Episode 100 | Walmart Launch 2022 [What Happened Part 3]
In this episode...
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Let’s speak about 2022 and our Walmart Launch onto the big shelf!
A few weeks ago a shared with you what happened in 2020 and 2021 when we launched our products on Walmart shelves in the middle of the pandemic. And let’s just say… it did not go as planned. The lockdown interrupted selling and we had to quickly pivot our sales strategy. If you missed these episodes, you can click the links below to catch each
Luckily 2022 was a little different and we didn’t have any COVID-related shopping restrictions!
Here are a few lessons I learned when working with a large retailer.
- Make sure you have a great promotion plan to help move the product off the shelf.
- Complete a postmortem or analysis of the launch or selling season. Ensure you document what worked and what didn’t work.
- Expect and plan for delays especially if you are shipping products from overseas. Even if you’re a service-based business and launching a new program, always ensure you are planning for delays and leaving “contingency” time aside.
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A Team Dklutr Production
Episode 100 | Transcript
Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.
Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.
Sophia Noreen: Welcome to the Boss It Podcast. My name is Sophia Noreen and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big-box retailers within 12 months. As a creative with an entrepreneurial drive, I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career, family, and self-care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.
There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you!
Welcome everyone, Tara at Boce. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boce community. By heading over to our website Boce club.com and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community, a fellow Boce BFS, and we want you to be a part of it. Okay. Sophia and Anden let's dig into this.
I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here. Welcome to the boss of podcast. My name is Sophia and I took an Etsy startup and launched it in big box retailers within 12 months as a creative with an entrepreneurial drive. I left my full-time career in healthcare to find better harmony between career.
Family and self care. We believe you can have it all. Yes, you can launch and run a successful scalable business while maintaining harmony in all aspects of your life. We believe we can learn from each other and draw on many experiences to create the best life possible. During each episode, we will share proven life hacks that will keep you on top and striving every day.
There should be no hesitation. Make a plan. Take action. We are here for you. What's up everyone. Welcome back to another fantastic episode of the boss podcast. My name is Sophia Narine. If we have not met before and today, we are gonna be chatting about how we got into Walmart and what happened in 2022. So the previous two episodes, we did chat about 20, 20 and 2021.
And the reason I'm talking about this is because I know many small business. Lived through the pandemic and had many trials and tribulations, especially if you're a product based business. It became a big concern. When retailers shut down also for service based businesses, if you're a professional working in a service based industry, you also know that you had to continuously shut down.
So I'm sharing my story. So you guys understand what it takes to run a business and what you do when you have to quickly pivot. And I think that's nature of the. In business, it's not a straight path. You have to understand there is gonna be trials and you will have to figure out what is the best way of conquering these situations.
So without further ado, let's talk about what happened in 2022. I wanna start off by saying in 2021, we did go through that lockdown in Canada. Non-essential shopping was completely off limits, which meant that our products could not move off the. And that basically caused us a lot of concern because it pretty much told the retailers that perhaps this is not worth continuously investing in.
And it almost damaged that relationship. But luckily for us, our products were eye catchy enough that another category manager at Walmart saw it and thought, Hey, that could still work for us. And I think our customers would still enjoy. So 2022 turned out to be not such a bad situation for us. We actually had our first real go at having a season in Walmart.
We do provide our customers with seasonal goods for E and Ramadan to holidays celebrated by the Muslim community. We also provide products for the community that celebrates DWAI and. Pretty much, these seasonal opportunities for us are very time limited on the shelf, which means that we're in there for about four to six weeks.
And that's it. We don't stay on the shelf longer than that. So really 2022 was the first time our small business had the opportunity to show what we could do in a retail environment. And I'll tell you this, because we knew it was coming because we knew we had to execute. We pretty much went all in. We did not.
Hold back. We made sure that we had lined up our campaigns to ensure that the customers and the community knew we were arriving at the store. And we also did another additional service for our customers by placing the locations of the stores on our website. And so when people came to our website, yes, they could check out.
But they were also able to find a retailer close by so they could go grab it off the shelves. Now some of you may be thinking, why would you do that? Because if you shop on your store, you have a greater margin that is provided back to the company. Yes. But we also have to ensure that we're selling off the shelf.
And I know a lot of people may think why you don't have to, but in a way you do, because you have to show that you have a great sell. Now sell throughs, that crash phrase, which I learned when I jumped into business, that means that you need your product to sell off the shelf. And it's a percentage. So we wanna ensure that our.
Retailers know that we are taking a concerted effort with them to help with that sell through. And that really helps them feel more comfortable with taking a risk on a small business. So that's my tip for anybody. Who's looking into getting into big retailers in 2022, because it was our first opportunity to shine without pandemic looming over our heads.
There was no lockdown at the time when our products hit that seasonal. Shelf that we were able to show that we were able to do a high sell through. And it was, it was a very good sell through our customers really came through for us. They knew that the product was on the shelf. They wanted the product.
And I'll tell you this. It sold out within days, days on some of the shelves, some weeks sold out within weeks. Some of course took a little bit longer, but those stores that sold out within days were asking for more. Those testimonials from those stores proved to the category manager that this is the right vendor to go with.
This is the right season to promote, and we need to do a better job next time of rallying our stores together and asking them what do they want on their shelves and how much? So we took those lessons learned and we're applying it year after year, but 2022 really allowed our. The opportunity to show what we could do.
So with that said, we were very happy, very fortunate, but lessons learned, we learned that certain types of displays needs to be better managed. So my second takeaway for you is yes, you wanna sell off the shelf. You have to figure out a way of, of course, providing the opportunity for the customer to buy off the shelf plus off your online store.
But you also need to look at lessons learned. So every time you finish a season, Be it like seasonal holiday or some type of promotion you need to look at how did it perform? And this could be for service based business as well. You could be running a campaign, you could be doing a launch. You do need to take a step back after you have launched and after your season's completed and complete a postmortem.
And I know that sounds a bit weird to me because when I say postmortem, that is implying. And so with my healthcare lens, I'm like, I don't really like that work, but that is the word the industry uses. So you're going to do a postmortem and you're going to go ahead and see what worked, what didn't work.
And I would do a full analysis of the things that you're going to improve on for the following seasons or for your following launches. So make sure that you don't skip that very important step. And that is exactly what we. And then we took those lessons and we actually communicated that back to our retail partners.
And the reason we did that is because yes, of course, it's our responsibility. To ensure that we're executing, but it's also their responsibility to try to communicate to their stores and to their other corporate partners. How can we improve this for not just our customers, but also for our vendors, because in the end it is a partnership and we need to make sure all the partners are working well together.
Otherwise they're gonna end up into a real big sticky mess. So what I have also learned is that our supply chain is always. I don't know about anybody else in other parts of the world, but Canada's supply chain is terrible. It takes us so long to bring product over. And I'm kind of at the point where, okay, well seasonal or not, I'm just gonna stop this all year round.
It might not be that great if you think about it, but it's a big problem. Like having a supply chain that runs so slow, ISS, hard to time. So this year with DWAI, we had a few shenanigans happening with COVID still affecting Asia and India. And our supply chain has gotten a bit more complicated because we're basically importing from different parts of the world and we're consolidating, and we're assembling now in Canada because we realize that we can't always send products from one country to the next, without there being some issues at the.
And whether or not COVID was also interrupting service quite a bit. So that has been our lessons for this year 20, 22, while we start to roll out our next season, which is DWAI, hopefully next few weeks, it'll hit the shelves and I'll have another good update for you guys, because if you're following along the story, I'm sure you're gonna wanna know how that turns out.
But again, the point. Supply chain is always a nasty mess. So if you are in the product based industry and you are looking to offshore, anything you need to ensure that you have figured out the delays that are attributed to the season, and you also have to figure out if you can store your product somewhere.
So future planning for us is that rather than doing just in time method, which was typically used for many product based businesses, you order the products just in time, so they can be taken out of the warehouse onto the shelve. Now we have to provide a bit more leeway for our products to hit the shelves and of course have space to store the products.
So that way we can not be always just on time, cuz just on time can also be late. So we need to ensure that we don't do that. So that's my lessons for 2022. I am super fortunate and super grateful that the customers have stuck by. And I do wanna share as much information as I. Regarding this industry.
Again, I'm learning as I go and I'm creating as I go, but I know that many of you are hesitating to even just jump in. But again, like I said, if you know what to expect, you can plan as much as you can, but sometimes what ends up happening is you have these nuances where. For example, the pandemic hit and you couldn't plan ahead, but with perseverance and with the right mindset, when the opportunities resurfaced like they had in 2022 for us, we took it.
And I could have said at that point, sorry, we're no longer doing business. With the Walmart customer, or we're no longer gonna be doing business with large retailers, we're only gonna stick to our eCommerce platform, but we changed our mindset to say, Hey, things happen. Let's go ahead. Let's move forward.
Let's try this out. And let's put our best foot forward. Let's take lessons that we've learned. Also, let's see if we can provide the community with the things that they want and a reasonable price point in a reasonable space and listen to their feedback as well. So lots of thoughts, lots of big ideas, and I'm really excited for 2023.
We have more exciting stuff coming up. Well, hopefully round out 20, 22 as a second season in a big retailer. And I will, of course tell you how that goes. I've already told you some things that haven't been occurring with supply chain delays, and of course, trying to package things in Canada, I'll tell you about how that goes later.
And hopefully we'll hit the shelves and I'll hopefully tell you some great news about the sell through for DWAI. And if not, I'll of course share that with you S well, but guys, I really hope you're enjoying these episodes. If you have not done so yet, hit subscribe and follow. So you can always catch an episode.
We try to release every week and if you're not following us yet, you can go ahead and follow us on Instagram or at boss a. And remember guys make a plan and take action and yes, you can have it all. And we'll talk to you guys later. Take care. Bye. So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action.
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Sophia Noreen: So my fellow Bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now, it's time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the Boss It Podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTunes. Take a screenshot of your review and share it on Instagram as a post or a story, and tag us at Boss It Club. If Instagram is not your thing, no worries. Email your screenshot to [email protected]. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our top 50 tips for starting and scaling a business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers so don't miss out. Now, remember Bosses, make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.