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Faire R
emember when Amazon was going to destroy the brick and mortar shopping model? Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Amazon disrupted the retail model, but it didn’t destroy it. We learned to adapt. Faire is that disrupter for the Sales Rep industry. It won’t destroy the Reps, but it will cause some pain. How much pain is dependent on how quickly and how well the toy industry adapts. I know I may offend some with this article, but I want to share one vendor’s opinion on this topic and a glimpse at how vendors can adapt in a way that I believe causes the least amount of disruption to our reps, while providing the ultimate convenience to our retailers. We’ll start with this premise: Faire is here to stay. Many of us hoped if we ignored them, Amazon would go away. Like Amazon,
A Vendor’s Perspective
By Phil Wrzesinski, HABA
Faire has the financial backing and the strong inroads to lead me to believe they will be around for a long time. We have been selling through Faire for over two years now. We didn’t seek them. They didn’t seek us. It was our retailers who asked us to be on the platform. We extensively researched the platform, talked to our reps, talked to our retailers, and made the decision to jump in. We went live July 1, 2019. The results were amazing! We had 16 orders including eight new customers in the first couple days. There were several questions. Will we be undercutting our reps? Will we get qualified leads and the kind of retailers we want for our brand? How will it impact our current ecosystem? I talked to several of my Principal Reps about these issues and realized there were two things at play – Terms and Commissions. TERMS Here are a couple things you need to understand. When Faire offers a retailer free freight, it is coming out of Faire’s pocket, not the vendor. Faire pays the freight. Same thing with their Net 60 terms. From a vendor’s perspective, this is a huge money-saver. The first disruption is when those terms are better than what we vendors give the sales rep to offer. We made the decision then to try to match our terms for our reps with what Faire offers as much as is possible. We also do not participate in any of Faire’s promotions or special deals. Instead, our best deals such as our ASTRA Show Special go to our sales reps. Yes, Faire still runs its own promos and undercuts the reps from time-to-time, but we’ve found another way to protect our reps when that happens. COMMISSIONS Here is the real disrupter: money. Who gets it and what did they do to earn it? Here is how Faire makes its money: through commissions. For every NEW retailer Faire brings me, they keep a hefty commission. For every reorder that retailer makes, Faire also takes commission. But, if I have first already claimed that retailer as a HABA retailer, the commission is zero. Faire does that because they want me to upload my customer base and claim them for zero commissions. Then Faire can sell those retailers all the other brands on the platform and gain commissions that way. I have to say, it is a smart business plan. continued on page 24
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October 2021 • astratoy.org
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