Designing exceptional products is only a small piece of the puzzle for manufacturers in the home furnishings industry. Whether your strategy is rooted in mass-market, high-end luxury or somewhere in the middle, the right retail partners are a major factor in your business’ growth potential.
In what feels like a sea of potential retail partners, it has never been more important to pick the ones that will drive sales volume, align with your brand goals and can reach your target customer. When you partner with a retailer that checks those boxes, you can maximize channel revenue, build brand awareness, ensure a solid customer experience and increase your ability to maintain MAP compliance.
Here’s what to consider when evaluating a new online retail partner and forming the type of strategic partnerships needed for long-term success.
The Retailer Evaluation Process Starts and Ends with Goal Alignment
Mutual fit is crucial in any partnership, and it’s no different with a brand-retailer relationship. But before determining whether “X” retailer is a good fit, manufacturers must define their goals and use that as the driving force in evaluating a potential partner.
For example, if your brand is new to ecommerce and you’ve spent a lot of money in preparation to launch, your main priority might be making sales as quickly as possible. This could lead you to look for a major retailer with lots of customer traffic, like Amazon or Wayfair. If your brand has already amassed a certain level of cache or you’re invested in building a premium brand, you might prioritize a relationship with a high-end/luxury retailer like Nieman Marcus.
“The process [of finding new retail partners] should be focus-driven, and really starts with what you want out of your business.
Whether either of these situations sounds familiar to your brand or not, the prevailing theme is that you should focus on retailers that match your ambitions, prioritizing quality over quantity.
“The BrandJump philosophy on brand-retailer relationships is that more isn’t always more,” said Jolynn Wilkinson, Associate Director of Sales. “The process should be focus-driven, and really starts with what you want out of your business. Once you solidify your own goals, you can better find retailer partners that align with those goals and will help lead you down a path of long-term success.”
For Long-Term Retailer Success, Prioritize a Good Fit Above Short-Term Gains
Once you’ve identified your own goals, it’s time to start looking for potential retail partners. The process starts and ends with goal alignment, but there are many other elements at play.
Here are some of the most important factors to consider when evaluating a new retail partner:
Brand and Category Alignment
Ideally, your brand should fit within other categories and brands sold on the retailer site. Make sure you ‘know who you are sitting next to’ and the type of products and price points the retailer is focused on.
At the same time, don’t assume you know whether a retailer is a good fit before doing some due diligence. Rather than working off a preconception you have about a retail brand, do some research to understand the full picture and if there is an opportunity there.
A great example is overstock.com—thanks to the name, many assume the site is for closeout, discounted goods, but it leads to a number of home furnishings categories, such as rugs.
Read more: Is Ecommerce in the Home Improvement Channel Right for Your Brand?
Price Points
Much like brand/category alignment, your retail partner should carry items priced similarly to your product assortment. If your brand doesn’t align from a pricing perspective (think Tom Ford at Walmart) your brand will seem outlandishly expensive. Or if you’re priced far lower than the other products on the site, yours may seem unappealing to that customer. Being unaligned in either direction means you aren’t even reaching your target customer, let alone converting them.
Site Traffic
Retailers vary on how much information they’re willing to disclose, but it’s still worth asking for website metrics like site traffic, conversion rates and cart abandonment rates. There are also some websites that can help you with some basic research for free. Site traffic will give insight into the sheer number of visitors to the retailer site and help you understand the size of the opportunity for your brand. Cart abandonment rates and conversion rates can help indicate how often customers browse versus actually purchasing products, giving you an idea of how well the site can “close” on a potential customer.
Website Aesthetic and UX
Be sure to consider the aesthetic and user experience of the prospective retailer site. Aesthetically, consider how your brand will fit in on the website. You should consider what the product pages look like and how your brand and product will be represented.
From a UX perspective, be sure the site can present your assortment and products in a clear and understandable way. If you offer an option-heavy assortment, the site platform must be able to handle that and showcase products to the customer in a functional way. You'll want to partner with a retailer whose sites are highly shoppable and designed in a way that leads to conversions.
Funding
In this incredibly competitive landscape, the strongest internet retailers usually have outside funding which allows them to leverage the most innovative technology, provide a best-in-class customer experience and attract top-level talent across all departments.
Funding isn’t everything, but it can create more opportunities to drive sales and growth by creating a better customer experience. Exceptional technology helps increase efficiency and ensures a well-functioning website that is easy to shop, while top-tier customer service can turn first-time shoppers into repeat customers.
Investment Potential
It feels good to be wanted and appreciated. Before partnering with a retailer, get a good sense of their potential investment in your brand and their willingness to promote your products in their marketing efforts. If your brand is just another “plaque on the wall” of this retailer site, you’ll likely be left out of the retailer’s strategic initiatives and won’t get the necessary brand exposure to truly succeed.
And if they do showcase a good level of potential, that means there’s an increased likelihood of building a truly invested partnership and seeing long-term success.
Forming a Strategic Partnership with Retailers Results in Sustained Success for Both Parties
After solidifying your own aspirations and weighing those key factors, you should have an idea of which retailers you want to partner with. And while the finding part of the relationship is important, the work doesn’t stop there.
Like any fruitful business relationship, a strategic partnership between manufacturer and retailer starts with trust and a willingness to work together to make the relationship mutually beneficial.
Once you’ve found your ideal retail partner and entered into an agreement, it’s important to establish benchmarks that will help continuously measure the success of the partnership.
Like any fruitful business relationship, a strategic partnership between manufacturer and retailer starts with trust and a willingness to work together to make the relationship mutually beneficial. This requires a mutual commitment to communication, engagement and alignment on end goals and working towards them. A few ways manufacturers can nurture a strategic relationship include:
- Keeping an open line of communication. Being flexible in your communication preferences (emails vs. phone calls vs. video calls), participating in regular check-ins and utilizing a retailer scorecard to track progress and points of improvement will all show your desire to be a worthwhile ecommerce partner.
- Participate in retailer opportunities. When talking to buyers, be sure to voice your interest in retailer promotional and marketing opportunities and experimenting with initiatives that will help drive sales. The only way to find out what works is to be willing to give things a try, and retailers should be your partners in success to do so.
- Ensure there is alignment between both parties. Both you and the retailer should be aligned on where you want to be and how you’re going to get there. Identifying a realistic goal, developing a roadmap and then sticking to your plan will make for a strong partnership and an increased likelihood of sustained success.
All while developing and executing that plan, you should think about how to evaluate your relationship with your retail partners as well. There’s no cut-and-dry timeline for when to evaluate these relationships, but consider doing so on a yearly basis at a minimum. Annual evaluations allow for access to a larger swath of data that can drive your decision-making, but monthly and quarterly discussions about what’s working and not working also hold value in the partnership evaluation process.
Manufacturers that identify their own aspirations, prioritize a good fit over short-term gains and form a strategic partnership with new retail partners will experience sustained growth over the long term.
