A Business Thread - Opportunities
 

As the adult industry changes many are looking for something new or additional.

Everyone thinks mainstream. There are many opportunities in mainstream that are being missed. For instance. Do you need an emergency generator? Google it and you will find many good looking websites that sell them.

What you probably don't realize is that this is almost never the manufacturers website. It's someone that knows the internet and they are a portal to manufacturers. Most people in the manufacturing business don't understand the internet. They build information sites.

Two of my companies product lines are sold by people we've never met. These guys make lots of sales. Both of them netted over $1/4m each in pretax income in 2013. All they do is take orders, forward them to our sales department and we do everything else. At 30 days they pay us by credit card. Their only expense upfront is a domain.website & credit card processing fees.

The way they found us was by googling for the products we make. They found our informational sites and didn't see any way to buy our products other than calling or sending an email. We didn't have a storefront.. Most companies like mine don't.

There are a lot of companies that need help selling online. No reason to let Amazon make all the money.

I'm here in the office for a few hours yet today and will try and answer any questions.

Why don't you sell online and have an internet presence then? It seems you are losing out on maximizing your profit by letting these other guys do it for you.

It's a nice tip though. I believe this was way more common in the early days of the mid to late ninties. I didn't know it was still common in 2014.

Most of the products we sell go to OEM's and distributors. It's what we are good at. Building traffic, maximizing search engines is something that most companies like us fumble with.
Since the recession began in 2008 a lot less employees are expected to do more. We have meetings that are great. Lot's of enthusiasm, then the meeting ends,everyone goes back to work and nothing happens.

As the economy comes back, more companies are getting healthy again,and they still have informational websites.

I'm not suggesting to contact IBM and sell their stuff. It's the small/medium companies that have many opportunities for independent sales portals.

quick edit and addition- The guys that sell our products online do a good job. By the time we hire people,set up offices..etc.. we are actually ahead just letting the guys sell online. We still make more than we would selling through box stores.

Do you have any sales rep/affiliates operating in Canada yet? I've done this type of referral work for several other companies over the years, I can certainly take a crack at your operation Minte.

Ideas are just falling out of my ass already and we haven't even talked yet. :D

Other than selling through Amazon, no. At least none that I am aware of.

do you give them a discount or do they add their profit on top of your selling price?

what price would the consumer pay if he bought directly from you?

I'm an Amazon Associate, and push traffic to them...
I know of couple of friends who sell products there and make bank on there too.

Yea, I am an Amazon associate too. I have a water filters site. Not doing very well at it, but that is my fault. I get less traffic because of the competition, but way better conversion than porn. But it does open the key to facebook, pinterest, youtube and all the other mainstream media.

I may try the drop shipping route on another site.

The online sellers determine their price based on market costs. We sell to them for the same as we would to a distributor. In most cases the online seller adds 30% to our price.

And the reason the conversions are better is that someone is looking for that water filter.
Your challenge is to get them to find you first. You don't ever have to worry about the next guy giving away free water filters.

Now since you mention this,while i understood how most of factories deal with wholesale only and only over phone business,if you already have tons of workers,is it really such a problem to hire a one more or two workers which would be specialized to build and online site and run marketing for it?

the problem with amazon if you do their FBA where they ship it etc
you lose like 30%

If you have quality applicants that will work for around the same salary as you pay everyone else in the office it's probably not an issue. It's not like hiring a welder. A welder comes in, we give him the welding test. He either can do it or he can't

Then you still have to put together and maintain an office or a cubicle. Higher end salary people don't work in cubicles. Putting together an office for a new position costs more than you'd think.

Hey Minte,

I sell a few different high-end medical products, exactly like you have stated, and I have been looking for more big-ticket items to market. If you have products that I could market in a drop ship situation or something of that nature, I would be highly interested.

If this is something that you have available, what is the best way to reach you?

Are you not basically talking about just becoming a distributor?

Not really, A distributor purchases large quantities and inventories them in their warehouse. They are responsible for shipping from us to them and then to their consumer customer. They are also obligated to pay us per agreed on terms, regardless if they sell or not.

With the internet sales portals, we drop ship directly to their customers. Our internet people aren't concerned about cashflow and inventory or shipping..whether it's UPS or common carrier.

I am going to add one more thing to this question, regarding adding our own internet staff. If you are good at it. why would you want to work for me for $50-60 grand a year if you can make 4 times that from home. And if you're not good at it, I'd have to fire you. :)

Minte,

Awesome post... :thumbsup

What products do youv make?

What has been given to you here is the wave of the future. I have said it before - you all, the sales experts, are the kings of the world, you just don't know it.

You can sell anything portable from anywhere in the world to anyone anywhere. You can track the sale, track the buyers, track the window shoppers, the entire process is open to you.

I missed the important part of this question..

The twist is when we sell to distributors we aren't allowed to sell directly to consumers. It would completely undermine the distributor - dealer chain.

I posted this thread to make those that are interested, aware that there are great opportunities in hooking up with small/medium size manufacturers.

Google some common products and start at page 6.. The mission is to find those companies on page 6 and worse, then email or call their sales department and ask them if they would mind if you sold their products... select a great domain name IE: generatorsunlimited.com build a pro site and use your experience and knowledge to get your portal to page one. You will be surprised at how receptive small companies will be to you selling more of their products for them.

I appreciate all the PM's. My company currently has good online presence with some savvy people. For now we aren't looking to give those people any competition. When we finish our current round of expansion we will have some new products to market. I will post another thread at that time and speak with you that are interested in setting up a store.

Just to throw gas on the fire... Many webmasters would be surprised how willing companies like these are to sign exclusivity agreements, giving you a year to sell their product for them online without anyone else being allowed to compete with you. As long as you are willing to do it with zero cost to them, many see the offer as found money. A friend and I did well marketing home generator installations using a similar business model in the wake of 'Superstorm Sandy' when a large number of local people went from living on a portable gas generator for two weeks to having real units tapped into their homes. The downside was you have to invest in the up front build, and companies that fail to market themselves online in 2014 often fail in a lot of other ways too.

Finding the right companies to work with isn't that easy, and working with the wrong one can be a huge waste of time/resources.

Email me any time you have a product available Minte ;)

what site is it?

(I really don't mean to be a smart ass.... but....) If someone is making $1.4 million, one would think you could hire a few people to do SEO. I mean, it's not like you don't have connections.

Rochard, we were an 8 figure company before there was an internet. If we thought that it made sense years ago to go online and sell retail rather than deal with OEM's and distributors we would've. If I have to explain the conflict(again) about selling to OEM's and distributors and selling retail at the same time the concept of mainstream sales is probably not for you.

There is a good pro-Obama thread somewhere on the board you can play in. right?

what do you do in porn?

I will do that. There are some neat things coming soon.

Nothing.. I retired from it early in 2013. It was a great and very profitable hobby for 15 years.

Solar energy is also great market for Internet guys to jump in

I know another plastics manufacturer that makes kayaks that has tremendous success with online entrepreneurs. Another guy I know makes parts washers for automotive. Since he hooked up with some good seo guys he sells 100% online now.
As a manufacturer he's never been happier.

Anyone own a plastic handchair? That was one of my early projects. Two guys have online stores and that's all they do. And they make real good livings at it.

So what you are saying is you can boost your sales by millions of dollars and you choose not to?

Read carefully.

We -sell- through- distributors -and -OEM's.. If we were to launch retail outlets for the same products we sell them we would lose 10's of millions of dollars in sales.

This is the 3rd time, I have typed this.

How do you know how many customers you sent actually bought the product? I can imagine a manufacturer shaving your sales I suppose.

I got one for you since you have a factory. I got a strat and to lock the trem people recommend a block of wood but no one sells it. You have to make it yourself. Do trem blocks different types of wood and there is no one who does it , you would own the market. :)

Some of the replies in this thread are incredibly amusing

We get the orders from our online sales people. They collect the money from their customers. You see all the orders. About the worst that could happen is that we could send a months worth of your orders to your customers and then you don't pay us.

Then my good friend Guido pays you a visit. :winkwink:

If you had 50 more unique parts like that you could probably make money. But across the world, how many do you really think you'd sell? And how much would you pay for one?

Minte, can you talk more about these particular customers? Are they unique from the customers that buy from your in-place sales channels? etc? Any insight is appreciated re: this group. Are they overlooked or? What is it about them that is different?

The two product lines our distributors sell are in catalogs, stores and on their online sites. If you were to be selling our products and you went and undercut our distributors/dealers prices online we would terminate the agreement with you. You are competing for the same customers our distributors are. Or you find new markets that they didn't.

Your knowledge and experience in using the search engines, website design and internet marketing is your edge.

I see. I'm just trying to see if there are distinguishing factors that characterize the customers these website attract and sell to or if these customers are identical to the customers that buy your products from your traditional sales channels.

The important part of this thread was about the fact that there are a lot of small/medium companies that have little to no internet presence. The page 6-10000 guys that you see on Google.

I can't post names, but we have 2 customers that are smaller businesses. They have great products. One is in food processing, the other in oil filtration that have a huge need for someone with internet experience to get them going online.

Discover those undiscovered companies and drive them sales.

I understand what the important part of the thread is.
Driving sales to undiscovered companies also includes attempting to understand and relate to the customers one is trying to sell to.

It seems when i went looking out there, it seemed popular. I would say made of a good wood like mahogany I would pay $30 . But I see your point.

Remember a few months ago, I had a friend bring his new corvette to the plant.
He sells aftermarket intake and exhaust products to corvette owners.He does some internet marketing, but primarily he goes to carshows and sells.
He is adding some more products this year to sell to them. He lives a good lifestyle. His business paid for that new Corvette.