Start Up Comapny Needs Advice

bernard colgan

I have just started an ltd company, but will not be trading for 3 months. I hope to supply the retail trade (Bars, restaurants, shops, supermarkets, cafés, and such) with my product. I strongly believe I have a big market and my prices will be more competitive than the competition. I have no experience in marketing or sale, so I will be relying on my competitive pricing to build a client base quickly. Through market research all my responses were positive about price and product. I will be competing against other supplier with same product but I believe I can be more competitive than them. Retailers have told me “ if you can sell it to me cheaper than what I’m buying it for I will buy from you”

As a start up company we have a very limited budget and have to keep expenses to a minimum. I will get flyers made up with product details and prices (is it a good idea to put price on leaflet) I have a list of retailers I want to contact and try sell to them. I was thinking of cold calling the managers on the phone for an initial contact and maybe faxing details of my product and a price list to their office. As I have said I have NO experience in sales or marketing and need some suggestions on effective way to initially get my foot in the door of retailers and companies. Also any advise on marketing would be very much appreciated.

I’m in process of looking for a warehouse to store my stock and am finding it difficult to find a place with my budget that doesn’t tie me down with a long lease, does anyone have spare space in their warehouse that they could rent to me at reasonable rate in south Dublin, or Dublin side of Wicklow or Kildare ?.

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice on business and Warehouse

[FONT=&quot]Regards Bernard[/FONT]

Your business will rise and fall on your ability or employees abilities to sell. My advice is get a sh** hot salesperson on board.

One method you could use is to have two sales team. One team books appointments for the other team who go out and meet the client and sell. Its hard to find someone who's good at both, and a good sales person who will sit and cold call.

You'll need to offer more then just a price advantage - you need to design a brand image that is credible and the buyer can have confidence in, so you can sell yourself and your company. Perhaps some other angles like your service, administration is better etc, dont limit yourself to just price

bernard colgan

First, thanks for your helpful reply. As a start up I don’t have the money to employ a sales team, wish I could. As I'm concentrating on just 1 product starting of, I know who my target market is, and through research and speaking to them, they say who ever is the cheapest they will buy off of them. Have a look at my blog, http://discounttillrolls.blogspot.com/ it explains my idea better, and any and all help is very much appreciated.

Regards Bernard

http://discounttillrolls.blogspot.com/

flash harry

Bernard

Id suggest call, ask permission to send details/pricing, call back couple of days later to get feedback, try meet them based on the call or agree a follow up when they think they'll be ready to order again.

Call out of busy periods e.g. for a bar morning, mid afternoon, not luchtime etc....Be able to describe what your selling and why they should choose you in less than 15 seconds BUT dont launch into that spiel till they confirm an interest etc. Prospect constantly on the phone and pick geographically similar areas so you can arrange meets/deliveries in same areas for same days

Hope this somewhat helps

antoinolachtnai

Why do you think there is a business in this? I'd imagine the margins will end up quite low. You have to sell an awful lot to actually cover your costs. Every customer will only buy a limited number of rolls.

If you don't have the money to pay a sales team, why are you starting the business?

Have you really factored in the cost of keeping a sales team going and doing all the logistics, warehousing, etc. in determining your prices? Sure, you can buy in the rolls pretty cheap, but most of the value in the roll comes from the customer service, the stock availability and quick delivery.

forbairt

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Why do you think there is a business in this? I'd imagine the margins will end up quite low. You have to sell an awful lot to actually cover your costs. Every customer will only buy a limited number of rolls.

If you don't have the money to pay a sales team, why are you starting the business?

Have you really factored in the cost of keeping a sales team going and doing all the logistics, warehousing, etc. in determining your prices? Sure, you can buy in the rolls pretty cheap, but most of the value in the roll comes from the customer service, the stock availability and quick delivery.

Really good advice here from Antoin.

- Warehousing costs
- Car / Petrol / Insurance / Tax
- Wages (yours + someone elses)
- You'll be on the road a lot I'm guessing with deliveries hence you'll need a mobile and your bill here assuming you start to do a good bit of business is going to be insane.
- Shipping costs (lets assume you won't be delivering them all the time P&P is really going to kill any margin you have)

You've mentioned you don't have much money to put into anything really ? ... this makes me think you've not talked to any of the enterprise boards ? and done some proper market research. It does seem like various people will buy from you but why wouldn't I just go to viking and while I'm at it I'll get my coffee tins .. a few packs of paper envelopes and so on.

Once you add up all these as Antoin said being able to source things for that bit cheaper isn't going to make that much difference unless you've got a large volume of sales happening.

Also Id recommend you respond to people's pm's ( I had pm'd recommending you grab the domain name if you haven't already as a professional website and not just a me.blogspot.com one is preferable ... and no I wasn't drumming for business as you have mentioned you don't have much of a budget ... I was just trying to be helpful)

Edit:

Minimum wage in ireland is €8.65 ? 40 hour working week means you need to make a profit of 345 just to cover basic wages for yourself. While a lot of people overlook their own wages going into these things you really need to think about them.

Car is probably going to be 50 - 100 € a week ... petrol / insurance / loan fees (if you don't own)
Warehouse I'd have to see costing at least another 100 a week

We're at 500€ at the moment ... phone will be added in on top of this lets just say another 50 - 100 quid and we're up to 600€

Quick check on viking direct ...
they sell these in 20's for around 10 eur

presuming they are making 50 cents - 1 euro ? on these
This would mean you'll have to undercut them ... and still make a profit

assuming you're earning 50 cents on each 20 pack you sell ... that'll mean you've have to sell 1200 at least a week just to try breaking even ... (costs involved for you are probably going to be more) so you're looking at needing to be selling 2000+ a week ?

You don't have a budget so you'll want to think you're going to be making a loss for the first 6 months to a year in business ...

Can you handle that ?

I think the business can work if you target the major supermarkets tesco and dunnes and get every branch of theirs on board. The logistical costs might be too much otherwise if you have lots of small orders.

Essentially thats two sales if you speak to the right people in the respective supermarkets

forbairt

A problem with this would be .. getting to talk to the right people.

You are right though the major chains would be the way to go.

Do up a professional proposal with figures on potential savings and so on that could be made by them and who knows. They get the kudos for saving their company X ...

1 Major problem you may encounter is .. you've got no track record yet so why should they go with you. Also giving the bulk quantities they buy in (I presume they buy in BULK) you may not be able to compete ?

antoinolachtnai

Really hard to do this without contacts.

Dunnes, Tesco et al. have guys on the road around Asia and Europe looking for cheap stuff to sell in their shops. As mentioned, I'd be surprised if they haven't already sourced a pretty good deal on till rolls, probably by the container-load, directly from a pulp-producing country.

Medium-sized chains might be a better chance.