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Home Essentials - Wholesale Housewares and Decor
By businessbroad | June 15, 2007
If you have any experience with product sourcing, you’re probably well aware of the fact that there are a TON of companies that sell attractive, neutral, unexciting houseware and decor items. Sure, some of them have different themes - Victorian, modern, country, etc. - but they’re all pretty much the same.
For some odd reason, nearly all of them make you get a wholesale login to view their websites, too. This means that you have to call them up, submit vendor credentials, and deal with followup calls for the next year or so, all because you wanted to browse their product line. Call me crazy, but I hate that.
So, after that wonderful build-up, I’m going to point you to one of those companies. Home Essentials is one more company in a long line of places that you can search if housewares are your thing. They have a total of 8 preview pictures, which makes them a little better than some sites I’ve seen, but it was still enough to deter me from looking into their product line. If I see them at a gift show this summer, I’ll check them out and report back, but I certainly won’t go out of my way.
While I’m ranting, let me explain why I feel this way. I am well aware of the fact that most wholesale companies do not wish to act as retailers, too. I know that they don’t like to share their wholesale prices with the public. What I don’t get is why they don’t want to show their product line to the public.
Seriously, what’s the harm in putting your products online, sans prices? Yes, non-reseller people will probably browse your products. The world will not end. The ability to browse products without a login is good for several reasons:
1. Allow actual, professional buyers to view your line without a lot of work. Yes, this means you lose the ability to pester your “browsers”, but consider how many more you will have. There are literally thousands of companies in the world where I can buy products. Unless I KNOW you have something I want, I’m not going to waste my precious time signing up for your membership.
2. Save money on catalogs. There’s definitely a cost to getting your products online, but there’s also an expense in sending out catalogs. Personally, I rarely request paper catalogs from companies that show their entire lines online. I just browse and order. When I want to show a product to a co-worker, I just print out a single page.
3. PR - Having your products online makes them accessible for regular people - your end buyers. Even if you can’t sell them the item, you could have a links and phone numbers on your page where people CAN get the items. Then, your resellers make sales and buy more stuff from you. Pretty sweet, huh?
4. Appeal to younger buyers - Baby Boomers are retiring now, and we younger types are moving into their positions. As a general rule, young buyers like to deal with their computers. We don’t want to spent an hour chatting with your area sales rep, and we definitely don’t want to fill out major paperwork without so much as a peek at the catalog. Sorry, your candles and vases can’t be THAT cool.
Topics: Distributors/Vendors |