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In: Retailing Tips|Last Updated:

One of the most persistent trends of the last 30 years of CPG marketing has been SKU (Stock-Keeping Unit) proliferation – the addition of more products and a variety of products based on changes to the market, such as adding several new flavors of a top-selling beverage. However, this trend is coming to an end. 

Over the next five years, we will see a contraction in the number of SKUs in the typical food retail store, driven by several factors: retailers’ desire to free space for more service-intensive, higher-margin products; the need to use space more efficiently with faster turning, more popular items; and to reduce supply chain and store labor costs.

The reduction will be concentrated in the 20 or so large categories containing the most SKUs with duplicate attributes, such as those stocking 60 SKUs of vanilla ice cream or 30 SKUs of blueberry yogurt. A shopper seeking vanilla ice cream or blueberry yogurt simply does not need this many options.

As the person who literally wrote the initial efficient item assortment protocol for the CPG industry as part of the development of category management in 1994, I can assure you that retailers can provide adequate attribute choices …

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Walmart Open Call Offers Three RangeMe Suppliers the Opportunity of a Lifetime

Walmart’s annual Open Call sourcing event is an initiative that supports Walmart’s investment in products made, grown, or assembled in the U.S. and gives thousands of American suppliers the opportunity to submit their products directly to their team of merchants. For the fourth year in a row, RangeMe and ECRM have streamlined Walmart’s Open Call submission process, making product discovery easier for Walmart’s team and the participating brands. 

During the application period, interested suppliers and manufacturers can submit their products directly through RangeMe’s limited-time sourcing campaign for Walmart Open Call for a chance to pitch their innovations live to Walmart merchants in one-on-one meetings. Selected participants will be able to choose between in-person meetings at Walmart headquarters or virtual meetings via ECRM Connect.

In 2022, more than 1,100 businesses were selected to pitch their products to Walmart and more than 330 products were chosen to be sold in stores or online. Each brand had a unique experience, so we’re sharing insights from three RangeMe suppliers who were selected by Walmart. Keep reading to hear about their experiences and tips to brands hoping to see the same success.

Walmart Open Call FAQ’s

Rancho Meladuco Date Farm 

Inspired by a lifetime of …

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In: Retailing Tips|Last Updated:

Iconic music begins with an opening that you can’t forget. The lyrics are emotional, engaging, and personal. It pulls the listener in, inviting them to go on a journey hand in hand with the artist. Similarly, from a young age, we learn that the opening sentence of a story or play is the “hook” that reels the audience in and invites them to the table.

Like a song, the first line of a presentation paints a picture; it sets the atmosphere and allows you the confidence to continue. The first minute creates momentum for the rest of your story. Consider your last discussion, did the opening permit you to move forward, or did you lose the audience immediately?

Researchers believe that first impressions are created in under three seconds.1 Three Seconds: The First Impression – Books To Courses https://www.bookstocourses.com/tools/oc/…/Three_Seconds__The_First_Impression In the blink of an eye, people assess your competence, aggressiveness, intelligence, and trustworthiness. As you finish your first line, you’ve already been sized up and judged by audience members. Observers automatically and unconsciously conduct a mental shortcut, assessing whether they like or dislike, trust, or mistrust. 

Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Nobel laureate, and author of Thinking, Fast And Slow, has …

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In: Retailing Tips|Last Updated:

Walmart’s annual Open Call sourcing event is an initiative that supports Walmart’s investment in products made, grown, or assembled in the U.S. and gives thousands of American suppliers the opportunity to submit their products directly to their team of merchants. For the fourth year in a row, RangeMe and ECRM have streamlined Walmart’s Open Call submission process, making product discovery easier for Walmart’s team and the participating brands. 

During the application period, interested suppliers and manufacturers can submit their products directly through RangeMe’s limited-time sourcing campaign for Walmart Open Call for a chance to pitch their innovations live to Walmart merchants in one-on-one meetings. Selected participants will be able to choose between in-person meetings at Walmart headquarters or virtual meetings via ECRM Connect.

In 2022, more than 1,100 businesses were selected to pitch their products to Walmart and more than 330 products were chosen to be sold in stores or online. Each brand had a unique experience, so we’re sharing insights from three RangeMe suppliers who were selected by Walmart. Keep reading to hear about their experiences and tips to brands hoping to see the same success.

Walmart Open Call FAQ’s

Rancho Meladuco Date Farm 

Inspired by a lifetime of …

Read More

In: Retailing Tips|Last Updated:
It’s a Beauty-Full Match for these Emerging Small Businesses

Astoria Beauty Bar is no cookie-cutter, assembly-line salon. When a guest comes to have their hair styled or colored, get a scalp treatment, add extensions or have their eyebrows shaped, it’s the owner Michelle DeMartino who takes the call, schedules the appointment, and provides the service. It’s DeMartino who educates customers on how to maintain their hair between appointments. And it’s DeMartino who sources the products (many of which she finds on RangeMe) for them to use at home. She does it all, and there is a reason for it.

DeMartino is all about delivering a completely personalized end-to-end experience to each of her clients, many of which are local residents of the salon’s Astoria, NY neighborhood. “I wanted to create a boutique experience for my clients,” says DeMartino. “I want it to be more of an intimate affair versus the assembly-line type of structure that is very much the case with the big salons today. And this is demonstrated in the services I provide as well as the products that I sell, each of which is hand-picked by me to ensure they align with the salon’s values and our customers’ specific needs.”

This personalized experience has certainly resonated with …

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In: Retailing Tips|Last Updated:

Almost every time I facilitate a small group leadership discussion, I ask the team to share some of their story. Predictably, half the group jumps at the opportunity to transparently relay “who” they are and the “story” that informs their lives. It is one of the most powerful moments of any gathering because our story is the truth of where we’ve been and often the spark of our motivations. Our personal narrative is the essence of who we are and the impetus for how we engage with others.

We all have a story. It explains our past and inspires our future; it is, was, and will always be essential to who we become. As Harvard’s Dr. Howard Gardner says, “stories constitute the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.”1 Dr. Howard Gardner quote, Howard Gardner, cited in: Richard L. Daft (2014), The Leadership Experience, p. 273 Research suggests we almost exclusively operate within a ‘story mindset.’ Leaders who are not afraid to enter someone else’s story understand the power of empathy. But leaders who are not afraid to share their own story understand the power of vulnerability. The future belongs to the storytellers.

One of the best predictors …

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