Image via Flickr[/caption]
When youâre making the big transition from sometimes-online-retailer to full-on wholesaler, youâre faced with a core question: how do you uncover the value of the products you make? According to designer, wholesaler, and CreativeLive instructor Megan Auman, keeping customer experience at the forefront, even when marketing to wholesalers, is key to the success of your brand.
As an individual maker, you most likely think about the value of your product in terms of the hours, effort, and thought you put into producing a product. But your customerâs perspective on your productâs value is often completely different. Your ideal client most likely doesnât care about the time you took, the materials youâve used, or the thought process that went into a design. Instead, he or she cares about how they experience the product.
When youâre thinking about the product you offer in terms of customer experience, ask yourself:
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How useful is my product to customers?
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What does the product say about them?
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How does the product make them feel?
Megan points out that the idea of âusefulnessâ can be tricky for those who make things that are considered ânon-essential.â
âItâs sometimes hard to put use on something like jewelry...but itâs not the only thing that people value.â
Once youâve considered the base level of your brandâs ideal customer, youâre ready to brainstorm ways to increase the perceived value of what you have to offer. While itâs tempting for you as a maker to focus on how long it took you to make a product. But just because it took you ten minutes (or ten hours or ten days) to make something, doesnât mean the time you took will translate into the way your customer perceives that product. As Meganâs frequent collaborator Tara Gentile explains, âJust because something is easy for you doesnât mean it isnât valuable to someone else.â
Chances are, your customer is most interested in how your product will benefit them. And in a maker field, when youâre offering a client something like jewelry or artwork for their home, the core benefit for your customer lies in how your product makes them feel.
While a focus on an individual customer experience might seem counter-intuitive when youâre trying to make the transition into a wholesaling market, Megan explains that itâs actually essential. âYou might be thinking -- weâre trying to sell to retailers, so does any of this matter? Absolutely, it matters. Ultimately, your products are still ending up in the hands of customers,â and when customers enter into a store, theyâll think about whether they need what theyâre seeing, how it will work with what they already have, how much theyâre willing to pay for it, and so on. Before you can even begin to articulate the value of what you do to wholesale clients, you have to understand it for yourself.