Do people hate blue now? That was a real thought I had over the past two weeks. (Spoiler: they don't.)
A big part of owning a CPG brand is shelf maintenance, and it's more work than I expected. Getting on a shelf is the first fight. Keeping a good spot on it is a whole second job.
So here's what I check when a store goes quiet, and what I found.
1. Are we even visible?
One of our best stores over the summer had us completely hidden behind another product and a wall. A wall! My guess is we'd been stuck back there for a few weeks. Shelf space shifts like Jenga pieces every time new inventory comes in, and a bottle can get buried without anyone noticing. You can have the best bottle in the building and it won't sell if nobody can see it.
Asking a manager to move your product is always a little awkward. But if you're in the wrong spot, there's no point in any of the other effort and it is very unlikely to sell. So after some negotiating, the manager agreed we needed better placement. And it's awesome when a manager is kind enough to let you pick your spot. But then all the pressure is on you to make sure it's the right one.
Since doing this, I have learned our product thrives next to the all-purpose cleaners and glass and mirror cleaners, especially if the store carries higher-end ones. People shopping that area are already looking for something better than the usual, so they see us too. A buried bottom shelf with neon orange and green bottles doesn't give us that.
2. Is the shelf channel in?
Three stores were missing it because I forgot to install it. My bad! For those of you who do not know what a shelf channel is, it is the blue piece of paper that sits beneath our product to help it stand out. It looks like a tiny detail, and it isn't. A shopper gives a shelf a two or three second glance, and those seconds are everything. The channel pulls their eyes to the dark blue bottle, and it gives someone who's never heard of SOHJI a little more confidence in who we are. It's a whole different experience standing in front of a shelf with one.
Not every store allows them. Some are happy to let us put one up, while others tend to steer away from them. It all depends on the store.
That matters because we have two products (with more to come!). Our competitors usually have 10, 20, even 30 on the shelf. I can't stand in every store promoting the product 24/7, so the shelf has to do that work. Fully stocked, channel installed, looking clean is the golden standard.
And the best part: within a week, two of those three stores reordered!
3. Are we at the right height?
If you're on the very bottom shelf, nobody reaches down there. And our bottle is smaller height-wise than a lot of our competitors, so I don't want us next to a 32 oz or 40 oz bottle that makes us look tiny. We want to be next to proportionately sized bottles, within reason.
We're a higher-priced product. Shoppers paying more for a cleaner want to feel like they made a good call, not like they got ripped off. Shelf placement is a big part of that.
What I took from it
None of this was a product problem, which is great news. It's just maintenance. A store that goes quiet isn't always a store that doesn't like us. Sometimes we're hidden, missing our channel, or sitting on the wrong shelf.
So the work doesn't end when a store says yes. Checking shelves, fixing placement, restocking and reinstalling channels is part of the job. It's also a great way to hit 10K steps quickly :)
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