Selling Your Soul to Big Box Stores - Part 2

When you start out as a small company from your basement/garage, getting your products into big box stores is like a validation that “you’ve arrived”, or that you’ve made it.  You’re no longer some unknown peddler because you’re now shipping products out by the truckloads.  You also think that having your products in all the thousands of chain stores all across the country translates to multiple 0’s added to your bank account.

Getting into big box stores can either make you or break you.  Unless you have a really low cost item that is easy and cheap to mass produce, doesn’t take a genius to figure out what it is, and have investors or a really big trust fund to back you up, you might as well forget it.  One of the biggest chain stores in the country has been known to cause more business bankruptcies in the U.S. than anything.  A friend of ours got an order for 4,000 bags from one of the baby chain stores.  Because she was having her stuff made in China, it took over 4 months for her to receive the products.  By that time, the chain store decided they didn’t want them anymore.  What do you do now with all these bags that had customized packaging just for that store that decided to change their mind?  When you have products made in China, you have to pay for them upfront.  Double ouch!

Cloth diapers, at least the ones we make, are probably not best sold at chain stores.  It’s like having a registered nurse perform brain surgery.  There are a lot of variables in making the system work, and the concept is still too new to be adapted by the masses and their automatic gag-reflex at the thought of cloth diapers.  And I’m not sure it would be possible to require the staff of a chain store to educate themselves in how to use our products so they can answer any question a customer might have.  I think that would be asking too much of them.

After reviewing everything we have to do just to get into the big box stores and a lot of soul searching, none of it felt right.  The stores don’t have to do anything but they have to get tremendously lower pricing just because of who they are and the clout they have.  They don’t have to market your products but they get advertising allowances.  They don’t have to have a clue how to use your products, but they’ll probably get the sale anyway since the customer (that doesn’t know how to use the product either) can just return it and claim it as defective if they can’t figure it out.  And if the store chain decides your product isn’t selling fast enough, if at all, they can just drop you like a hot potato and either clearance your products or send them all back to you.  Nothing personal, it’s just business.  You’re just a commodity item to them.  It doesn’t matter that you just put up your entire life savings to be able to afford that production run to fill their order.  That’s not their problem.

Then I look back at all the retailers we already have and those who’ve supported us right from the start, from Australia all the way to Iceland.  They juggle trying to teach a new customer how to properly use and wash our products with a baby on their hip.  They educate other moms about the benefits of cloth diapering via email while nursing a newborn at their keyboards.  They are constantly thinking of better ways to serve their customers while cooking dinner.  Sometimes, they will forgo buying their kids little luxuries just so they can afford to buy the inventory to fill a customer order.  They either stay up late past midnight or wake up really early to answer emails and pack orders just so they can spend the rest of the day with their kids.  If a customer is having trouble with any of the products they purchased, our retailers will troubleshoot the problem with them until they get it right.  They take full responsibility for any of the inventory they decide to stock in their store and only purchase what they can sell.  They market themselves, their store and the products they carry using innovative practices and by building their own followers and connecting with their own communities.  They can make a much bigger difference in the life of one mom and their own families than any of the big box stores can.  They’ve supported us through all the ups and downs, product revisions, price changes, shipping delays and backorders.

Can it get any better than this?  I don’t know.  But how can we risk taking sales away from them and giving to a faceless corporation that may not really care?  There’s really no reason for us to get into the big box stores.  The grass isn’t always greener on the other side.  We’re still growing by leaps & bounds doing what we’re doing.  We’re able to provide jobs and a means of income to a lot of people who truly believe in what they do.  And we’re creating products that help families without having to compromise anything.  While world domination may sound attractive and what a lot of companies choose to aim for, we prefer to practice concsious capitalism.  Right now, I don’t see the point in reaching for the stars when we already have the whole world underneath & supporting us.