Inventors are known for having great ideas. Making those ideas
sell-well, that's another skill altogether. Inventors
frequently lack the expertise or resources necessary to really
launch a product successfully.
Enter manufacturers' reps, who can bring extensive knowledge
and expertise to a budding entrepreneur's sales approach.
Having a manufacturers' rep represent your new product adds
some serious advantages to the equation. For one thing, reps
usually have large, established sales networks that ideally have
significant market contacts. Plus, representatives get paid only
when they make the sale, which is a far better alternative for
underfinanced inventors who'd otherwise incur high costs
associated with setting up an internal sales organization from
scratch.
Not surprisingly, reps look very attractive to inventors. But
unfortunately, inventors don't look all that attractive to
reps. The primary problem is that inventors don't yet have
existing sales, so reps are forced to pioneer the market. It's
common for reps to lose money during the first few years spent
selling a new product, because their sales costs may exceed their
commissions. They won't actually cash in until customers start
buying.
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Considering the important role they just might play in your
business, you'd be well-advised to learn how to locate, sign on
and nurture such reps. After all, who wouldn't want a rep if it
meant maximizing his or her company's profits?
Growing
Strong
Jane McKittrick, 48, started out as most inventors do-by attempting
to take on the big job of selling her innovative gardening products
herself. Sure, she and her partners made some sales on their own,
but the products didn't really take off until they hired a rep
to take over.
McKittrick's innovative line of products stemmed from the
simple realization that many gardening jobs were tough on a
person's hands and arms, especially when using hand tools like
small handheld hoes, trowels and cultivators. So McKittrick and
partner Patricia Greene, 48, created six new garden hand tools that
featured comfortable, upright handgrips and flexible arm cuffs to
increase leverage. The main benefit of these products is in the
design (refined by McKittrick's other partners, father and son
Steve Kari, 57, and John Kari, 34), which effectively cuts down the
strain gardening puts on arms and wrists.
Originally, the partners started out by selling a modest number
of products at the Minnesota State Fair. That was before they hired
a rep. Now, by year-end 2002, they expect their Forest Lake,
Minnesota, company, Earth Bud-Eze, to sell at least 15,000 tools
annually at retail prices ranging from $9.99 to $15.95 through
large gardening stores and chains nationwide. Thanks to the
expertise of Marshall Associates Inc., a rep group with extensive
contacts in the hardware and gardening markets, Earth Bud-Eze is
achieving the kind of success the partners had once only dreamed
of.
Like many innovations, the design of these tools was inspired by
real-life observations. "Six years ago, Jane was doing a lot
of landscape gardening, but she didn't have enough arm strength
to keep up with the men on the job," Greene says. So the
partners developed a product that would preserve her strength while
gardening. Soon enough, they found they weren't the only
gardeners who appreciated easy-to-use tools. "Our products are
for everyone who wants to make gardening less work," explains
Greene.
Although they knew their products had the potential to sell
well, actually getting them into the hands of customers proved
difficult. In addition to introducing the products at the 2000
Minnesota State Fair, the partners tried licensing their products
to another company-to no avail. Having to rely solely on sales from
the fair wasn't really enough to put the company on the
map.
In the fall of 2000, Greene was introduced to Terry Byrnes, a
member of her church who happened to work for Marshall Associates
Inc., a nationwide manufacturers' sales agency that
specializes in gardening products. The agency liked the products
and added them to its line-and in one short year, Earth Bud-Eze
went from respectable sales at the state fair level to retail
success at mass merchants and hardware stores nationwide. What
convinced the agency to pick up the products? Greene says Marshall
Associates had noticed a tremendous need in the gardening industry
for tools that were easy to use-and Earth Bud-Eze fit the bill.
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