Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Retailer companies in America have 'buyers'. The job of these people is to source products which they will then resell. To sell directly to these companies, you need to find a way to contact these buyers.

Many retailers prefer to work through some form of middle company. They prefer the convenience of getting all of their products from a few wholesalers over working directly with many manufacturing companies.

Two basic routes that I can think of off the top of my head:
- if you have retailers specifically that you want to work with, start contacting them until you can find the right person (the buyer) and see if they will take your product. You may find they use middlemen, in which case you should find out what companies they use and then start contacting those companies.
- go for many people at once by going to the appropriate trade show and showing your products. The appropriate trade show would be the one that all of the retailers go to for the industry to see the new products out there.

In either case, you can get around the cost of the markup of the trading company, but in exchange you will have to pay a lot more money out as travel and entertaining expenses to find the retailers and get them to be willing to carry your products. It is very unlikely that you can accomplish selling direct without taking a few trips to the US and Europe to meet with the appropriate buyers. It is not uncommon that for the first year or two, you find you actually will be worse off going alone than if you stayed with the trading company, but over the long term it can be beneficial for you to go alone.