Selecting a new brand for your office

Hello everyone,

if you get a few sales reps who walk in from independent brands, what is your criteria to choose one brand and sales rep over the other?

Are you more careful bringing in new product to your dispensary post Covid?

1. It's not an "either or" proposition. You add what you think you can use.
2. What is your concern? The economy?

Drk pretty much summed it up. Ultimately, do you have the demographic for their line (style and cost), does the vendor offer good promos or discounts not just at the buy in. Do you want something with a story, history, or something cutting edge technology. There's ultimately several factors playing in that. I don't think post Covid is as much a concern now.

With any frames, you want to heavily consider your patient base/customer base. If you live in a more well to do area, higher end collections will probably do well for you. If you live in a rural, generally lower income area, you don't want to bring in all high end frames. It's always good to have some variety, but we have to be realistic as to what will sell.

My patient base is mostly older, in a rural area. We carry Fysh and Kliik, which has a lot of really cool styles, but we really only sell a few each month, and mostly to the younger patients that come in. We carry it to have something more youthful and hip for the younger and more adventurous with their style patients, but only about 8-12 frame styles. I would never fill the whole boards with something like that. You want to bring in frames that will sell to your patient base. We mostly have the more "mature" styles from Kasperek (not independent but to give you an example) and the like, and they sell like hotcakes to the older crowd. Do you have customers who want something unique and different? Something with a story? Then, an independent brand would be great for that patient base. The majority of our patients could care less, they just want something sturdy, modest, and economical. But, again, I'm in rural Pennsylvania where most of the landscape is corn fields. :/

For independent brands, I would want to know if they have any promotions and if there is a minimum amount you have to order. Are the wholesale costs doable for your pricing structure? If you have frames that don't sell, will they accept them back for credit in return for new frames? Etc. etc..

Any time I bring in a new line, it has to fit two criteria:

1. Will my patient base buy it?
2. Is it different from everything else I'm carrying in some way?

"Different" can mean a lot of different things: styles, colors, price point, target demographic, materials, etc. I don't like to bring in too many frames with overlapping styles; for example, I prefer to not carry Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, and Liz Claiborne because there's too much overlap in colors and shapes. I'd rather carry KS and LC and skip JC, which is too similar to KS and is priced almost exactly the same; LC is at least a lower price point even if the styles are similar.

Every line you carry should fill a specific niche in your patient base's needs.