It was a Really Big Deal for the first wholesale buyers and sellers to meet on the Internet. They said it was only profitable for the biggest wholesalers and manufacturers:
The first 800-pound gorillas of the business-to-business E-commerce World arrived on the same day last November, when, hours apart, General Motors and Ford Motor Company announced they were establishing Internet Trading exchanges for their supply chains. That was just the start … Chevron, Daimler-Chrysler, Royal Dutch/Shell, Sears Roebuck, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc.etc.
Cut! Hold the trumpets and parades here. That breathless announcement was from CFO (Chief Financial Officer) back in the Virtual Dark Ages of May 2000.
Fast Forward to today’s Vertical World:
• Drill down into industry-focused search networks,
• Pinpoint online advertising,
• Searchable product databases,
• Cyber-auctions,
• Specialized trade shows and targeted publications.
Today’s vertical marketplace is not an exclusive club only for the Fortune 50. In fact, vertical search strategies level the playing field for ALL merchandise wholesalers, great and small.
Highest ROI Buyers and Sellers. Wholesalers and manufacturers with the best ROI and profit margins work in advanced Internet Buy-Sell territory, where they don’t simply use any generic online search engine to find sellers, and they don’t advertise across broad wide-screen networks trawling for the right suppliers. High ROI comes from specialized territory, Vertical Search Networks.
Here’s how successful wholesalers and resellers work vertical search and trade strategies.
Value Price Expo Builds Extreme-Value Marketplace … Where It Lives
Value Price Expo shows focus on the discount merchandise sector, matching up buyers and retailers with preferred suppliers – wholesalers, liquidators, importers – in extreme-value categories, such as sporting goods, consumer electronics, toys, housewares, fashion apparel and novelties.
But isn’t the economy tough right now? How can retailers can afford to mosey around distant trade shows, gambling on finding the right pricing and the right merchandise to stay competitive? Here is where Value Price Expo’s vertical trade strategies meet the Real World.
Meet Buyers on Their Turf, Timed to Their Regional Markets
Value Price Expo zeros in on the discount merchandise retail segment, a highly competitive marketplace on the front lines that wholesale suppliers listen to, or risk their own supply chain failure. Value Price Expo listened to buyer demand and crunched the regional numbers.
Retail Stores By Region from Value Price Expo
Source: Dunn & Bradstreet Data By State/Metro Area (General Merchandise, Jewelry, Toy-Hobby, Catalog-Mail Order-TV, Leather-Luggage, Gifts-Novelties) September 17, 2008
Value Price Expo staked out its marketplace of small, medium and large value-driven retailers, breaking out 290,000 stores doing over $700 Billion in annual sales. VPE mixed in demands from regional retailers and suppliers, plus different preferences for hot products and seasonal timing that break across regions. Then, they factored in quantum leaps in the cost of travel and merchandise shipping. The result?
3 Regional Value Price Expos Tailored to the Trade and the Terrain:
VP Expo New York January 11-13, 2009
Is the first East Coast wholesale sourcing event of the year where discount-minded retailers restock after the holiday season … and tap overstock deals, thanks to suppliers with excess year-end inventory.
Click on Lady Liberty
Find Floor Plans for Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, Booth Space prices and online contracts for exhibitors and sellers; plus info for attendees and buyers, like name-brand regional/international wholesalers and liquidators in over 30 product categories.
VP Expo Returns to Las Vegas May 4-6, 2009
As the one-stop shopping spot to kick off summer sales for value-price-minded buyers of housewares, consumer electronics, toys, hardware, health and beauty discount merchandise, sporting goods, gifts and more.
To boost buyer returns on travel and time investment, VP Expo Las Vegas runs about the same dates as National Hardware Show, Gourmet Housewares Show and Off-Price Apparel Show … purchase opportunities X four. Or, trade industry vertical synergy at work.
VP Expo Hits the Atlantic City Shore May 17-19, 2009
As a new Value Price Expo tailored to Mid-Atlantic and East Coast wholesalers and retailers who want to trade hot-selling products at discount prices to meet Summer Shore Season demands.
Tap the Trade Networks: Vertical Search and Niche Media
What would you do with 1,000,000 sets of eyeballs for your next marketing campaign? If you are a wholesaler, manufacturer, importer, retailer, auctioneer or reseller – small, medium or large – the answer is: Waste a lot of marketing money reaching the wrong eyeballs!
Check out the raw numbers again on that Retail Stores By Region pie chart. Sure, you’re not approaching a few consolidated Fortune 50s, like the 800-pound gorillas cited at the beginning of this article. But, if you are in wholesale-retail apparel, accessories, footwear, Dollar Store supplies, jewelry or general merchandise, the worst strategy you can use is to shout from the highest mountain to any of those million pairs of eyes who might look your way.
Enter Vertical Search Networks, Verticalized Advertising Networks and Niche-Targeted Media … tailored to the merchandise buyer/seller trade.
Vertical Search Engines Top Ten Wholesale, global sourcing AliBaba
Drill down to targeted, trade eyeballs; merchandisers who are ready to buy, sell and deal. B2B vertical search engine Top Ten Wholesale lists 2,000 wholesalers/manufacturers and pulls over 20,000 visitors to its network on any given day.
That’s why you’ll see clickable buttons like this one for Value Price Expo:
Or linked display ads like this one for DollarDay$:
On a vertical search engine that’s part of a network focused on wholesale merchandisers; it reaches the right and most relevant eyeballs.
Fewer Eyeballs, Better ROI. Online buyers/sellers who think only Google or Yahoo for paid search ads and product listings, look at this: You may get 1,000,000 impressions (eyeballs). You’ll definitely get big pay-per-click bills … even if a miniscule percentage of those one million ojos click through to your web site. But if you want to see a decent return on your advertising investment, you gotta go “verticalized” ad network. See DollarDay$ above, for a wholesale products supplier that gets 20-30% higher ROI on vertical search networks than from a Google AdWords campaign. Can’t take eyeballs to the bank.
Use Tribal Knowledge. Insider Knowledge works on two fronts for wholesalers:
Content That Shares Trade Smarts and Results That Are Refined and Relevant.
Sharing Trade Smarts. Dive into free, shared knowledge at the Dollar Days site, linked at Entrepreneur Advice or Open An Online Store. You’ll find dozens of topic listings — from Business Financing, Planning and Technology to Marketing, Advertising, Promotion and Home-Based Business – with all the information you need to start or grow a wholesale-retail business.
Tips from the Tribe. Forums, Comments and other user-generated content at trade or vertical search web sites offer tips, advice, strategies and warnings from buyers and sellers in your world. One example is a User Forum at WholesaleU that shares alerts on deadbeats or no-pays in the wholesale supply chain. Wouldn’t you like to see that before placing an order for salvage or liquidation pallets?
Relevant, Relevant, Relevant Search Results. Any trade- or industry-focused search site that is worth its algorithms and technical muscle will give you better product supplier listings and serve up more relevant results to your searches for, say, Blue Widgets Below $40 per Package. Whether it’s business services at Business.com or niche-market suppliers at Chemistry.com, scrubbing out thousand (even millions) of off-target general search engine results and handing you a selective refined list of supply sources or resellers is the very reason Vertical Search Engines exist. They drill down an industry or trade vertical sector.
Vertical Searches at the Top Ten Wholesale network – which includes WholesaleU, Off-PriceNetwork and Wholezilla – go a step further in the wholesale apparel and general merchandise sector. Top Ten Wholesale deploys human filters and people experienced in the wholesale industry to moderate results. So a search on Boho Biker Wear pulls up leather apparel importers, Gucci fashions presented in Milan last Spring, and Harley-Davidson licensed “moto” wear … NOT 272,000 hits on variations of Bohemian. Or misspellings like BOGO, Buy One-Get One free promotions.
Look At How Vertical Strategists Use Media.
Savvy wholesale buyers and sellers know they get better qualified prospects and convert more pre-qualified leads to deals through vertical and trade-focused networks, for search and product listings, for trade show promotions and supplier sourcing. Such wholesale buyers and sellers would not revert back to old, traditional mass media channels that focus on a general consumer audience.
The easiest way to see this verticalized media strategy in action is to check out “Media Partners” for wholesalers who do it vertically. One example is from Value Price Expo. VP Expo’s trade show media partners include:
• Top Ten Wholesale and its search, directory listings, advertising network;
• COVER Magazine’s focus on Independent Retailers, Kiosk Operators, Closeout Buyers;
• Merchandiser Group, in East, Mid-West, Western editions, like VP Expo’s 2009 calendar;
• And Wholesale Merchandise, focused on the value-priced niche Closeout News.