You’ve got limited resources.

Scarce resources might be a better description.

To be successful, your finite time, money and attention must be carefully allocated to the most meaningful activities. You don’t have the luxury to over-invest where it won’t payout. But you also can’t risk overlooking critical elements that can end up being showstoppers.

Your big idea becomes a lot smaller if it doesn’t fit with a retailer’s shopper profile and category strategies. Or you can’t demonstrate how the idea will deliver incremental sales and not just shift purchases from existing items.

Great product design won’t matter if the packaging is completely unremarkable and nothing is being done to drive awareness and interest before shoppers get to the shelf.

Huge distribution gains will be short-lived if you get into the wrong stores, can’t manage replenishment to keep product in-stock or you have the wrong pricing strategy.

THE DANGER OF URGENCY AND IGNORANCE

Unfortunately, looming deadlines and fire drills demand most of your attention every week. You are constantly functioning in tactical, not strategic mode. You spend so much time sacrificing to the god of urgency, there is little time left to even acknowledge the god of importance.

By Q2, your strategies for the year already start to feel more like hopes and prayers.

Based on our experience with clients across 150+ categories, you are not alone. Take a little comfort knowing that most other companies operate in a similar hair-on-fire manner.

Hopefully that makes you feel better…but it should for only a moment.

The best of intentions and 80-hour workweeks won’t improve your odds of success if that time and attention is focused in the wrong areas. And some of your competition…those that are the biggest threat to your success…know this.

These companies have a clear understanding of what needs to be done, in what order, and with what level of excellence. They have an organized allocation of resources based on what is important. And they plan well enough to minimize how often urgency hijacks the organization.

While lots of things can cause a product to fail (75 the last time we counted), ignorance is the most common root cause. It is the stuff we don’t know we don’t know that trips us up.

KNOW YOUR NEEDS

If the above description hits too close to home, please don’t ignore that feeling. If you think something is missing…or you feel unprepared in some area…you almost certainly are.

Retail readiness requires far more than a good idea or a good product. Through our needs assessment, we identify and prioritize the work that stands between you and your success.

We confirm what you know...and teach you about what you don't.

We help make you strengths stronger and prevent your weakness from causing failure.

The odds are already stacked against you. And those odds say you’ve got at least a 95% chance of becoming a statistic (that is, another failed product).

Luck doesn’t get a product into that successful 5%. Those companies understood their needs and put a plan in place to address all of them. And they have partners to help them along the way. So…

Find partners that have been down this path many times.

Find partners that can provide you with a roadmap to success.

Find partners that know what you don’t know.

Not sure where to start? Let us be the first partner to help.

Contact us to begin the assessment process. We’ll figure out where your business needs the most help to be retail ready, and we'll help you take the necessary steps to be ready.

RETAIL READINESS ASSESSMENT: Figuring out what needs to be done