When you build a house, the foundation must be laid strong and straight. If it’s not, the framers try to make up for it. When they can’t, the drywall guys try to make up for it. When they can’t, the painters try to make up for it. When they can’t, you’re going to have to [...]
Improve Your Chances of Success by Starting Small and Carefully
As long as your product is not in a specific market or retailer, it can’t be discontinued. Once you are discontinued you may never get back. You’ve got one shot. Take careful aim and hit just one bullseye at a time. The shotgun approach may get you more distribution in the beginning, but, due to [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 4
With all the challenges your small start-up faces, you still hold some impressive cards. If you play them right, you can have the winning hand! You face all the challenges of cash flow management, distribution management and personnel management, not to mention the competition, push back and resistance you get when you are new in the marketplace. [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 3
By focusing on your customer, and not your big time competitors, your small start-up has the opportunity to address the market with creative and relevant products. In this series we have examined some of the powerful advantages of being small, undercapitalized and able to turn on a dime. These days, with lawyers running the big corporations [...]
Winning Distribution Strategies
Title: Winning Distribution Strategies Location: Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA Successful brand building hinges on diligent management of the 3-tiered distribution channel and appealing to customers at all levels. Houlihan and Jones bring extensive street smarts and proven techniques to attract trade partners and cement their loyalty. This course is designed for owners, national [...]
The Advantages of Being a Small Start-Up – Part 2
This is the second installment in a four-part series designed to encourage small start-ups by recognizing some of their inherent advantages. Small start-ups face a myriad of challenges. They are undercapitalized, unproven and have no market traction. They are up against the status quo that will use its established power and influence in the marketplace [...]
Positive Company Culture is critical to Growth and Survival – Part 3
This is the third part in the series about the original Barefoot culture. Culture really sets the tone, boundaries, and expectations the team has toward your company, your mission and your product. We’ve saved the best for last because having a common cause and a common challenge forges, more than any other single factor, positive company culture. When [...]
Positive Company Culture is critical to Growth and Survival – Part 2
A company survives and grows due to sales and the loyalty of customers and staff. Sales are based on price, value, dependability, integrity, availability and perception. The basis of perception is image, networking, and more recently, the transparency of the producer. Transparency is what the brand stands for, its authenticity, its identification with higher values, [...]
Distribution: The Distance between a Great Product and a Sale – Part 4
In the previous three posts we have given just a few examples of the importance of Channel Distribution Management in product design. Here we will examine two of the most important factors in product distribution through conventional channels: 14. Stack it! It is great to get your product on the retail shelf, but getting it [...]
Distribution: The Distance between a Great Product and a Sale – Part 3
When the producers of any product first go into business, they tend to think they are in the production business. In fact, if they are to succeed, they are in the Distribution Management business. Distribution Management trumps production because without it, your product may never make it to the shelf – no matter how good [...]
