How to Sell Your Office Supply Products to Retail Chains

Do you have a product that is perfect to sell to Office Supply stores?

With that said, let’s talk about getting your office supply products sold at retailers like OfficeMax and more! So if you have a great consumer product in the office supply category, and you’re looking for quick tips and strategies, this little training, we’ll walk you through how to do that. And just to give you some ideas and suggestions on what that world is all about.

A little background about me before we begin.

 My name is Karen Waksman. I’m the founder of a company called RETAIL MBA Brands. We help consumer products companies scale into retail chains, online retailers, catalogs, small retailers, HSN, QVC, and so much more. And the purpose of our trainings are honestly to just help as many people as possible generate the most amount of income for their products. I personally sold millions of units of products to the world’s largest retailers as a manufacturer’s rep, started my career out back in early 2000s and since then, I’ve taught close to 100,000 companies across the globe on getting their products sold at retail chains and beyond.

What You Need to Know About Selling Your Office Supply Products to Retail 

Let’s talk about what I would do if I was selling an office supply product. The first thing I would do is I wouldn’t do what everybody else does. What everybody else does with office supplies is they’ll go after Office Depot and OfficeMax, and start there. And basically, those would be their top hitters. Those are the ones that they really want to sell to.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with selling to these retailers, but every single office supply company is trying to sell them. Why does this matter to you? Well, it is a problem because when a buyer sees the same products all day, every single day, and she’s looking to purchase something new and she’s office supply retailer and very niched out, all she does is see your competitors’ products and better and bigger and working with bigger brands and so forth.

The buyer is more inclined to say, “No.”  We need to come up with the right angle to get her to say YES. It is possible!

Once you become a office supply vendor other retailers will accept your products

Whereas if you sold to a retailer like Walmart or Target or anywhere that sells, even Michaels stores. Whatever it is, retailers that can buy office supplies that are not totally niched out, they’re actually more intrigued by looking at new products. You would think that the niche retailers would be their first go-to move, but as a sales professional, I’ve found that those ended up being the ones that were harder to convert initially, and the ones that were a little bit outlandish. Not exactly what all your competitors are thinking about going after are the ones that generate the most amount of revenue.

Selling Office Supply Products to Office Depot and OfficeMax

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go after Office Depot or OfficeMax. You should, but just recall that I said that if for some reason they’re rejecting you, it doesn’t really matter because all you need is one “Yes” from one chain store. And the more obscure the chain store, the better, meaning, you know, maybe Ace Hardware can buy your product or 7-Eleven can buy your product or some sort of retailer can buy your product. That is not something that most people think about in your industry. And you get them to say yes. Their retailers are actually looking for products that are not risky. And for them, when you are selling a product at any chain store, you tend to be less risky in their eyes because somebody took a chance on you.

And that’s usually when they decide to start working with you. 

If they say no to you, go to all the different retailers, find one to say yes, and then it becomes a domino effect. And then you go back to the Office Depot‘s and the OfficeMax’s of the world, and they get what you want.

It can be to tricky to sell your office supply products to retail chains

I see it all the time. People kind of cower away after they didn’t get what they wanted initially and they think that there’s something wrong with their product and so forth because the retailer said no to them. It’s not really that. It’s just usually your strategy and you don’t quite understand how retailers operate and so forth. Obviously, there’s so much more to say about that, but the essence is, don’t stick to what everybody else is doing, which is to reach out to the only few retailers and so forth.

So one thing to consider also with chain stores is, they don’t always have a lot of room for office supply products. 

And so one thing to think about … If you go to an aisle at a chain store and they only have one section for office supplies, that concerns people and makes you wonder whether or not you should sell to them.