by: Geoff Ficke

Yesterday I received a call from a prospective client with an interesting Do It Yourself home improvement product. The product is novel, priced right, well made, possesses unique features and consumer benefits and has absolutely zero direct competition. It should be a slam dunk to achieve distribution in any progressive big box retailer, shouldn’t it? Uh, not really!

Years ago retail chain store groups and department stores reviewed products on an appointment basis, and most provided open buying hours one morning each week. Anyone could get in line and receive a hearing from a buyer, maybe there would be interest, or maybe the introductory meeting would be brief, but the innovator at least had a fighting chance. Today the opportunity to walk in the door of a major retailer, gain an appointment and make a proper presentation is becoming as rare as the dodo bird.

Blame it on the internet. Blame it on retail consolidation. Blame it on a lack of professionalism among today’s merchant class. Blame it on scale. But realize that getting in front of decision makers with your innovative new product is a real uphill trek in today’s frenetic retail client.

My prospective client with the interesting DIY product had approached the obvious retail targets of opportunity with gusto. By the time he contacted my consumer product marketing firm he was fairly well beaten down, confused and afraid. He simply could not get past the gate keepers and receive a fair hearing from the decision makers that make or break new product innovation.

The first thing to recognize if you are seeking a meeting with today’s retail buyer is that it will be very difficult, not quite impossible but difficult, to obtain a traditional sales presentation with a category buyer or merchandise manager. You are competing with dozens, if not hundreds of competitors all seeking that meeting and hope of lucrative product placement on store shelves. There is only so much space on store shelves, in warehouses and in retail logistic links.

Your approach will be treated very much like any cold call. Consider when you receive an unsolicited telemarketing phone call at home. What is the typical response: joy or disdain? We all know the answer and so it is with a buyer receiving an unsolicited offer from an enthusiastic marketer excited about their unique product opportunity.

So how does the product innovator break through the filters and receive an opportunity to present their wares to decision makers? We utilize several different strategies that, in essence, back door our way into the buying suite.

The most professional and direct method is to participate in trade shows. Industry and category specific trade shows are attended by decision makers precisely because they are charged by their managements with discovering exciting new products. They are travelling on the stores expense account and are expected to return with something very new.

Trade show participation is an opportunity for innovators, startup companies and small businesses to look far larger than in reality they are. The opportunity to present new items next to established products and companies conveys a certain layer of solidity and appearance of prosperity. As retail buyers travel around the floor of a trader show it is likely that they will view your offering. Networking opportunities abound at trade shows. Business cards are exchanged. Hands are shaken. Introductions are made. Sales collateral is provided. The opportunity to directly demonstrate a product to a buyer in a highly charged environment is invaluable.

Once contact is made, and interest is expressed, it is almost always a given that the opportunity to schedule an appointment is offered. The ice has been broken. Your face, name and product have been impressed upon the buyer. He knows you, at least a bit. Take advantage of this personal contact, you are no longer a cold calling nuisance.

Another option for penetrating big box retail store shelves is what we call the “local option”. I have written in detail about this strategy before. It works. District or regional managers of chain stores typically have the ability to write purchase orders at the local level for products of local origin. They actually love to discover these regional gems, in many cases to rub the corporate nose a bit.

We place product in a group of district stores and support with on counter point of purchase aids and a bit of local cable television. In addition, we create a publicity campaign targeting local media. Awareness begins to build. As re-orders are written, we extrapolate a national sales model, based on the district stores actual sell through performance. When these numbers are projected against the national store count we now have hard performance figures that are unassailable. The marketer is no longer presenting a product based on assumptions.

The local district or regional manager is always keen to tout this discovery to the national merchandisers. This endorsement of a product is invaluable. It is solid “Proof of Product Life”. The door is now open at the corporate level to present your program and receive a proper hearing from the powers that be-the buyers.

Another tool that is not utilized often enough is the simplest: sales agents. The days of road salesmen calling on each little town and shop are long over. Retail consolidation has made it imperative that sales representatives build strong rapport with the big box retailers that make or break products. They live off commissions that only increase with volume. Salesmen are always looking for new products that burnish their relationship within buying offices.

The only way to grow your business is through successful sales efforts. Remember ABC = Always Be Closing! It is essential that you utilize every option and opportunity to put yourself and your product in front of buyers.

World’s Largest Hunting Industry Expo Provides Launch Pad
For Innovative New Units That Showcase Trophy Heads

Klamath Falls, OR Rob Shaw, President of Ivent, LLC and inventor of the Skull Hooker™, interviewed in Las Vegas, stated that his Company’s novel Euro Mount wall unit is being overwhelmingly positively received at the SHOT Show.

“The first morning the SHOT Show opened, we were swamped with aggressive buyers”, said Mr. Shaw. “The momentum has only increased as word of mouth has spread among buyers from all over the world, and from media outlets about the multiple design features we have built into the Skull Hooker”.

Geoff Ficke, President of Florence, KY based Duquesa Marketing, managing consultants for development of the Skull Hooker project stated, “In this market, it is gratifying to see Rob Shaw’s instincts confirmed by the professionals in the hunting and outdoor industry. Retailers have flocked to add Skull Hooker to their stores offerings”.

Skull Hooker is a patent pending wall mount that simply and stylishly enables sportsmen to display Euro Mount style trophy heads and eliminates the need to drill, and damage, the skull. Skull Hooker is available for small and large game skulls and will on retailer’s shelves this spring or by ordering from the website at www.skullhooker.com.

by: Geoff Ficke

My consulting firm specializes in marketing and developing consumer products. Currently we are preparing a hunting product for launch at a major outdoor products tradeshow. This week I took the opportunity to attend the largest expo targeting the archery/bow hunting product industry to scout trends and network for my hunting product client. It was revealing and a valuable lesson was strongly reinforced.

In every industry, and especially on display at tradeshows, there are mammoth players that dominate their category. These leading brands are the stars of the trade and are immediately recognized as such by competitors and consumers. Their products typically are well established, their distribution channels fulsome, the marketing strategies are dominant and awareness of their products nearly universal to their targeted consumers.

The bow hunting industry show I spent a day visiting this week was like most of the hundreds of other trade shows I have attended over many years. The largest, loudest, most active booths were populated by the biggest archery product marketers. The vast majority of the stands in the show, however, were small, independently owned businesses, featuring more targeted product offerings. The opportunity to participate commercially in an industry, in this case for avid bow and arrow hunters, where the entrepreneur shares a passion for the sport with the pursuit of profit is a strong lure for the driven creator.

As I walked the show, I was able to meet and chat with a range of small business owners who love hunting with bow and arrow and relish the opportunity to earn their living in the archery/bow hunting industry. They have created products that fill needs they have identified from their field experiences. These people were virtually all passionate, positive and proud of the many items and specialty products they were showing.

Consider the simple hunting arrow. We all, even if we have never hunted in the wild, have shot or held an arrow, certainly as kids playing cowboys and Indians. We know there is a tip, a bow shaft and feathers built into an arrows assemblage of parts. At the trade show there were numerous purveyors of all types of arrows. Interestingly, there were also numerous vendors offering only tips, or shafts, or feathers, in a stunning range colors and styles. The specialization of these products, their artisan nature and the small, even seemingly tiny, niches they occupy were testament to the idea that building a better mousetrap will be profitable.

I left the show re-energized. The lesson I relearned for the thousandth time is this: If you have passion for something, and can identify a way to improve the experience, you can profit and enjoy earning a living doing what you love most. Many people do exactly this. They earn a good living from commercializing their hobby, craft or favorite pastime. It takes a bit of vision and a bunch of courage to successfully take the leap from employee to entrepreneur, but it is being done every day.

by: Geoff Ficke

In 1911, the Procter & Gamble Company was already a highly successful marketer of consumer products. Its original Ivory Soap was the top selling bar soap in the world. One of the key components of Ivory Soap is cottonseed oil. The Company purchased huge quantities of cottonseed oil from agricultural product brokers. As sales continued to explode, and the need for cottonseed oil expanded, P&G began to have designs on controlling the market in cottonseed oil.

By controlling this market, the Company could enjoy economies of scale and drive down raw material costs for making Ivory and other products. However, with total market control over cottonseed oil, there would be added inventories of the oil that P&G would need to utilize in some other product. The Company put their scientists to work to discover a new product use for their excess cottonseed oil stock.

The result was a scientifically designed, laboratory produced, white, fluffy substance that resembled lard. Technically it was a foodstuff. In reality it was not. It had no smell or taste. And yet P&G began to ask consumers to bake and fry with the new product, Crisco. This was a mass marketing milestone. Crisco was one of the earliest products sold by utilizing modern mass market consumerism strategies.

P&G positioned Crisco as a scientific breakthrough. The Company’s real genius, then as now, was in creating a consumer demand for a product that people did not know they even needed. Stores across the country were given free samples of Crisco. Recipes and cookbooks were given away for free to teach homemakers the features and benefits of cooking with miraculous Crisco. The product was positioned as a healthy food (we did not yet know about trans-fats). My mother, until the day she died, would not think of baking a pie without using Crisco for her crust. Crisco became a staple in the cupboards of generations of cooks and homemakers.

This is a classic example of a consumer product that has its root in another completely different product classification. Bar soap is not consumed or ingested. That Ivory Soap would be the progenitor of Crisco, a non-food baking and cooking ingredient, is a classic example of an enterprise taking a component and engineering or adapting to create a completely new category or brand.

Many consumers have discovered alternative or multiple uses for common household products or ingredients. Heloise has made a wonderful career for herself by advising housewives in this type of crossover product usage in her daily syndicated newspaper column. Consumers are amazingly adaptable and creative in discovering new ways to utilize products that were originally marketed for other purposes.

Look around your environment and you might find a new product or business idea sitting on a shelf, right under your nose. By remarketing, repositioning, reengineering or reinventing something that is old, you can create something new. Who knew that a basic raw material, simple cottonseed oil, could evolve from a bar soap to a consumable foodstuff before Procter & Gamble saw and marketed the need.

by: Geoff Ficke

The times are obviously difficult economically for many people, companies and organizations. There is uncertainty about what the future holds. Many of us are worried about the “new normal” and exactly where we fit into these norms, if we could define them. There is a certain paralysis of action that accompanies change and uncertainty. This is to be understood.

For entrepreneurs, however, nothing much ever changes. The optimism that must be hard wired into their constitutions is omnipresent. Real entrepreneurs, those that “do”, not just dream, see opportunity behind every tree and under every rock. Most importantly, they act while others strategize, stargaze and pontificate.

We review hundreds of entrepreneurial opportunities every year in our marketing consulting business. But only a hand-full of these ever become functioning commercial entities. At the end of each calendar year, we review every presentation file we analyzed over the previous 12 months. We are always struck by how many excellent consumer products, concepts or services we saw and how few actually move beyond the talking, dreamy, gauzy muddle of the old Texas axiom, “all hat and no cattle”.

The most distinguishing factor we see that separates a successful entrepreneur from the dreamer is the ability to simply get started. I see much better than I hear. Words are cheap. Action is dear. The “do’er” is driven to get started in pursuit of their goals and aspirations. The time is always fine for them to get into gear and move their project ahead.

Procrastination is a trait that all entrepreneurial pretenders (wannabe’s) perfect. They are always waiting for the perfect alignment of the stars. Excuses abound. Investment is coming. Next year will be better, because……. My wife needs to get her degree before we start. It’s fishing (or hunting) season. A friend is going to make me a prototype when he takes vacation. Self-imposed limitations are endless.

No matter the economic climate, the best time to start a business is when you have a viable commercial idea. Down markets actually offer wonderful opportunities for entrepreneurs with fresh ideas that improve, enhance or change product performance. Fresh features and benefits and novel products are always welcome in our vast consumer product marketplace.

by: Geoff Ficke

The following are 10 of the most important Commandments the entrepreneur or inventor can follow when seeking to define a fresh niche to be attached with new products, services or business concepts.

1. Speed
People, especially in the industrialized developed world hate to wait for services, delivery or fulfillment. Figure a way to deliver your product faster that competitors and you will enjoy a huge competitive advantage.

2. Addition
What can your product add to an already existing product that creates an obvious advance, improvement or new usage feature or benefit for the consumer.

3. Customization
In a world of mass marketed, high volume production goods the opportunity to customize a product or service is often a sure fire way to break through market clutter.

4. Portability
The ability to use a product in as many places, as many ways and at any time creates huge opportunities to expand a category with a portability feature that is highly prized in a mobile modern society.

5. Safety
Can your product innovation improve the personal safety of users? Mitigation of risk is always a winning feature in new products.

6. Entertainment
People love to be entertained. This can be achieved by incorporating humor, novelty, history, pro-activity or clever branding in your new item.

7. Adaptation
If there are already successful products in your space, look to adapt and improve those products by adding convergent features and benefits to differentiate your offering.

8. Reversal
Identify a service or product feature that competitors are highlighting and reverse engineer the offering to highlight a performance difference.

9. Elimination
Life is hectic, cluttered. People will pay more for a product or service that provides a service that eliminates or lessens wait, pain, risk, inconvenience, etc.

10. Easier
People crave products and services that make life easier. Just look at the modern kitchen, laundry room or tool shed in any modern home.

Consider each of these 10 Commandments when evaluating your new product or business idea. If you can shape the idea to include one or more of these keys you will have an exponentially greater chance to successfully sell into the contemporary marketplace.

by: Geoff Ficke

Recently I was presented with the opportunity to review a rather mundane new food product. The offering was a barbecue sauce. The taste was excellent, formulated from an old family recipe. The entrepreneur was in love with the taste, the appearance and the history of the product. It did have excellent presence. But, it did not have enough to be commercially viable as presented. Why?

In order for any new product to be successful the item must offer a clearly recognizable Unique Selling Proposition (USP). A USP is a fancy business school term for the special features and/or benefits that make any new product different, and hopefully better, from competitor’s wares. These features and benefits create the differences that enable a product to have an excellent chance at success.

My barbecue sauce review was not positive, not from a sauce standpoint, but from a marketing standpoint. Better ingredients, better recipe or formula, better components, better appearance or taste, or Mom made it so it has to be good are not difference makers. They are claims that every brand makes, and most brands already being successfully distributed support such statements with big sales promotion budgets. Most start-ups and entrepreneurs do not have the ability to shout their story with any strength in a competitive marketplace. We had to address these issues before moving forward on the project with any hope of success.

What to do? In order to create a USP for a new product the entrepreneur must tell a story that creates separation between the new offering and the competition. In the case of the sauce we reviewed, we suggested a duality strategy, an ingredient provenance and process story.

We highlighted the two most distinctive herbs (signing a Secrecy Agreement, which we do with all products we review, does not allow me to be specific about details) and suggested that the product marketing be built on the nurturing, harvesting, artesian craftsmanship of the agricultural techniques utilized and the specific unique geography, topography and climate necessary to derive the luscious taste from the products most influential ingredients.

Then we suggested that the sauce be positioned as a 19th century, hand blended, slowly layered product, cooked in small batches in a copper kettle, under very low temperatures. This is the process feature that further separates this sauce from the other mass produced products that are indigenous on store shelves and offer the sameness of taste and blandness of character that make them virtually inseparable in consumer’s minds. We created a process nomenclature unique to this sauce’s recipe and gave it a proprietary cooking terminology (again, under Secrecy Agreement).

Now the sauce has a provenance and process story that is simple, understandable and stands apart from the mass marketed competition. The product can be positioned as an upscale alternative, the kind of product that discriminating homemakers will be open to trying. The sauce is being readied now for a spring 2010 market launch in gourmet shops and high end gift stores.

This is an elementary example of a product from a most mundane category that can be positioned to highlight a USP that gives it every chance for success. This type of strategy can be customized to fit almost any consumable product category: cosmetics, hair care, foodstuffs, supplements, house-hold cleaners, etc. The niche carved out by a clearly defined USP is crucial to successfully penetrating the consumer product market. Make your new product different, special and interesting.

by: Geoff Ficke

My marketing consulting company reviews hundreds of new product submissions every year. We specialize in consumer product development. The items we analyze run the gamut of product categories. The most creative, prolific and many times, the most commercially exciting are golf, pet or hunting and fishing products.

The reason I have come to believe that there is so much creativity in these areas is passion. Golfers, pet owners and outdoorsman are among the most ardent aficionados in their interests in these hobbies. They will spend almost any amount of money to improve the benefits they derive from their chosen pleasure.

Golfers are manic in their desire to improve their games. We receive numerous training devices, stroke control, bag accessories and novelty golf products annually. Each entrepreneur seems to have developed their innovation based on a perceived need they have identified from their personal play experience. The result is a flood of truly novel devices, some very commercial, that pique these golfers creative juices.

Hunters and fishermen have similar passion for their favorite pastimes. Hunters are driven to get closer to prey, obtain better shot sight lines and get more shots with their rifles or bows. They invest heavily in any gizmo that offers the promise of more action while on the hunt. Fishermen will go to abnormally heightened lengths to catch more fish. Exotic lures, fish finders, bait scents and rod accessories that are new, and offer the angler a possible advantage over the fish are must have items for the tackle box.

Pet owners are especially unique. People that will share the interior of their homes with one or more pets are indeed committed. Recently we introduced a new pet product at the largest pet trade show in the United States. The casual observer could easily imagine the types of products that would be featured in such an exposition. However, walking the show floor was an education. To view the luxury, comfort, fashion and expensiveness of the thousands of specialty products on display was staggering.

Entrepreneur’s that we have worked with over the years are always most passionate when they are trying to commercialize a product that they created to fill a need that they have identified in an important area of their life. Whether it is from employment, a hobby or sport in which they participate or from their household experience, the best ideas seem to evolve from the inventor’s life experience. Passion is to the entrepreneur as fertilizer is to agriculture, essential!

The pet category is huge and growing, There are over 70 million licensed dogs and 45 million cat owners in the United States alone. A niche product that creates demand among these pet lovers has huge upside potential. The market in this product category can be penetrated relatively easily, if the item is truly unique.

Products that are commercially desirable in the categories of golf, hunting, fishing and pet care/accessories also enjoy huge international distribution potential. Distributors, partners and licensees are available for country and continent distribution pacts. These parties will buy the products in bulk quantities from inventors and handle in-market sales, warehousing and business operations.

In many product categories there are 800-pound gorillas (competitors) that present daunting hurdles to new entrepreneurs. The golf, hunting/fishing products and pet product areas are much more sliced up. They have lower barriers to entry and the main players are typically more specialized in their product strengths. This provides greater opportunities for entrepreneurs to secure shelf space and promotional features.

The time has never been more exciting for the market to absorb truly fresh, innovative new specialty products in these and many other categories. The inventive mind, driven by zeal for a hobby or identified need, can be successful and significantly change the course of their life while providing real product performance benefits to consumers of their inventions. The best time to move is always now.

by: Geoff Ficke

The first issue we see nascent entrepreneurs almost universally attempt to address is the perceived need for working capital. When we ask how much investment they believe is required to get their product to market, they never can justify what they identify as their magic number. I have yet to read a business plan that can justify the assumptions that are utilized to support the capital investment being sought, ever, and I read dozens of business plans each month.

My consulting firm reviews hundreds of new product ideas every year. Many have wonderful commercial prospects. However, almost none of the entrepreneurs offering these opportunities for funding have considered all of the possible avenues available to launch their idea. Funding is the “Holy Grail” in the eye of most entrepreneurs, and yet, a capital raise is the single hardest route they can attempt to utilize.

Investors, unless family or friends, demand a very high level of due diligence before they will stage a capital investment. Strong management, a clearly identifiable Unique Selling Proposition (USP), first mover advantage and a 35% return on invested capital kicking in between months 24 and 36 of operation are the basic guidelines typically utilized when underwriting opportunities. These are standards that very few entrepreneurs and inventors can achieve.

There are many ways to “bootstrap” new products or services before seeking a financing round. They are not glamorous, more like the old parable of the tortoise and hare. These strategies require the oldest trait known to inventive man: simple hard work!

Here is an example of a product that we recently “bootstrapped” to a successful market launch, and subsequent funding relationship. I received a call from a gentleman who owned a construction business. After initial platitudes, he advised me that he had created the world’s greatest barbecue sauce. We receive a lot of food products for review, and every single one is accompanied by the old bromide, “ it’s the best in the world”. I was wary.

Mr. Barbecue Sauce sent me a box of his three sauces to sample. They were very tasty. I advised him that the taste was surely excellent and potentially commercial but that he would have to utilize more of a “guerilla” marketing strategy than his hoped for investor funding round. We wrangled for several months. He approached other consultants and food industry experts before finally coming back to us and agreeing that he needed to utilize a “plan B”.

We contracted to write and execute a business plan for the launch of the sauces. We engaged the services of a dietician, a licensed food product private label source, a graphic designer and a packaging resource. We perfected the label statements and content values of the product. Then we conducted a focus group, obtained testimonials for attribution, and prepared sales collateral.

When the product, packaging and sales materials were market-ready we approached independent and regional purveyors of high-end gourmet food products. These types of retailers are much easier to work with, barriers to obtaining shelf space are small and they are keen to enjoy exclusive distribution of select items. Each door that was initially opened agreed to a schedule of product samplings. We set up a table on an aisle end cap, cooked top quality sausages and asked shoppers to choose which of the three styles of sauce they would prefer on their taste sample. We had an inventory of product on the end cap gondola with a special introductory price.

The results were gratifying and confirmed our assumptions that the barbecue sauces were truly commercial and consumer acceptance would be strong. The samplings lead to strong initial sales, but much more importantly, in subsequent weeks repeat sales began to grow without the aid of sampling.
Geographically, the client fanned out to the nearest markets and repeated the same limited, controlled roll out strategy. The results were always the same, a bit of a cult product was beginning to germinate.

For most of the first year of distribution we utilized the “tortoise and hare” approach. We then identified a gourmet product trade show in Orlando, took a stand and sampled the sauces just as we had in the first local gourmet products stores in the owners hometown. The difference is this instance, was that we were sampling, and taking orders from retailers from all over the United States and internationally, key decision makers in the gourmet product industry. Also, because the product was positioned as a gourmet foodstuff, price points reflected the sauces higher perceived value and the products were not buffeted by mass market discounting.

The entrepreneur had invested some reasonable amount of his own money, but this was mitigated by the go-slow approach we had undertaken. His initial sales funded the controlled rollout of the sauces to additional regional markets. He had not diluted a single percentage of his ownership by taking on investment partners. The growing order book from new retailers and repeat purchase orders were valued by his bank and he was introduced to the merchant bank division to establish a line of working capital.

Mr. Barbecue Sauce came to us with the notion that he needed $350,000 to fund the launch of his enterprise. As we initially quizzed him, he realized that he would really need to raise more like $1.2 million to realize his goal. By being open to alternative ideas, he avoided a huge pitfall that most entrepreneurs fall in too: raising $350,000 and failing is expensive, raising $1.2 million in order to insure success is cheap.

In this case, Mr. Barbecue Sauce was fortunate that there was an alternative strategy readily available to customize for his product. He mitigated risk, limited financial exposure, test marketed the product, extrapolated market potential based on real sales numbers and enjoyed the secure knowledge that the product was commercially viable without being at the mercy of investors demanding strict performance markers be constantly achieved.

Most entrepreneurs with truly commercial projects have many more options available to them than they ever consider. It is amazing how few projects are really fundable, and yet, investor funding is almost always the preferred route they choose to undertake. “Bootstrapping” is almost always the last alternative considered. Successful inventors, entrepreneurs and small businesses will always do whatever is legally necessary to achieve success. Anything less is the equivalent of dreaming.