Big vs. Small Stores

As they say, "Be careful of what you wish for!" When I first had my idea for the nomie baby car seat covers, the feedback was so positive and encouraging that I imagined that they would sell out as quickly as they were being manufactured, and remember asking how quickly the turn around could be. I also imagined that getting the products into stores would be a snap. In fact, while the feedback for the actual product has been equally incredible as it was for the idea, getting the product in stores has been a bigger challenge than I first imagined, but not all the time.

I first introduced the nomie baby products to a very large baby store chain over a year ago. At the time they weren't taking on new products, but said they wanted to keep in touch, and in October 2009 after keeping them up to date, they said that they would like to carry the car seat covers, and then sent a 24 page vendor agreement. Since October, 6 months ago, we have been going back and forth with the forms, images, insurance forms, warehouse and shipping details, and then they said they needed some updated forms since things had changed since October. While I was re-filling out form 2, I received 2 orders from stores in Brooklyn, NY. My first thought was, how easy those 2 new stores were, and my next was, "Are the big stores really worth it?"

On the one hand, with the small stores I am dealing with one person for the order, billing information, shipping, or photos for their site. On the other hand the larger stores take longer to open the account, there are usually multiple people dealing with the account for each step, and often the initial order is not much bigger than orders for the smaller "mom and pop" stores. I am still holding out hope that the products will be as successful as they have been at Diapers.com, and that will lead to increased orders, and putting nomie baby products in their bricks and mortar stores as well as online. My hope is that the time invested on the front end will be worth it in the end.