if you are thinking of going into mail order, the first thing you should do is put your product in as many mail order catalogs as you can. You don’t have to just use the traditional mail order catalogs, there are online catalogs as well. An average mailing by a company run by a single person is a thousand pieces. Most of them don’t mail out any more than one hundred each week.
When you send out these mailings, you can expect up to 2% of the people to order from you, if you buy a list. If you build your own list, you can expect at least 5% to purchase your product. In other words, you would get 2 sales from a 100 purchased or rented list, and 5-10 sales when you build your own list of 100 customers.
Now, let’s talk about the major money places here, like Miles Kimball, Lillian Vernon, Hanover House or L.L. Bean. Each of these companies would most likely be mailing out six million catalogs each month, or a few months each year. These companies buy from the people who sell the products. Your product could be the next one they would purchase. Of course they are not going to except just any product, these buyers are extremely selective in choosing what they want included in their catalogs.
Here is what they are going to be thinking about when looking at your product.
1. Is is anything that our customers will buy?
It’s just like in music you can’t send a country demo to a rock label. So don’t send a product that isn’t similar to what is being sold in the catalog.
2. Will this product work in a test?
Before buying a product, they will test with a few copies of your product, perhaps a hundred or more. If it looks to be seller, then they will buy large quantities from you-up to 5000 or more. As long as it sells, they will keep buying from you.
3.Are You the originator, or someone who doesn’t hold the rights to the product?
These catalog companies would rather have someone who owns all the rights to the product, rather than a person who purchases from a wholesaler. They want the lowest price that they can get.
4. Is this a brand new product?
If your product is something that has been seen and sold before, the catalog companies will most likely not be interested. They want something different, it really has to be a good product.
How You Can Be Included
The primary thing is that you have to be professional. Everything has to look like it was done professionally. If you don’t know how, do some research and look at how a product submission should look like. Obviously you should register yourself as a business, get stationery-which you can create on your own computer. Most importantly, your business name should go with the types of products that you are going to sell. When you write someone, type it, don’t handwrite your business letters.
If you think you can’t be included in a catalog, because the product isn’t yours, that’s not true. For instance you can find a great product to sell from the U.K. and ask them to be the distributer in the states. It can be costly, but if you believe in the product you’re selling, it will be worth it. Before you rush head on and send your product to the catalogs, you should test the product on your own. This way you are sure that what you have will sell. If it’s not good, then no time is wasted in sending it out. You want to do good business with these companies, so they will buy from you again.
