2007
What is the Best Way to Go About Obtaining Buyers Names and Contact Info?
Posted by: Fashion06 in FAQ, Starting your own line |
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This is the second installment of the new renamed FAQ now Dobizo Answers 
page.
Gabrielle wants to know:
What is the best way to go about obtaining buyers names and contact info? I am trying to compile a target store/contact list and I am finding this task incredibly difficult.
This post is going to be a little shorter mainly because I wrote an article on how to contact store buyers and obtain their contact info (email, number), but I still want to give some more tips.
One way you can also gain some contacts without all the hassle you have to go through that I explain in my article is spend a little money on attending a trade show. If you pay to exhibit at a trade show most offer an attendance list either up to date or past list with all the stores and buyer names and store numbers. That is the easy, but costly way. I know one of the cheaper trade shows that does this is Americas Mart Alpha show.
For more info on obtaining buyer contacts and info read My first Order I Processed With No-Money Upfront and Money Saving-Tips Free Publicity
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September 12th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Man some of the old articles you linked to are some of the better ones. Good looking
September 16th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
network..network.. network.. network…
September 16th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Business contacts? Thats what I call it.
I launched my line in 2006… For a whole year, I emailed about 30 manufactures, met 10 local store managers/buyers, sent out 100 catalogs across the U.S… The result: only 1 positive reply from a manufacture and 1 buyer was interested in seeing more products. Kinda sad aint it? Soooo….
I took my line all the way to Magic Tradeshow in August ‘07 in Vegas… I had about 40 buyers(boutiques), 10 manufactures(Paskistan, India, China & US), 6 marketing/advertising firms and 2 investors approached me. Last but not least, 2 buyers from a major chain store asked for my catalogs & business cards. Yes it did cost a lot of money trying to look presentable but you know what, like they say “do what you gotta do”. I didn’t go there to sell million dollars worth of clothes, I went there to introduce myself and get business contacts. Ask yourself this, “are you there to sell a tshirt or do business? I believe I sold my concept & identity to a lot of people. Yea it sucks watching other companies meet with buyers & making sales on the spot, and all I get is a nod & a hand shake. Fow now, that works for me and I don’t take that for granted. I’m definitely coming back in February 2008 with a stronger line and making sure I seal the deal this time.
I know presenting without going there first is not the brightest but trust me, I did a lot of research on it. Plus I got 2 friends w/ their own line so I bug the sh*t out of them for info. haha
My mistakes: Forgot to take down most of their information/business card. Didn’t realize that until the last day of the show. Damn, can’t follow-up but hopefully they’re remember me next season! Also, trying to do too much. Spent more money than I should for displays which end up being useless. Other than that, Im very proud. I hope this helps somebody out there in this cold-ass world.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Hello, I have a question about legal structures of businesses. I’ve chosen to be an LLC. Is it possible to change the structure of my business, say to a Corporation years down the line? Or is a business stuck with the structure chosen from the begining?
February 28th, 2008 at 3:44 am
I took the advice from one of the old articles about finding your competition online and getting their “store locator”.
What we did was find as many competitors that we could think of and just compile the list and place it in an Excel spreadsheet.
It wasn’t terribly difficult. Now, we’ve got a list of almost 2,000 stores nationwide, that we can sort by name, city, state, etc.
Some of them we had to find the phone numbers for, but that’s just a little bit of leg work.
It was a great tip, and has helped us tremendously.