How to get your products into independent shops

01Sell to the owner, not to the shopper

A maker who had emailed gyms and health shops about a new protein snack asked what he was doing wrong. His pitch explained why gym-goers would love it. The reply:

The important thing to remember is that your customer is the business owner, not the consumer. To the gym owner it's an additional revenue stream that they can make profit from. How much? What's their take?

Two replies on r/smallbusinessuk

The owner has to believe your product is good for them before they care whether their customers will like it. That means the margin, and it means saying it first. The numbers shop owners gave in these threads were consistent:

A shop owner in the farmers' market thread put the ceiling bluntly: "I don't care if you're local and hand poured or whatever, if you try to charge me $18 so I have to sell at $30, that's too much for my market." Work out your wholesale price and your recommended retail price before you approach anyone, and open with what the shop makes on each unit.

02Pick shops that already buy what you make

The advice that came up most often was also the least glamorous: go and look.

Don't make assumptions. Go look. Find out what they're stocking. Make a note of how they're selling it and what the prices are. It's not easy for any shop just to "add another rack". Assume that you're going to need to displace something already stocked.

r/smallbusinessuk

The reason is on the other side of the counter. A shop owner who gave local crafters space during lockdown found "those products are hard to sell. Our shoppers were coming in for what we sold, not farmer's market goods." A pet shop owner said she chooses treats "based on customer responses". A shop that already stocks a brand like yours has already proved the demand, knows the margin, and has a place on the shelf that your product can compete for. A shop that has never stocked your kind of product is a bet on changing what its customers came in for.

So the list you start from matters more than the pitch. Every shop on it should carry something comparable to what you make. If you have a brand in mind that sits next to yours, its stockist page is a list of shops that have already said yes to your category. That is the whole idea behind this directory: it turns those pages inside out, so you can look up a category and a region and see which shops stock what.

03Find out who buys before you write

Three makers in these threads had sent twenty or more emails and had nothing back. A candle maker at markets said, "Literally no one calls me back. Emails have never been answered. Owners and decision makers are never 'around' when I swing by with samples." The shop owners explained why.

Only email after you've identified who you should be emailing. Only ever email to a named person, never to a generic info@ style email address. You're wasting your time if you don't know who the owners are.

r/smallbusinessuk

"People are quick to delete emails from people and businesses they don't know," said another. A card shop owner added the detail that decides whether post gets read: address it "FAO Manager" and mark it "Private & Confidential", "only to stop it being opened by part-time staff and discarded as spam".

The practical version is a phone call before anything else. Ring at a quiet time, say what you make in one sentence, and ask who does the buying and when they are in. You now have a name, a time, and permission to follow up. In the UK that call also keeps you on the right side of the marketing rules: a limited company's business address can be emailed, a sole trader's cannot without their consent, and a large share of independent shops are sole traders. The phone is lawful for both.

04Turning up: the shopkeepers disagree, usefully

On walking in, the owners split. One: "I absolutely hate it when reps turn up." Another, in the same thread: "Favourite way has been approached during quiet times in store or at events. Lovely to be able to talk to the owner." A potter who had run a shop settled it:

First, look at their website and see if there is an established procedure. If not, reach out via email or their contact option. Do not just walk in. Generally, if you walk in, the person working is not the owner and cannot help you.

r/Pottery

Put together, the rule is: check the shop's website for a wholesale or stockist enquiries page and use it if there is one. If there is not, ring. Visit only when you know the owner will be there and the shop will be quiet. Never leave samples with whoever is on the till, "like an unwanted orphan", as one reply put it. And the one thing every owner agreed on: no clever subject lines. "Least favourite way: e-mail with manipulative subject line. Always annoys me."

05Make the order effortless

The owners who said they would consider a new line described the same package, in different words.

I wouldn't answer an email asking if I want free samples: I'm too busy and my business is already existing fine without them. But if you came by and dropped some off with a little display and a cost list that made it SUPER EASY to order some if I wanted to, that would work.

r/smallbusinessuk

The card shop owner: "send samples AND a pricelist and online link for ease of ordering." The potter: an email that introduces you, links to your website, and attaches exactly two things, "a portfolio of work (3–5 images) and a list of products with corresponding consignment and wholesale prices". The gift shop owner: barcodes on everything, invoices with part number, description and cost, "so it is easy to put into the store's computer system".

And keep the first order small. "You need to make small orders possible so small stores don't shy away, and all stores can test demand without a large inventory investment." A shop testing you with £80 of stock is a shop you can reorder from. A £300 minimum is a reason to say no.

• One page: wholesale price, recommended retail price, minimum order, lead time, carriage.
• Three to five photographs of the product as it will sit on a shelf.
• One way to order that takes a single step: a reply, a link, or a form.

06Samples, and the note inside them

Samples came up in nearly every thread, and the owners were less keen on them than the makers expected. One retailer: "90% of the time a sample is not necessary. A picture is fine. The only time I want a sample is if a picture truly doesn't do justice, or if it's a brand new product to the market." A golf shop's manager made the point makers miss: a sample "does cost them", because their staff have to handle it.

Where a sample earns its place, the owners were specific about how. The card shop owner suggested "sending a sample card with a handwritten invitation to call to discuss inside". A reply to the dog-treat maker whose twenty emails went unanswered: "Creative sample kits with a personal note to each store owner would start to move the needle." For candles and scent, a reply on r/candlemaking listed the cheap versions: wax-dipped scent sticks, tealight-sized testers, or a one-ounce tin in the same livery. Send the sample once you have a name, never cold, and never expect it to do the asking for you.

07Time it to their buying, then come back

You need to time it around their buying season, which will be different for everyone, so reaching out a couple of times over a year is sort of the only answer here. But it doesn't mean you need to send multiple samples. Summer for me is a sprint to make some money; winter it slows down and I spend time reviewing sales stats, dropping slow items, looking for new items.

A shop owner on r/smallbusiness

Silence is often timing, not rejection. Gift and homeware shops in the UK do most of their Christmas buying in late summer and early autumn, around the trade fairs; food shops buy for summer in spring. Ask, when you ring, when they look at new lines, put it in the diary, and write again then. Two well-timed approaches a year beat six in a fortnight.

08Know your terms and prove you are reliable

Independent shops buy on two bases. Wholesale, where they pay up front and the stock is theirs, and sale or return (called consignment in the American threads), where they pay you when it sells and take a cut, typically 30 to 40 per cent in the potters' experience. Some shops mix them: one maker listed "wholesale, 50%, 40%, and a monthly price for a spot in their shop plus a small percentage of each sale".

Whichever you offer, arrive with the answers. A potter who had done it listed the questions: "Have a drop-in display ready to go, do not expect them to put any work into figuring out how to merchandise your items. Does the store have the packing materials they need? How often will you be by to restock?" A soap maker was told to know costs, inventory and capacity cold, and to "show you are a real business and have insurance". Product liability insurance is cheap and shops do ask.

Reliability was the shop owners' quiet condition. A café owner on a thread about supplying bread: "I'll only switch to bought-in if it's a great quality that is consistent. One poor batch or delivery not met, I'd probably go straight back to making it myself." Say what you can make, how often, and what happens if you cannot. A shop that stocks you is replacing a supplier that turns up.

09The paid routes, and what they cost

The same threads that asked how to approach shops asked whether to pay someone else to. The answers give the prices.

• Marketplaces. A ceramicist worked out that a 50 per cent wholesale discount followed by the marketplace's commission left her "25–35 per cent of the product's sale price before manufacturing". The current Faire figure quoted in reply was 15 per cent on orders that come through the marketplace, and nothing on retailers you bring yourself.
• Trade fairs. Spring Fair, Autumn Fair, Home & Gift and Top Drawer were recommended for meeting buyers and agents in one place. A stand, stock, travel and time come to several thousand pounds per show before an order.
• Sales agents. For candles, giftware and home fragrance, "commission-only arrangements around 10–15% seem fairly common", with agents expecting regional exclusivity once orders flow.
• Wholesalers and distributors. They build reach for you, and take a margin on top of the shop's, so your price has to carry two cuts.

Every one of these is a way of paying to find the shops. They are worth it when you cannot find the shops yourself. When you can, the direct approach above costs a phone call and a stamp.

10The checklist