Do you have a sporting goods product that you want to sell into retail chains? Have you ever wanted to sell to Dicks Sporting Goods or any other chain store retailers that sells sporting goods? 

If so, you will love this new video training on How to Sell Your Sporting Goods Products to Retail Chains! No Experience Required! 

In this video, we explain what to do and how to get started today!

With that said, let’s talk about sporting goods and outdoor products for retail chains. First of all, the reason I decided to create this training is because for the last 12 years, I’ve taught close to 100,000 consumer product brands across the globe on how to approach, pitch and sell to major retailers, online retailers, catalog, small retailers, HSN, QVC, etc. And I do this because I used to sell the chain stores for many, many years as a manufacturer’s rep and started teaching my time-tested sales methodologies to people and they were getting so much successes that I’ve been sticking it out all these years and just loving helping people. I want to support you in actualizing your dream of generating revenue with consumer products. And if you have a sporting goods and outdoor product, I want to give you ideas as to what you’re up against, what to think about and have to help you get started today. 

Why Sell Your Sporting Goods Products in Retail Beyond Sporting Goods Stores

One thing that you’re going to note is that everyone always says go to Dick’s Sporting Goods or certain retailers in that way and sell to them first. Well, one of the things that I want you to know is that that’s a perfect idea, you should go after all the sporting goods stores and diversify. And the reason I say that is because Dick’s Sporting Goods is a great retailer, they have perfect products for you and everybody else is reaching out to them. So that’s something I always say in my trainings, because it really matters to me that you get beyond your nose and what everybody else is doing, what your competition is doing and find retailers that can give you money now, that the whole world is not calling on day one.

So if Dick’s and other sporting good retailers are rejecting you, it’s usually not because of your products, it’s usually because everyone is contacting them. So my recommendation is to go after any other retailer as well who can buy your products, the Target’s of the world, the Macy’s of the world, retailers across the globe are selling sporting goods products, other people can buy your stuff, stop picking the top few retailers that have sporting goods in the name, go beyond it. Because as a rep, someone who’s sold products for close to two decades, someone who helps people get products into stores, and this helped so many people in this. I know for fact that the money comes in going beyond what you’re typically doing and what your competition is typically doing because I know that in the chain store space, all you need is one buyer to say yes to you, one chain store and all the other retailers will start noticing.

Buyers are Looking for New Products in Retail Now!

Most people don’t realize that the buyer at Target is shopping at Walmart and the buyer at Walmart is shopping at Best Buy, and the buyer at Best Buy is shopping at some retailer like Dick’s. Whatever it is, all looking at each other’s stuff. And when they see a product that could be interesting for their stores, they will jump on it much faster because they believe your product less of a risk and we really, really want that for you. So what about retailers like department stores? They have the ability to buy your product on your massive scale that your competitors may not be thinking about. And what about CVS stores? If your product could fit there, could that be a retailer. I’m talking, I would go well beyond if you have a product that is unique that could sell into supermarkets, could it, I don’t know, there’s retailers that sell all sorts of crazy stuff, did you know that ACE Hardware sells sporting goods products? Retailers are now buying all sorts of random stuff and you could get in on that and make a lot of money. So I would definitely explore non sporting goods retailers as well as those types of stores.

If you have a gadget product you may want to sell into Best Buy. A lot of people don’t think about the fact that all these retailers have the ability to spend lots and lots of money with you if you are willing to let them know about your product in a very particular way. If you want to sell your sporting goods and outdoor products, you may want to consider exploring associations like the National Sporting Goods Association. The reason I say that is because it’s nice to be around like-minded individuals, people who are selling into that industry in that category. It’s good to know what they’re doing and maybe get mentorship by them. I always like people to get involved in their local community, it’s very nice. We have communities for everything that we do and so we love to support people like you .and I will talk in a minute about how we can help.

Consider Selling at Trade Shows

Generally speaking for this industry in this category, you can go retail specific, products specific associations and shows. You can go to like the PGA show, if you have products that are great for golf. Again, anytime you have some sort of product that’s really niched out don’t just go to the niche retailer, go beyond what’s comfortable for you and really explore there. If I could give you any quick tips and strategies, it really comes down to this. Retailers are hungry for new products, they’re looking for new sporting goods products. Could your product fit in a different part of the store? For instance, if your product is currently for sporting goods, could you repackage it for the camping section of the store where a different picture would be on the box and some sort of camping something with some sort of sporting, something that could get people to be interested in your product? If you’re selling to adults, maybe you sell the kid’s section of the store by putting a kid on the package, you could do a lot of different things. Is it a gift item? Could you put it in a different area of the store beyond just the sporting goods section? There’s so many ways to generate revenue with a consumer product. Could your product do well internationally? There’s a whole way of generating revenue by selling your products to other retailers and other countries.

A lot of opportunity out there for people with sporting goods products, and outdoor products, because people are going outside and they’re buying stuff. Also for you regionals, so people who live in Miami are very different than who people who live in New York, obviously because of the weather changes. So people who are more inclined to buy sporting goods products could live in different regions and there are ways to sell the retailers on a regional level, that could be another opportunity for you. So the bottom line is that these opportunities are endless in bountiful and if you’re willing to explore and learn more, we can help you in that way.

So anyways, if you want some more time to learn about how to sell your products to chain stores, and you’re willing to spend some time, we have actually a free webinar coming up. All you have to do is go to retailmba.com/free 90 minutes. We answer questions, we support you along the way, sign up to get access to that information. If you need help with your pitch or the words to use with the retailers or your packaging or your pricing, we have all sorts of programs to help you. We have do it yourself programs, we have done for you programs where we reach out to retailers on your behalf. We have systems in place to help you with buyer contacts, we have events where we work with you closely in a one day settings, 30 days settings and so forth. If you want to learn more, you can go to retailmba.com and learn what we’re up to.

Please also take a look at our success stories. We have so many clients success stories and we work so many different categories, and this is definitely a happy category for us, a lot of people doing well. So anyways, I hope this provided value for you. Please subscribe to this channel, comment below if you liked this information like this post. Keep in touch with us we’re always creating new content. We’d love to support you with retail chains. Karen Waksman Retail MBA. Really appreciate you. Thank you.