Another retail store location added :)

Today I innocently went by a local health store here where I live (population 6000 so you can imagine our "town"). I took some of my soaps and offered to leave them in consignment. I don't mind doing business like that as an introduction of my product to that particular store, so when I noticed the store owner was nervous about buying the soap, I just told him straight out you can have them in consignment. He jumped up at the idea and said yes :) It also helps that I'm a regular as I buy my beeswax from him every month or so.

He also asked me about my production levels. I told him honestly I don't produce much because I don't have many places to sell and it doesn't make sense to make product to have laying around in my lab (insert geeky comment about project management: "inventory is one of the seven wastes identified by 6 sigma"). He told me that this store is part of a bigger chain of stores of about 20+ all around Costa Rica, so he was interested in knowing if I could cope with having product in all the stores. What a question?!? I had to do a quick sum in my head which went kind of like this: I left him with 18 bars of soap - 2 of each kind. 1 batch = 10 bars so 2 batches (to cover 20 stores) of each soap times 9 = 18...each batch is done in about an hour considering mixing, cutting, labeling...so that's 18 hours a month to start with...not bad! so I told him "Of course I can!" I did make it very clear to him that depending on the soap and if I didn't have the qty on hand it could take me from one to four weeks to deliver, that he should take that into consideration. He said that not a problem and then told me that he has a distribution company if I wouldn't be interested in making my product labeling it made by ___ for ____. I said absolutely! Both scenarios would be awesome for my brand! Both have me mildly terrified!!

So it all depends on how the product sells in his shop. Hoping he'll call me tomorrow to say he doesn't have any more left!

xoxo
Irene