At the New York Toy Fair last week I met with the brand owner of a niche collectible brand available in Australia. They shared worldwide sales information that changed how I saw some items available in Australia. Data insights revealed not only top sellers but also helped demonstrate connections between items in the portfolio.
While local suppliers do their best, sometimes even they do not have insights that can be invaluable to driving greater success from licenced product. This where groups can play a role, by digging deeper and developing information-flow relationships with brand owners.
Thanks to the social media world of today, information is key in being able to pitch points of difference. While a product may be in multiple retailers, if you have information ahead of others yo can leverage it to pitch a point of difference.
Price is not the differentiator it was years ago. The most valuable shoppers to any retail business are those who care less about price and more about a licence, its collectibility and value-add insights you may have. It is our job as retailers to mine for these value-adds.
This is especially true of brands that are not usual for the business you run for anything you can do to leverage a brand that can attract new traffic has to be mission critical.
I appreciate I am not being explicit here. There is a reason for that. More core message is – mine for unique information that you can use to leverage fringe brands you carry and through this expect to discover en shoppers.
Pitch it how you like but Price is everything v expensive for American products, so much so It’s cheaper to deal in UK products. They don’t charge vat the UK mail is far cheaper than what they charge for posting something from America and most Am company’s don’t want to send to Australia anyway, don’t know why.