Tricks to get into 3,500 Retail Stores

Yesterday was incredible. I finally visited our brand new CROSSNET warehouse out in Vista, California. It’s crazy to think that just a few years ago we were selling nets out of an old thousand square foot record store in Willimantic, Connecticut. The lights barely worked, there certainly was no heat, and the rent was $500 a month. Now we’re in a 10,000 square foot facility and have trucks picking up orders from some of the world’s largest stores daily.

Sadly, your business starts and ends with logistics. It’s the least sexy part of running a business, but if you’re overpaying for importing, packaging, shipping, and labor you literally don’t stand a chance. You should be checking your invoices monthly from shipping providers & 3PLs, relentlessly comparing costs, and seeing what you can to do stretch every dollar. If something can be done better, then take the time to do it. Don’t settle for just okay.

This Sunday, I’m heading to Toronto for the first time to record a masterclass on what it takes to build a successful e-commerce business in 2021. It will be live within the next few months and I’m so damn excited for you guys to check it out. I’ve never been to Toronto before so if you have suggestions on places to go and eat that I don’t want to miss please let me know. As I’m preparing for this trip I’ve started to think a lot about this:

5 Best Things I've Done Post iOS15

1) Create monthly MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) targets that are visible to the entire company and daily ROAS targets for performance marketing. We use Triple Whale to track our daily ROAS and it’s a no-brainer solution. MER is a bit more complicated to track and is a report of all of your expenses versus returns into your business. If you respond back to this email, I can send you a mock template of the excel sheet we use internally.

2) Review ad creatives monthly using a tool such as Motion. Sit down with the team, see what’s working, what’s not. Cut the losers, make more of the winners. You need to be testing more than ever.

3) Driving all your traffic to one landing page will not cut it anymore. Niche your audiences down. Create landers specifically for the demos you’re running ads to. We now drive parents to a parents page, gym teachers to a physical education page, etc.

4) Make sure every person on your team is fully aware of their weekly & monthly KPIs. Follow up with them. Hype them up when they hit their goals. Keep them on their toes when they come short.

5) Be frugal. Stop spending money unless you 100% need to or it makes you more money.

 Retail 2022

As of writing this today on March 31st, 2022, retail will make up well over 50% of CROSSNET’s annual revenue. We started slow, skyrocketed fast, and have been successful in moving units at thousands of stores across the world. I know I get dozens of emails weekly back from you guys screaming about how hard it is now to advertise and my best advice is to build a strong brand that will leave your customer with undying loyalty and diversify into as many marketplaces as possible.

Buyers right now are getting excited for summer and putting their final touches on their displays. Remember if you are outreaching you should probably be making your pitch at least six months in advance. I want to give some quick tips & advice on retail.

When to go into Retail

• You have steady DTC traffic and starting to establish brand recognition

• Your online shoppers also shop at these key accounts

• Your company is staffed to help fulfill retail orders and market yourself in these locations

• You have full confidence that you have customers entering retail stores looking for your product

Consequences of Going too Early

• Units do not move & you lose the account

• Your product doesn’t have enough hype and its hard to receive larger purchase orders

• Your logistics team is not set up properly to ship these orders and you lose your margin on chargebacks

• Not understanding the levers you can pull to increase in-store sell thru

Dos & Don'ts for Breaking into Retail

• Don’t promise or guarantee sell-through (some things are out of your control)

• Do fully understand what will happen if your inventory doesn’t sell-thru, are you okay with these consequences?

• Do remember you are a small fish in a big pond, retailers typically prefer to deal with merchants with multiple SKUs & history means something

• Don’t spam and annoy your buyers, do your best to set up recurring monthly or quarterly check-in calls

• Do come equipped with a plan on how you are going to drive more traffic to their stores

Expansion

• Start slow and scale. Going nationwide in 3,000 Walmarts before you’ve proven you’ve even can sell a single unit could be a massive mistake. Sure it will be amazing to get that HUGE PO, but you’ll probably never get it again unless something incredible happens.

• Set small goals. In my meeting with Academy Sports, I wanted to start with 16 locations & with Scheels, we started with 2.

• Set targets with the buyer. Ask “What do I need to do to get nationwide? How many units do I need to sell a week? What are similar brands selling per week?”

Resource of the Week - The Current

Have you heard of The Current? It’s basically my new homepage and it’s a site dedicated to breaking e-commerce news. My old homepage when I was 21 was Complex media filled with hip hop & streetwear trends, now it’s all about getting smarter & staying up to date with the latest news and advice.

The Current is completely free for readers and there’s no cost for content creators to syndicate their content through the site, list events on the calendar and get involved.

Besides subscribing to my newsletter, Sharma’s, and 2PM’s, this is an absolute must and I could not recommend it more. Subscribe here and thank me later.

Wrapping Up!

That’s all I got for this week! If you have any suggestions on Toronto or questions about retail, I’m always here for you. Just drop me a note back. I hope you have a great rest of the week and enjoy some time with loved ones & family. I’ve been running this free newsletter for about six months now and getting new readers is the only thing that keeps this thing going. So if you’re enjoying this, getting some good value out of it, please share this signup page with a friend or on social.

If you need some new good work tunes, some great new albums and tunes came out by Coin, Destroyer, Wallows, Denzel Curry, and Peach Pit. See you next week!