Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Are you looking for people to submit inventions or to manufacture/distribute inventions?
What makes these products better (other than being "new")?

I am assuming you have a kitchen product which a small retailer would sell? Not a kitchen product used by the small retailer (so the retailer is your final customer)?

With things sold through retailers, you can push or pull. Push means that you promote to the retailers, who put it on their shelves (where people see it and buy it). Pull means you promote to the end buyer who then asks for it at retailers, who then buy from you to stock their shelves. For new products like I think you have, push is generally done first.

Within small retailers, there usually are buying groups (like Ace hardware). The retailers team up and get to buy at much better prices from manufacturers. Manufacturers get the benefit of reaching many retailers all at once. Depends on what your product is within the kitchen ware area as to what buying group may be appropriate for you.

Many products take advantage of Reps. These are people who go to the retailers with complimentary products and work on signing them up, and get a percentage of the sale (often 10-20%) as their pay.

One challenge is that all retailers only want to bring in successful products. New products take a leap of faith, which few are willing to do. So it may take some additional steps by you to get them to do it (sell on consignments, start selling initially online so you have sales to prove their is a market, etc.). All of these have challenges to you, so need to be thought through carefully before doing (for example, if you went the online route, you probably don't want to discount, this way a retailer can still buy and resell from you without feeling like they are being undercut by your online sales).

Try my favorite: the display network. You can quickly find out who is interested and where they are. You can also get an idea of how many are interested. Knowing this you can then use Peter's advice with far more power because you can tell the distributors that there is already a market for your new idea.

Google's display network covers everything that has online advertising - magazines, blogs, you name it. The pricing is extremely modest and whilst not as effective as their search advertising, you can speak to people who aren't actually looking for the thing you are selling. That way you can find out if your idea really clicks with people. You can target to your heart's content and refine your tagline and all sorts of things before you need to commit them to hard print.

Direct response TV.