How to get an appointment with a retailer

Getting your lingerie stocked with a retailer can be beneficial in that it gets your brand name out there, plus it feels so great that you can state who you stock with. A few weeks ago I did a blog about getting your lingerie stocked in shops, but now we are out of lockdown I thought it might help to have information on getting an appointment. Although not for everyone and their brand (selling wholesale doesn’t come without headaches and the you have to sell at a wholesale price rather than your retail price - so lower price), here are some of the methods I used when approaching a retailer with my brand.

Get the right person

That may sound totally obvious but I have friends in buying who often tell me that they receive emails to them not meant for them. So before you start sending out emails or post, ensure you have the right person. Finding the right person is so easy now-a-days so you have no excuse, check LinkedIn, any social media stream, ring the company and ask who is in charge of buying or making decisions about buying lingerie (often if it’s a boutique, the owner and buyer are the same person). If you’ve called them and are speaking to the right person straight away, state that you will be sending an email/post to them about your brand; that way when they next receive anything from you they can place who you are.

Finding the contact information in a bigger store means you may have to find more than one person, a buyer will have an assistant buyer, and that assistant buyer may have a junior buyer, by emailing them all at the same time, you’ve taken the pressure off the buyer to return your message but kept them in the loop, and often the assistant buyer may push for a meeting if the buyer has missed your email due to the amount of work they need to do.

When I was trying to stock with a bigger store I was only given the assistant buyer’s number and email, but on one of the correspondents I was having with her, she cc’ed the buyer in, so then I had the buyer’s contacts, so I began to cc them in. I don’t know if that was annoying for her but I did get a meeting and I did end up stocking with them.

*Vanjo circa 2007

Send post

If the stockist is in the same country as you, send post, even if you have sent an email, it takes more effort to send post but if you are sending postcards, or images of your brand the buyer has everything to hand rather than search for your email and as not many people send out post anymore you may stand out. I use to do what is called *‘Lumpy post’ packages that aren’t just in an envelope.

*Lumpy post is any post that is sent in an irregular shape, people are more likely to open up post if it’s sent in a different shape.

Past ideas that I have done has been sewing images into an envelope I made which was the shape of a pair of pants. Having images of bras on the envelope and glueing bows onto where they were on the image. Be aware though this has to be executed really well so it doesn’t look like a college assignment. If it’s not your thing, then ideas could be putting your envelopes through the printer to print your logo, or buying branded tape.

If you’re contacting a stockist you really want to stock with can you send a sample in their size? I’ve sent samples of past seasons to stockists and checked what size they were so they could wear the garment to make a decision, and if you are using the same pattern from seasons to season then this is a perfect way to get them on board.

Tell a story

Why did you start your brand? Often when we buy something, we act on our emotions, and who we align ourselves to be and buyers are no different. By telling a story about your brand you are playing to their emotions rather than facts.

Remember when you approach a store after getting their attention with your story of your brand, offer up facts like sizing, why they should stock you and the benefits (not features) your brand has to offer.