I have worked with many brands that have one or a few retailers that make up a significant portion of their sales. To sustain and expand the brand's reach and revenue, these brands depend on consistent sales performance at these retailers.
This can make for a delicate dynamic. The brand needs to consider and (within reason) accommodate the retailer’s requests to secure its long-term business health and stability. Yet, the brand also needs to foster its unique personality and vision, otherwise it risks becoming meaninglessly generic and stunting its potential self-reliance.
This is especially true when it comes to a brand’s color. Color is a crucial tool in a brand’s identity and positioning. It’s critical that it remains centered in that brand’s DNA. It’s also critical that it leads to sales. Outside of DTC channels, those sales require retailer buy-in.
It’s a tricky needle to thread. Most commonly, brands tend to err on giving retailers too much influence in their color strategy, or brands don’t involve them soon enough. That can lead to problems. Here are a few:
Color Related Problems in an Unhealthy Brand-Retailer Dynamic:
* When a brand hands over control of color - one of its most potent tools - that brand diminishes its power and value.
* When a brand depends heavily on a key retailer's buy and ends up losing it because the retailer doesn't like the color palette, the financial security of that brand suffers.
* When a brand makes last minute color changes to secure a sale, the color strategy is punctured and ends up disjointed, leading to further sales disruptions (not to mention the headaches from last minute scrambling).
So, how can a brand avoid problems like these and create a beneficial relationship with a retailer? Like this:
image: Martin Adams
How to Build a Thriving Brand-Retailer Dynamic:
1. Understand the Role of Retailer Insights
Retailers are an invaluable resource for brands, providing insights from their daily interactions with the target market. Their feedback can sharpen a brand’s vision, offering practical perspectives on what resonates with customers.
However, retailer insights are naturally shaped by current and past experiences, and often reflect the specific demographics they serve, which may only represent a portion of the brand’s broader audience.
It's essential for brands to thoughtfully consider this feedback while maintaining their long-term vision. By balancing retailer input with future trends and the brand’s unique identity, feedback can help refine and enhance the brand’s direction without dictating it.
2. Bring Retailers Into the Process
A brand can create strong retailer advocates, build trust, and guard against last-minute changes by bringing key retailers into its color process. Do this at established touchpoints, where feedback is targeted and not open-ended. This allows the brand to satisfy a retailer’s request while maintaining its own principles and vision.
I have found that sharing the seasonal trend and color direction with select retailers can be incredibly valuable for a brand. It introduces the retailers to the dominant stories that will be woven into the line for that season. It shows retailers the inspiration and the why behind the design and color decisions, which creates understanding and buy-in. Most importantly, it demonstrates that the brand’s strategy is thoughtfully researched and considered. Just keep in mind that this is a precious brand asset; share accordingly.
Involving retailers around key color reviews is another good opportunity. The goal here is to utilize retailer insight to help make either/or decisions and to refine an already dialed collection. Keep this separate from internal color reviews. For products that are big sellers at a retailer, this involvement gives retailers a chance to weigh in on seasonal color decisions affecting those styles. In these cases, I highly suggest that the brand present options to the retailer. This gives the retailer concrete choices to choose from that will still adhere to the brand’s overall strategy.
3. Ask the Right Questions
These are questions a brand can ask retailers to reveal what’s working, what isn’t, and where opportunities lie:
* How is our brand positioned in your store? This helps the brand understand how it compares to competitors and whether the retailer showcases the brand’s complete personality or just a segment. It gives insight on what types of colors, colorations, and products align best with the retailer. This allows the brand to tailor sales presentations to the retailer, showing how certain color and product groups support the retailer’s goals. The brand can push outside of these boundaries into a more comprehensive order, but it’s starting from a solid, thoughtful selection. The brand is helping the retailer win by designing a merchandised collection to meet their needs. And when the retailer wins, the brand wins.
* What colors are selling well (or not selling) from us? Color is a tool a brand uses to accomplish specific goals.Understanding the jobs these colors are doing well (or doing poorly) helps the brand shape future color decisions.
* What are the key selling colors in our category? If the brand’s colors are top sellers, this shows the brand where to continue investing, either specifically with this retailer or more broadly. If a competitor’s colors are performing better, it’s an opportunity to understand why. The brand can then design its color strategy to achieve similar success, staying true to its voice.
* What are you looking for from us for the upcoming season? This helps the brand understand a retailer’s specific needs for color. The brand can use this information to shape its seasonal palette and merchandising plan, crafting them to meet retailer goals while staying aligned with its own, global vision.
* Where are you investing your energy and dollars in the future? Understanding retailers’ priorities and goals, especially before they become reality, gives a brand the opportunity to adjust their own plans to better align with their partners. The answers to this question can also inform the brand of wider market trends (both positive and negative) that are in their interest to pay attention to.
Summary
Retailers can be a tremendous source of valuable insights for brands. On a daily basis, retailers interact with a brand’s current and potential customers, gathering extensive, first-hand information on people’s preferences, challenges, dealbreakers, and purchases.
When a brand cultivates relationships with its trusted retailers and allows this information to flow freely, it builds a deeper understanding of the community it serves. That richer knowledge leads to better decisions, which leads to better sales. Win-win for the brand and retailers.
