A retailer is adding a supplier's products to her website. She needs images, descriptions and specifications for each one.
She emails asking for a product image. Four days later somebody sends three photographs, two of which are low resolution. She emails again. This happens for every product she lists.
She lists eleven of the intended forty and stops. The distributor has an asset library, and reaching it required a person in a different time zone to answer an email.
1. Publish the image library openly
Available to download, by product, in usable resolutions, without requiring anybody to ask for anything.
2. Provide the images in several formats
Web, print and social, since a stockist needs different things for different purposes and asking for each one is what causes the delay.
3. Provide written descriptions
Which stockists will otherwise write themselves, badly, producing inconsistent and frequently inaccurate product information across the market.
4. Provide the full specification data
Dimensions, materials, compatibility and certifications, which stockists need to answer their own customers and which they most often have to chase individually.
5. Provide point of sale material
What exists, how to order it, whether it costs anything and how long it takes, which is rarely stated anywhere.
6. State the brand usage rules
What stockists may and may not do with logos, imagery and product names, which most want to respect and cannot find.
7. Provide material for the new lines at launch
Since the moment a stockist is listing something is the moment they need it, as in catalogue and new line questions from stockists.
8. Provide lifestyle imagery as well as product shots
Which stockists cannot produce themselves and which sells considerably better than a photograph on a white background.
9. Provide the seasonal campaign material
So stockists can participate in a brand campaign rather than watching it happen around them.
10. Provide translated material where relevant
For stockists selling in other markets, which is frequently requested and rarely supplied.
11. Explain what support is available for a launch
Sampling, demonstration material and anything else, which decides whether a stockist promotes a new line or simply shelves it.
12. Make it reachable without an account manager
Since the request currently depends on one person being available, in one time zone, during their working week, which is why a stockist listing products on a Sunday gets nothing until Tuesday.
13. Keep it current when products change
An asset library containing last year's packaging is actively damaging, since stockists will use it.
14. Provide the material in the sizes platforms actually need
Marketplace listings, social formats and print all have specific requirements, and a stockist resizing images themselves produces a worse result than the brand would accept.
Explain the own brand and reseller listing rules
Whether stockists may alter descriptions, use their own photography or list under their own branding, which varies by agreement and which stockists guess at constantly.
15. Let stockists get the assets at midnight
An assistant that provides images in the right format, supplies descriptions and specifications, explains the brand usage rules and points to the point of sale material means a stockist lists forty products rather than eleven. The local marketing equivalent sits in local marketing questions from individual franchisees, and the promotional handling in how to handle discount and coupon questions with a. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under wholesale distribution.