Kingdom Ventures

04/15/2020

Milestone Achieved 🙌

Just 15 days into the month of April and one of our brands has hit a huge milestone... Over $100k in monthly sales!

But don't be fooled, chance and luck played no part in this.

This month has been a direct result of over 14 months in the trenches building out:

🗸 Operational standards and processes
🗸 Community engagement
🗸 Our email list and relational automation
🗸 Dialing in our advertising on the best platforms
🗸 Improving customer support
🗸 Improved customer acquisition campaigns
and so so much more...

Looking just a few months back, there are a couple constants that showed to be some of the biggest contributors to this growth:

🗸 Continuing to invest in your audience on all relative platforms
🗸 BUILD & ENGAGE YOUR EMAIL LIST (highest ROI)
🗸 Don't stop your ads, period.
🗸 Staying in front of customer/potential customers with value pays dividends, even if you're not seeing a direct ROI at the time of doing it.

Excited to finally hit this marker, but even more excited to see what the future holds for the brand.

04/13/2020

Building an audience creates a compound effect...

With so many people online, now is a golden opportunity to engage and build relationships with your ideal customers.

Over time, the engagement from your audience can be used to attract new followers, and those followers then attract new followers and so on.

Just this past month, one of our brands launched a new product formulation that started to create this compound effect.

Over 400 shares on a sponsored post that continued to extend our reach to new potential customers.

After several Facebook lives, and a few new blog posts, we prepared to launch our Easter Sale campaign.

This incredible new audience ended up purchasing just over $7,400 in the first 24 hours through ads and combined with our current audience purchased just over $37,000 for our weekend Easter Sale.

This is the 3rd time we've used this sales process and this go-around was the best yet.

We finally took the time to go through and documented each and every step so we can duplicate this process again, and again.

If you want to get your hands on the exact sales process for your physical product brand, just comment "Sales" below.

04/11/2020

Now’s the time to serve your customers 🙌

You can’t help but enjoy seeing the nice jump in daily sales as a result.

If you’re investing anything into your brand...

This is when you need to be connecting with your brands audience now more than ever!

✔️ Email
✔️ Social Posts
✔️ Messenger
✔️ Lives

Just this past Friday, AT&T reported it hit a record high in data usage!

While everyone in spending more time online, you can be focusing on engaging your customer and building an audience at the lowest cost in ages!

02/07/2020

When selling to retail stores, we come across this question a lot…

Retailers will commonly ask brands “Do you offer exclusivity?”

The answer to this is a bit more complex than you might think.

In general, we advise against any generic exclusivity contracts.

This would include any exclusivity contracts for ZIP or mile radius.

Let us explain…

The best way to gauge any sort of exclusivity is a case by case basis.

Let’s say you have a retailer in Los Angeles...

Offering any sort of exclusivity in such a populated area would make it difficult to bring on any new retailers that could extend your line.

Even if retailers don’t compete with each other, you’d be out of luck.

Now, what if you have a retailer in Tyler, Texas?

With such a small population, there could be a benefit to offering exclusivity for a 5-10 mile radius so you can protect that retailer.

If you do decide to offer exclusivity, DO NOT create a contract.
(This doesn't mean you break the agreement)

Feel free to offer a verbal agreement on the radius, but we’ve seen too many brands drug into court over a retailer in the same state though it was outside the agreed radius or even a mistake made by the retailer management team.

Now an exception to this…

If you have a retailer that brings in BIG $$$ each month, and the only way to have them carry the product is with an exclusivity agreement, this would be up to you on moving forward.

Again, these are just suggestions from our experience.

A good rule of thumb, we don’t want our brands to have more than 5-6 retail locations in an area with a population of around 400,000.

At the end of the day, we want our retailers to be successful!

We don’t want to saturate the market, we want to keep things competitive.

So every time you have a new retailer apply for your brand…

You’ll want to look over a few things:

✓ What type of location are they in?

✓ Do they cater to your ideal demographic?

✓ How large is their audience?

✓ Current sales volume with products similar to yous.
Would verbal exclusivity be worth it?

✓ Do they take care of their customers?

As a summary…

We advise against exclusivity contracts and approach each retailer on a case by case basis.

We want to ensure both parties are going to be successful!
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Want to have retailers applying for your brand each month?

You wouldn’t believe the simple system we’ve developed!

Check out this training our founder put together 👇
http://bit.ly/GetInRetail

You’ll see just how easy getting into retail can be.

02/03/2020

So excited that The Commercial Appeal shed some light on the incredible work our founder's wife, Lee Pittman Howard and the entire team of women over at Re-New-All Candle are doing. 🙌

This social enterprise is working hard to bring community, restoration, and empowerment to those searching for a new start.

The goals the women set for themselves vary. Some of them are personal. Gunn wants to reconnect with her 16-year-old daughter, and Iris wants to get more comfortable sharing her story without fear.

01/24/2020

When approaching retailers, have you ever gotten the question…

“Who else carries the brand?”

Now, most brand’s first thought becomes,

“They want to know how popular we are...”

But typically, this isn’t the case.

A Majority of the time, this question is asked to gauge competition.

Retailers want to see if they’re going to have to fight for sales in their own back yard.

Now, in the case they are trying to gauge brand popularity.

And let’s say you’re just starting to get retail distribution.

we typically advise responding with the following…

“You’re actually one of the first few stores we’ve reached out to!

After spending time looking over your brand, we love what you stand for and think our products and mission would be a perfect fit for your customers.

Because of our popularity online, we’ve continued to get requests from retail stores and decided that retail was going to be a focus for our brand this year”.

But when a retailer IS asking to gauge competition in the area…

The question that follows shortly after is...

“Do you offer territory exclusivity?”

Now before we say what our opinion is.

Territory exclusivity can be a two-edged sword.

On one hand, you want to take care of your retailers…

On the other, you want to have the opportunity for your brand to get into as many locations as possible.

With this being a loaded question...

We’ll save this one for the next post on “Questions Retailers Ask”.

Are you ready to get your brand into retail stores?

We make it easy!

Schedule a call with our team below.

>> http://bit.ly/GetInRetailStrategyCall

we’ll explain just how SIMPLE it can be.

01/23/2020

Do you have a MAP policy?

Do you know why you need one?

Not long ago, one of our brands decided to start selling on Amazon.

This brand had several thousand retailers carrying their brand.

A few hundred of those retailers were through a big box store.

After having their brand set up on Amazon, we began listing products…

And this is when the frustration started.

Big box retailers had already begun selling our brand’s products on Amazon.

This meant we had to now battle for the buy box as ASINS had already been created.

The worst part…

WE HAD NO MAP POLICY!

This made it where retailers could continue to drop the price, leaving us unable to win.

After creating our MAP policy, we contacted retailers...

The listing were magically removed!

Well, not really...

This MAP policy won the day, leaving us as the primary sellers.

So what is a MAP policy exactly?

In short, this stands for the minimum advertised price.

Not only does this ensure the product can't be advertised under the MAP.

✓ It protects other retailers that sell the product.

✓ It also contains a clause stating…

“SHALL NOT PROMOTE, MARKET, ADVERTISE, OFFER TO SELL OR SELL ANY PRODUCT ON OR THROUGH ANY ONLINE MARKETPLACE OR AUCTION SERVICE (E.G., EBAY, AMAZON MARKETPLACE OR LIKE WEBSITES), EXCEPT AS MAY BE EXPRESSLY CONSENTED TO BY ”

So we hope this shows just how important a MAP policy is for protecting your brand, and other retailers that desire to carry your products.

We strongly recommend hiring an attorney to finalize your MAP policy, even when using an online template.

01/22/2020

We speak with a lot of physical product brands that want to get into retail but don’t know what their wholesale pricing for retailers should be.

In fact, we even see some brands that are LOSING money because they are unable to price their products correctly for direct to consumer.

This leaves them unable to reinvest back into marketing, new products, operations, and even paying themselves!

Without covering too many different options...

We want to show you the most straight forward pricing strategy that will leave room for a strong profit that has proven to work for our brands.

This is considered Keystone pricing (doubling your COGS).

But instead of using Keystone pricing for direct to consumer, this will establish the wholesale price for retailers.

For example…

Let’s say you have a jar of face cream.

After being made, jarred, and labeled, this jar of face cream costs you $10.

Knowing that your COGS for this product is $10, we are going to apply Keystone pricing to get $20 for our wholesale price to retailers.

Knowing that our wholesale is going to be $20 we are going to apply this again to get our direct to consumer pricing that will be $40.

Using this pricing strategy, you will have room to offer incentive pricing to retailers who buy bulk and leave plenty of room for investing in advertising & marketing for online D2C.

NOTE: When going this route, ensure your products are high quality and packaging/branding is on point. We always want to play the premier market, even if selling on Amazon.

Remember, it’s difficult to truly serve your customers with a cheap product that can’t produce the best results.

Not to mention, a brand that can’t reinvest in itself won’t be around very long to continue serving them.

Want your products in retail?

We show you how-to, here 👇
http://bit.ly/GetInRetailTraining

01/15/2020

Create an offer that retailers can’t refuse…

If you’ve ever considered selling your products to retail or boutique stores, you’ll need to create a compelling offer that will…

✓ Get them excited to carry your products.

✓ Reassure them they’ll have everything to succeed with your products

✓ Explain your initial order with pre-selected products that will reduce the decision time.

Now the old way of doing this, product brands just sent a catalog of products and allowed retailers to take their time on placing opening orders.

You don’t want to go this route…

1. They won’t know what products they should carry (or they’ll spend hours with your sales team trying to figure it out).

2. They’re just too busy.

Like you, retailers have a lot going on!

They need the ability to make a quick decision that they can have confidence in.

By creating a clear and concise opening order or “offer” you are going to make carrying your products a simply yes or no question.

And a majority of the time...we get a yes!

Let me give you an example offer one of our clients has had incredible success with…

The initial opening order was priced at $475 with the top sellers and colors laid out in a downloadable PDF with UPC/SKU numbers, wholesale/retail pricing (make sure to show the total retail value of the opening order), and images beside each product.

Along with the opening order products, our offer also included…

✓ A branded “back office” (Shopify site) with marketing materials (images/videos), product training videos, and project recipe cards.

✓ Listing on our site with $5/day Facebook ad budget for their store (this can be optional).

✓ Weekly mentoring calls for insider tips on growing their retail business.

You can see, we provide A LOT of value in our offer for the price of just $475.

This is why our client has been able to see up to a 90% close rate on applicants.

So as you prepare your Get In Retail campaign, don’t forget to create an incredible offer that potential retailers just can’t say no to.

P.S. If you need any help setting up your campaign offer, just schedule your FREE strategy call below 👇

http://bit.ly/GetInRetailStrategyCall

01/14/2020

Why should private-label brands consider selling to retailers?

This is a question I asked myself knowing how well our online brands and sales channels performed…

“Why add more work when I can just be comfortable with online?”

The great thing is, once you get a retailer on it’s pretty much hands off!

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t create an offer for potential retailers that has…

✓ Images for promoting on social media

✓ MAP policy to ensure they don’t compete with you online (dealt with this the hard way)

✓ A solid entry product offering & price so they can make a decision fast

- Some brands just send a catalog and wait for them to make a decision.

✓ Product training & sales videos to help them represent the brand well

And some other small things, but we won’t get into all that.

When you get a retailer to carry your products, sure you’re selling at wholesale pricing but the great thing is they are buying in bulk!

Not only is this great cash flow for you to reinvest back online, but it’s a great way to…

✓ Increase brand awareness on a national level

✓ Get retail sales “case-studies” to approach large buyers

For example, when my wife started her social enterprise Re-New-All Candle, the first route we went was setting up a campaign for retail while online sales got rolling.

In a very short period of time, we got into 10 well known retail locations that go through an avg of 30 units every 2 weeks!

Talk about some consistent re-orders!

While this might not seem as s*xy as scaling your ecom ads, this has proven to be a great route to connect with established retail brands, increase our brand’s recognition on a national level and provide some incredible cash flow in the process.

If you happen to be developing a physical product brand and want to grow fast, I’d highly consider throwing a retail campaign together when you have the chance.

P.S. If you want to avoid the headaches & fees off the bat, stay away from rep groups (unless you’re going big box out of the gate) and 3rd party sites (Faire, Tundra), just create the campaign yourself.

01/13/2020

Want the exact process for getting 30-50 retailers asking to cary your products, every month?

Visit The Training Here >> http://bit.ly/GetInRetailTraining