How to Package Your product For Retail

Posted by Damian Roberti on

Hey, guys, it's Damian from Marketing Food Online and, again, I hope you guys are having an absolutely amazing day as I am. So, I got this video. I wanted to bring this to everybody's attention. I do hope that every subscriber has an opportunity to see this. If you are developing a food product and you're always curious as to how to get it onto certain retailers' store shelves, The process of doing this has actually changed quite a bit because there are now a lot of companies out there who are utilizing this service.Some of the steps to answer the question "How to package your product for Retail" are pretty simple. 

 

And what is this service? It is RangeMe.com. So RangeMe.com is a website that has now partnered with hundreds of retailers who are either regional retailers, such as those in the Southeast, West, Northeast, or Midwest, or retailers who are national in scope, from East to West Coast.So what I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce you a little bit to the website, and I'll leave it up to you to take a few minutes on your own time to go to the site. I would highly recommend you sign up. I am not getting paid to promote anything here. This is simply just another resource I'm bringing to you guys that you may not be aware of, but is a wonderful site to kind of get familiar with and to be a part of. You can sign up for free. 

 "How to Create a Food product to Sell""

They do have different tiers and different levels that allow you to be exposed to more retailers and have more information, more data, and statistics, and you can pay for that. I'll get into that shortly. But I'm just scrolling through the website here really quickly, and I'll break it down and show you what all this wonderful information is all about. So, before I get into the website itself, I'm going to just explain the idea behind this. So, you have a website, and this is the RangeMe.com website.

 

You have a site where retail stores connect to. And then you, as a producer of a food product, can come onto RangeMe.com, create an account, and then create a listing very similar to what you would create to sell on Amazon or eBay or something. You put a picture, a description, but you would actually put your price point, your retail price point, a little history about yourself, about your business, how you started a little bit, and all that information. And then that data is matched with their software.

 

Their software will match that information about your product to the prospective buyers who are interested in that type of product. So as an example, let's say you made an organic granola bar, okay? And you posted the picture of your organic granola bar, and then you put your description, the price points, a little bit of information, et cetera, et cetera. So somebody from Whole Foods-- By the way, Whole Foods is one of the companies that partnered up with RangeMe.com. So the Whole Foods buyer who is in the category that purchases organic granola bars, he will be paired up, he will get a notice, he'll basically know that that product is available on RangeMe.com and he can look more into your listing and then contact you and say, "Hey, I would love a sample." Hey, Susie or John, I would love a sample of your bar. "We're definitely interested in something like this" for our category, et cetera, et cetera, and then you get that connection, you get that match, and then from there you guys can move forward. So it's actually the concept that's brilliant.

 

Why is it a brilliant concept? Well, before RangeMe.com, retailers would get inundated, literally hundreds of thousands, or thousands of them a month, and even in some cases, hundreds of thousands, depending on how big the retailer is, with solicitations that people would send out, or call, or email, "Hey, I got a great product." Hey, I got a great product. "" So what it does is that it allows companies to more accurately and more efficiently find products within certain categories without being inundated with 7000 offerings a month of granola bars, or whatever it may be. So it kind of helps them narrow down the search and it's more precise, more specific, and it takes the clutter, if you will, out of the process. So, and also, it allows them to see your product much more efficiently, faster, and with more interest if they're actually interested in it, based upon the data and the information that you create on the listing, okay? So it's a really great idea. The concept is amazing. Now let me hop over to this other page. I want to show you a brief Okay, so this is one of the help sections, and I'm going to go over a couple of little areas. So here I hear is just a simple, yet great way to explain what-- RangeMe is a product discovery platform. Okay? So it's used by retail buyers to source new products for their stores. So suppliers can create that free product profile, okay? So that would be the area that has all the details of all the key information for a buyer to consider your product. So all of that is super important and super key information on how and why they would even look at the product, or be interested in buying it.

 

So once you've created, once you've completed your first product listing and it has been approved, RangeMe's technology will match you with the retail buyer looking for that product. Okay, in that category, just as I mentioned before, So these buyers, excuse me, these buyers, will have the option to express interest in your product by contacting you within the RangeMe messaging or requesting a sample from your brand's dashboard. So, if a buyer has discovered your product outside of the review period, they may choose to save your product and connect with you at the right time.

 

So, really quick, so please be aware that you will not be able to see who viewed or saved your product. So as a supplier of a food product, you won't necessarily see, "Hey, you know what, Whole Foods looked at it." "Hey, Publix looked at it." Or Kroger, or Wegmans, or whatever store or company has taken a look at your product. You're not necessarily going to have access to that. Which is fine. You're not really in need of that. You need to match your product with the buyers so you can begin to communicate with them. That's the most important part. There could be a million people looking at it, but that's who really cares about it? Honestly, it isn't about how many people look at the product. You want success in business. You want to get your product out there. You don't want to know that everybody's looked at it; you want to sell it.

 

So, really quickly, this is great. The list below includes a number of our large retail partners that we are able to promote at this time. So, if you take a quick look at this, by the way, 99 cents only, Affiliate Foods, Albertsons.Huge, gigantic Birchbox is big. CVS is gigantic. Do It Best, Dollar General.Now you can literally just go through. I won't name all of them, but I'm just going to scroll down. So you get the idea here, guys. The Fresh Market, by the way, is the company that we were in when we started. So GNC, Harvey's, HEB, and so on and so forth. Publix is on here, Kroger's is on here. There's a--well actually, let me see. I don't know if Kroger is---H-I-J-K No, I'm sorry. Kroger is not on here. Lowe's Food, Lucky's Markets, and so on and so forth. So as you scroll down again, you can take-- Sam's Club is here. Target.

 

Obviously, everyone knows who Target is. And then there are Wegmans, Whole Foods, Winn-Dixie, and so on, so it goes pretty far. But anyway, let me get back to the site really quickly, and then scroll to the top. So you definitely want to check this out, and I'll put a little description down below, but of course you can see the name of the website. It's literally RangeMe--okay, RangeMe--dot com. It's super, super simple. So if you're a supplier, obviously, or if you happen to be a buyer for a company, you can definitely initiate an account under buyer. So, you want to showcase your product to thousands of buyers.

 

And, like I said before, it's great because you literally reach the right buyer, which makes total sense. A buyer who's purchasing beverages, if you're making an energy drink, this would definitely be something that they could look for based upon the category. And the product, it's again, there's software that organizes it that way and makes it really, really easy. And one simple proposal, so you do make a proposal. The right information for the right buyer Okay, so buyers are very busy, of course, as everybody knows.

 

They've been inundated with thousands of products, so you want to make that proposal precise to the point and make the pitch very simple and smooth. And that will allow you to be seen much more. If you ramble on, if you're not specific about the information, it's just going to turn the buyer off. And that's pretty much the gist of it. The listing process is extremely simple once you've created an account.I've got right now myself, we've got, I think, a half a dozen, if I'm not mistaken, or a dozen products on here. We just initiated our account just a couple months ago, so it's relatively new. We've actually been contacted by quite a few buyers.

 

There are a lot of independent grocery chains as well. Some of the big, gigantic ones have contacted us because of the type of products that we have, but yeah, I would definitely recommend it to you guys. Take some time, go to RangeMe.com and make an account there, or if you're not there just yet, don't get discouraged because they're going to be around forever and a day. They just started the site, relatively not too long ago. I'll have to find out the exact time frame. But if you're not producing it in a commercial facility, maybe you're at home and you've got an idea for a food product, that's great, that's fine. Keep this website in mind. If you're at that point where you're producing from a commercial facility, or you're on the verge of opening one yourself, or have a retail location, and you're selling some baked goods, or snacks, or candies, that would be perfect for you to then create an account here if you have the ability to product the product on a large scale, or co-packers, as I always talk about, co-packers are fantastic.

Then get a company to make it for you, and then strike a deal with one of these companies to go forward. I wanted to do a really brief video on this. Guys, as always, I like to get to the point, keep it brief and specific, and I hope this actually helps you guys out. If it does, as always, please give me a big thumbs up. If you have any questions about RangeMe.com, let me know down below in the description and I'll get to it as soon as I possibly can. Now I want to thank all you guys. If you're not a subscriber, I thank all the subscribers who have subscribed, and if you're not subscribed, I would highly recommend that you do so because we have nearly 1000 videos to help you get your food product into the marketplace. I have been in the food business, if you may or may not know, for nearly 30 years, and I operate several successful e-commerce platforms selling food online. I've been doing it for over a decade now, about eleven years, or close to eleven years. So I bring all of that experience here to Marketing Food Online, and that's what I love doing, is helping you guys start your food business. So with that being said, I'll talk to you guys later. Take good care of it.