand in a market. And also, just remember, there are only so many good well established reputable Toy distributors in each country. If you go through a new one every year, after a few years you will have none left. Stay on good terms, and once you decide to work with a distributor give them a chance (with your full support and monitoring) to deliver for you both.
And that’s all for this time, but just before we go, my company has increased export Sales for 100+ companies around the world. If you want to find out more about how we do that, just check out www.KidsBrandInsight.com/services
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