Article
How Retailbound Helped UltraHuman Transition from Crowdfunding to Retail
Ultrahuman is a growing health tech wearable company. The company raised close to $900k in the last two years in crowdfunding campaigns. Like many crowdfunded product brands, Ultrahuman looked towards retail as their next step. While transitioning from crowdfunding to retail may seem like a natural progression, it comes with its own set of challenges and complexities.
To increase the speed to market as well as avoid the costly mistakes one may make when approaching retail by themselves, the company decided to hire Retailbound to launch their advanced metabolism tracker with retailers in both the US and Canada. In a relatively short time, Retailbound was able to secure placement for Ultrahuman at major retailers like Best Buy and QVC.
The Strategy
The most successful crowdfunding to retail product brands tends to follow the same three phases:
- Being “Retail Ready”
- Targeting Key Retailers
- Driving Customer Traffic to Retailers
Retail Readiness
Just because your campaign raised half-million, one million or even three million dollars does not mean that you are ready to present to retail buyers. Many crowdfunded product manufacturers rush into contacting retailers when they are truly not ready to do so. The result is being told ‘not interested’ by the retail buyer and losing that one opportunity to be impressive.
The team at Retailbound worked closely with Ultrahuman to make sure they were ready to meet with retailers before the first contact with retail buyers was made. Some key retail readiness areas that need to be addressed before reaching out to retailers are:
- Pricing, including retailers cost and back-end rebates
- Sales Collateral
- Retail Packaging
- Master Case Pack/Inner Case Pack Packaging
- Logistics / Distribution
- Product Liability Insurance
- High-Res Product Images
- Web / Catalog Copy
- Marketing Calendar
Targeting Key Retailers
While it would be awesome to have your crowdfunded product placed with every retailer in the world, it doesn’t make sense for many different reasons when launching in retail for the very first time. The management team at Ultrahuman agreed with Retailbound to target key retailers once they were “retail-ready.”
Retailbound created a list of key retailers based on various criteria such as brand/marketing value and retailer margin considerations. Once the list of key retailers was developed and approved by Ultrahuman’s management team, Retailbound and their sales reps made appointments with retail buyers to present Ultrahuman’s product line. Since Ultrahuman was not reaching out to several retailers in the beginning, retail buyers liked the idea of not having a lot of competition. Also, having fewer retailers to work with in the beginning made it easier to control the inventory as well as manage retail buyer expectations.
Driving Customer Traffic to Retailers
In the world of retail, it’s not enough to simply have a great product. You also need effective marketing and advertising strategies to build awareness and to drive traffic to your retail partners. This is where most crowdfunded product brands who also have a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) strategy struggle with the most. They assume that once their product is either on the shelf or online with a major retailer, that their “job” is done and sales will magically happen. Unfortunately, this assumption does not work and the crowdfunded product brand either has to offer markdown money to lower the price or agree to take most of the inventory back.
At Retailbound, we say getting into retail is only half the job. The other half of the job is building awareness in order to get customers to purchase your products at your retail partners. Retailers like Best Buy give a platform for crowdfunded product brands to succeed or fail. The retail marketing tasks are the responsibility of the crowdfunding product brand, not the retailer, at least in the beginning. Once sales grow in-store, online, in-print, and/or on-air, then the retail buyer will help contribute their own marketing resources to help the crowdfunded product brand grow and prosper.
Ultrahuman understood in the beginning that partnering with retailers and utilizing the marketing levers that were available with their retail partners, that they could be successful in getting repeat purchase orders, a true sign of success in retail.
Case in point. With the help and guidance from Retailbound, Ultrahuman put together a strong proposal for QVC, a very large $12B direct TV response retailer, back in the Fall of 2023. QVC rarely tests new products on-air during the 4th Qtr., but Ultrahuman’s proposal was so appealing that the QVC merchants decided to run a test in late November. The test ran on November 24th which is known as “Black Friday”, one of the biggest sales days for retailers. Within minutes being on-air, Ultrahuman sold out of their forecasted inventory and had to take rain-checks. The QVC merchants were so impressed with Ultrahuman’s performance that they received additional on-air opportunities in December.
Instead of focusing solely only on D2C but rather adding retail as part of their overall go-to-market strategy for 2023/2024, Ultrahuman was able to build huge credibility as a brand as well as give their customers additional options on where to purchase their products from. This is the exact same strategy that former crowdfunding product brands, now well-known retail brands used like Oculus Rift, Popsocket, Allbirds, and Peloton.
Whether your crowdfunded campaign raised $500K or $3M and you have a strong desire to build your brand in retail, working with a professional team of retail consultants like Retailbound can play a huge part in your product brand’s success.
Learn more about Retailbound on the Indiegogo Experts Directory here.
