How much influence do places like Walmart, Costco, and Kroger have over package size of consumer products?
This is a Quora question I was asked to answer. My response is as follows. Quite a bit for smaller vendors, which is what I know. Probably less with larger vendors. But it also depends on how much the retailer wants the vendor’s products and what gets negotiated in the vendor agreement. And the influence [...]
What’s your concept of how retail stores could prosper moving forward?
This is a Quora question about how retail stores could prosper that I was asked. My answer is as follows. I think it comes down to four areas. Exclusivity You are the only retail location that sells a product that consumers want. I think the product category that best fits this would be art. In [...]
What is the mechanism behind supermarkets’ special offers?
This is a Quora question about the mechanism behind supermarkets’ special offers I was asked and my answer is as follows. Retailer category managers have run discounts, coupons and special offers to help temporarily drive up sales and increase traffic to their store section. They use them to promote new products or to reward existing [...]
What is a good marketing start to sell goods in a luxury segment?
This is a Quora question to sell goods in a luxury segment I was asked to answer. My answer is as follows. Are you selling your own products that you created and own to consumers, or are you reselling other luxury products via a wholesale basis? I think the answer depends on which avenue you [...]
What happens to the connections a distributor has made with retailers for your product if you decide to replace him?
This is a Quora question on connections a distributor has made with retailers that I was asked. My answer is as follows. That will depend. For fragmented retail channels where there are many retailers, you usually use a particular distributor because of their connections and logistical pathways to retailers. In these channels, it is easier [...]
Making microproduction work profitably: an example of printing labels in house rather than outsourcing
I want to talk about micro production. For background, consumer products over the last 6 decades have largely been built on mass scale, producing as much of it as possible on a mass scale, which drives economies of scale down and drives costs down to serve mass markets. That has worked up until the [...]
“Newsletter” versus “Magazine” and marketing power words
I want to do a quick post here on marketing in words and the power of words. For my pet business we've had a newsletter a monthly newsletter for a long time. It's both in digital version and in print version. We've always named it newsletter and it goes out once a month. But [...]
I’m considering on starting a drop ship ecommerce online site. What are the best products to offer?
This is a Quora question I was asked to answer. My response is below. There are a ton of free resources online about drop ship ecommerce. One is Drop Ship Lifestyle. Finding the best products is the million dollar question. But you find these products using many tools and processes to help, one of [...]
What are some barriers of entry to running a successful eCommerce business?
This is a Quora question I was asked and my answer is as follows. My sense is that a minimum qualification for “successful” is profitable on an EBITDA basis (net profit or earnings before interest and taxes, depreciation and amortization) such that your profits will pay back your original investment in a defined time [...]