Sell to The Container Store & Become a Container Store Vendor

Learn everything you need to know to become a Container Store vendor 

Let’s talk about The Container Store. I love that store because their stores are massive in size – that means that buyers have some wiggle room because they can test out new products, whereas other retailers have very small spaces to work with. Other retailers have to be really strategic about what products they put in their stores. But, the general concept is that it’s a big store, with big room, which means they have opportunities to test many new products – and not all stores have that luxury. Great for the new product company.

Why you should be sell to The Container Store

Also, I have clients who have sold products to The Container Store and worked with them for years, and they  generally are nice to work with and are good partners if you can get into their stores. Again, I feel really good about The Container Store.

Here’s an interesting thing about The Container Store:

When you are searching online and you are trying to get to know more about this retailer, you will see that they have a vendor page where vendors or potential vendors are able to ask them questions.  

If you do a google search for “Container Store Vendor,”  you’ll see this page and essentially all it really says is “Hey! Here’s what we’re all about”. And then people submit questions and someone at that retailer is actually responding.

Most chain stores don’t usually don’t have someone responding on their website

 You’ll also notice when you are looking at this page, a lot people are typing in “I have this great product, I want to be a vendor. What do I do?”

Things that you need to know before reaching out to become a Container Store vendor

And The Container Stores says every single time – to send an email to them and they will review your product. The Container Store is taking the time and effort to respond to vendors who are interested in working with them. It’s a nice gesture.

Chain stores will have you go to a vendor website to fill out a form about your product or they give you an email to submit your product online. What the Container Store is doing is very common. And most people who have a new product (your competitors), will follow protocol, go to their vendor websites and fill out the forms.

My recommendations for selling to Container Store

But sales professionals, people who sell to chain stores don’t do that. They do not fill out or submit a product online or submit a product randomly to an email.

Sales professionals limit themselves because who knows who is reviewing that email. It could be someone is reviewing these products and I’m sure that they’re looking at these products but the problem with that is that you want a particular buyer who’s responsible for the product to review it and sometimes you don’t always know if that’s actually happening. They get so many vendor requests that they just have to create a protocol and that’s what they do and part of the time is that you’ve submitted this product online and you don’t get a response for a while or they say no to you, you don’t really understand why. There are just so many variables, it’s just like sending your product out of the cloud and hoping that somebody responds to you. 

Why you should be selling to The Container Store

The Sales Professionals don’t mind filling out paperwork once they know there’s interest, they actually do is they know what to say to these buyers when they reach out to them directly. There are some things to articulate and ways to prepare your product to ensure success which a lot of people don’t understand but once you learn how to do that, what they do is they actually reach out to the appropriate buyer directly.

It’s a little tricky to become a Container Store vendor

Find out their information, reach out to them they know all the cool tricks and strategies that when they reach out to them and they get an answer generally quickly and it’s a higher success rate because they’re reaching out to the appropriate buyer. They’re getting an answer fast, they don’t mind filling out forms if there’s interest from the buyer and they also get feedback from the buyer if the buyer says no to them and so forth.

 There are definitely tricks and strategies when you want to sell to The Container Store

Generally speaking all Sales Professionals go to that route. They don’t go fill out forms and submit products to a random email. There’s a lot to tell you and explain to you in regards to how to approach these guys and how to find their contact information.