Today on the podcast I'm excited to welcome back Lucy Jeffrey, the founder of Bare Kind. Lucy makes bamboo socks and gives part of her profits to different charities. Today she is  joining us to talk about selling on Faire, the wholesale platform, where she's been doing incredibly well.

I know many of you have been asking about Faire, and I've been looking for someone who really knows their stuff to come and talk about it. When I found out Lucy was not only succeeding on Faire but also helping other businesses do the same through her YouTube channel and consulting work, I knew she'd be perfect for this conversation.

In this episode, we're going to talk about:

• Why Faire can be a great replacement for traditional trade shows
• How the money side works - from commissions to managing your margins
• The perks of using Faire, like how they handle the risk of unpaid orders and take care of all the paperwork
• Getting started on Faire - from getting approved to being found by customers
• Building up those all-important customer reviews

Lucy has built a great relationship with the Faire team and is a regular at their events. Her success story really shows what's possible on the platform - she's grown her business significantly through Faire's digital marketing and continues to bring in new customers every day.

So whether you're just thinking about joining Faire or you're already on there but want to do better, Lucy's got some really practical advice to share with us today.

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This episode is sponsored by Therese Oertenblad & Small Business Collaborative

Therese Oertenblad (Ørtenblad), works with purpose-led, product-based business owners who want to grow their wholesale and create a powerful, consistent income stream for their business. Therese’s mission is to help you find joy, ease and confidence in selling so you can build a profitable business that works for your lifestyle.

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to life podcast.

This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert.

Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Let's get started.

So today on the podcast, I am speaking with Lucy Jeffrey.

You may remember that Lucy actually joined me in an earlier episode talking about her products business, Bear Kind, where she makes bamboo socks with the profits going to various charities.

But today, I've invited Lucy onto the podcast to talk about fair.

Fair, as you may know, is a wholesale platform, and Lucy is doing extremely well on the platform, to the point at which I've invited her to come along and talk to us as a bit of a fair expert.

Lucy has her own YouTube channel where she shares tips and advice for selling your products on fair.

And she also offers consultancy and offers support for anyone who needs it.

As I say, she is definitely a fair expert.

Fare is a marketplace that many of you have told me you're interested in.

I've been looking for an expert for a while and I couldn't believe my luck when I saw this was something that Lucy also does.

So hopefully we've answered all your fair questions in this episode and if not, you will know where to contact us both if you need any more help.

So I would love now to introduce you to Lucy.

So, hi, Lucy, thank you so much for joining me again.

No worries, Vicky.

Happy to be here again.

Well, I'm so excited to have you here today because we're going to talk about fair and I've been looking to do a podcast episode specifically about fair for such a long time.

And I know you are an expert and I'm so.

I'm so pleased to have you join me.

So can you just.

For anyone who perhaps hasn't listened to your last episode or has, but needs a bit of a reminder, remind us all who you are, what you do, what you sell.

Yeah, of course.

So, hi, everyone.

My name's Lucy Jeffrey.

I'm the founder of a company called Bear Kind and we sell socks that save animals, so we don't donate 10% of the profits to save the animal on the sock.

And what's unique about us in that way is that we're very specific with the charities that we're donating to.

So we're partnered with over 30 wildlife, conservation and rescue charities now, you know, so if you're buying a pair of Orangutan socks.

It's being donated to the Orangutan Foundation.

Turtle socks.

Turtle Foundation.

So every sock is pretty specific to the animal that you're seeing on the sock.

And that's.

That's my primary business, which has been running for about six years now.

We have a Shopify website, but we've also done very well in the wholesale space, particularly in the digital wholesale space, including fair, which is why we're talking today, because I've set up kind of a secondary business almost by accident, really.

So we did really well on FAIR with our business, and as a result, we started sharing videos about it on YouTube, just talking about it.

Actually.

The reason we started is because people didn't know what FAIR was and we were trying to get people to buy through fair.

So I was like, oh, if I come on camera and talk about it, maybe it'll build a bit of trust.

And that worked.

Then we realized that people were searching for FAIR to get tips on how to sell better on the platform.

So we just started sharing advice.

And that's where it began.

And now we have the YouTube channel, which is called Candid Founders.

But we've actually registered as a business now because we sell digital courses and products.

I do consulting on it.

We have.

If someone wants us to run their FAIR account for them.

So we do, like, a range of different things.

But yeah, we've done a lot with fair.

We do have a FAIR rep that we speak to on a regular basis.

I've been to many events with them.

Them.

So we're pretty close with them from, like, a client side as well.

But we've.

I always just sing their praises.

I know there's the skeptics out there about the platform, but we've, I guess, a case study of having done very, very well on the platform.

And it's been amazing for our business.

So I'm very happy to talk about them.

Positively amazing.

Thank you so much.

And I think it's great how you had a great experience yourself and learned the platform inside out and now you're sharing that to help others.

I think that's.

I think that's brilliant.

And for anyone who doesn't know what FAIR is, and I'm sure lots of people do, because I've had so much interest in this episode.

Lucy.

But for anyone who doesn't, can you just tell us briefly what FAIR is and also why you recommend it, because you recommended it pretty strongly.

So I would also love to know why you think it's a great platform.

Yeah, absolutely.

So Fair is an American business.

That's.

That's where it started.

I think it started as Indigo Fair, but like way back, like six or seven years ago in America.

It's only started in the UK in the last three years.

And it's a wholesale digital marketplace.

I, when I'm explaining it to people that have never heard of it, I tend to say it's, I guess, similar to Etsy, but for wholesale.

It's meant to be like independent brands selling to independent retailers.

And that's how it started.

There is another question if it still is that.

I feel like there's.

There's definitely bigger companies coming onto it.

I know there's people complaining about, you know, it's an extremely saturated marketplace, however, so that's just the.

I feel like that's just comes par for the course with a big growing marketplace.

It's going to happen, it's going to get busy.

So, yeah, we definitely benefited from being an early adopter in Europe, so we had that kind of growth at the start, but we're still going pretty strong.

It works.

It's free, by the way, so it's free as a retailer to buy, it's free as a brand to sign up.

Where they make their money is taking a commission on orders that they bring to you.

So there's two parts of Fair that are really important to know the difference between you've got Fair Direct, which is we have a Fair Direct link, so we send people that link and it's specifically to our page, Bear Kind on fare, so we can send them that link, they'll click on it, they can shop with us, 0% commission, that order is free to us forever.

They are sit on our platform on Fair as a customer, that's 0% commission.

So that, that's kind of locked in.

So if you do a lot of your own acquisition, which we do, and we'll come to that, that part of it is free.

Where Fair make their money is, it's a marketplace.

So if someone in America, in Europe somewhere, is just sitting there searching for socks, animal socks, badger socks, whatever they might be searching for, if they come across us and they buy from us, Fab will take a 25% commission off that order.

That's the first order.

If they come back and repeat, buy from you, it's a 15% commission.

So, yes, I guess people are hearing that 25% commission and thinking that's quite steep, especially on wholesale margins.

So it is something you need to be aware of going into it is looking at your margins and Understanding can you take that commission out of your margins?

But if you're doing a lot of your own acquisition, which we are, a lot of those orders we're getting in are still zero percent.

So if you add them all up, the blended commission is actually way lower than 25%.

I think we sit around 10% and actually we love getting those orders in because that's just a cost of acquisition.

So rather than spending all that money on going to a trade show and maybe getting an order, it's a guaranteed order and commission has come off off the back of it.

You haven't even spent money on Facebook ads.

Like that's literally a guaranteed order.

So that's why I'm a fan of the platform because it has got us so many sales, so many orders and customers that keep coming back that we didn't have to acquire them.

Fair acquired them for us.

So we're happy to pay the commission for, for that cost because we know how expensive digital advertising is at the moment and how hard it is to acquire customers.

So fair is doing the work for us.

That's brilliant.

Thank you.

And when you say that they're doing work for you, I'm just, just curious, do they do.

Is it all customers finding you on fair research or sort of recommending your products to retailers they think might like.

A bit of both?

Yeah, it's a good question.

So we don't, it's an algorithm, so we don't know exactly how the algorithm works, but I have my assumptions based on what I've seen.

So there is search.

So yeah, there is definitely some work needs to be done in kind of optimizing your profile.

So from an SEO point, if you like, you would on any other platform.

So people searching for your product will find it.

The algorithm will push you.

Once it kind of learns your products and who are buying from you, the algorithm will start pushing you to like minded customers.

And that's what we've been told anyway.

My assumption is the algorithm is there to make fair money.

Like that's the purpose of their business is to make money.

So we are sitting there as a brand that's doing well and if we are doing well and making lots of our own sales, and that's what we did, we did our own acquisition, the algorithm starts seeing us and seeing our products and seeing that, oh well, they're making those of sales so I should push them to these customers because they can make me money, they want the commission.

So that's my assumption.

The algorithm is there to push you where where you should make sales.

So I think people come into me saying they don't have any sales.

Usually it's because they're not doing any of the work.

So although FAIR is, yes, making us money, we are doing a lot of work behind it as well to make sure, you know, you know, the customer service side of it, the acquisition return customers as well, and also optimizing our profile to make sure those, those orders are coming in.

So yes, it will bring you customers, but you also have to work for it.

It's not some like, magic thing that you're set on the platform and loads of orders will come in.

Like we've, you know, we've been doing this for nearly three years now.

There's, there's a lot of work that goes behind it to actually make those sales come in as well.

That makes a lot of sense.

And it sounds like the more proactive you are about getting your own acquisitions and getting people to shop with your own direct link.

And the more sales you're getting, the more.

Farewell.

I want.

I don't know if reward is the right word, but the more visible they'll make you because they can see that you're, you know, they can see that you've got, you've got the sales history.

So you've almost got that social proof that, okay, people are buying these products.

They must like these products.

Exactly that.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And I know what you mean as well about the algorithms being kind of secret because that seems to be the thing with all of these big platforms.

They don't quite want to tell you how you.

No, exactly.

Otherwise people.

Yeah, people would just use it as a way.

Like if they knew exactly what to do, then it would kind of be a waste.

But I think it's just the assumption that the algorithm is there to make money, so we like lean into that.

But yeah, absolutely.

As you said, the more customers you're getting in on your zero percent, it's better for you as well, because that's zero percent commission.

And generally it's a very, very good platform.

Like, there are other wholesale marketplaces out there.

So we're also on anchor store and Creo 8, and we've been on those for a couple of years as well.

But their interface is much harder to use.

Customers don't like it as much and we generally don't get as many sales from them.

But fair's platform, they've obviously spent a lot of money on the interface itself.

So it's actually very good as a sales tool.

It's very easy to use and it reduces the admin burden on us, especially with, you know, they've got like net payment terms and they hold the credit risk.

So the customer fare will always guarantee that they pay you and then they.

They're the ones that have to chase the customer for payment.

So that's an amazing thing on wholesale, that is.

And now you've said that, I'm thinking the side I hadn't even considered is that of course it's kind of like managing the wholesale side of your business.

Yeah.

You know, I'm assuming it's got a database of customers, you can take the payments.

All of that is kind of built into the system that you're not paying to use.

That sounds like a huge advantage.

Oh yeah, massive.

Yeah.

So, yeah, you're right.

So you've got a database of customers.

It's basically like a CRM.

So you've got your database of customers, you can message them directly.

So you've almost DMing your customers in there and they can do it based on stuff that's happening with them.

The order.

So you've got order history in there, you've got email marketing tools in there, obviously all your products inventory.

So, you know, if for people who maybe didn't have a wholesale platform before, which I guess, no, we didn't, our wholesale was all manual.

This is a huge game changer in terms of like the admin required to do a manual order.

If you're creating the invoice, building the order and it all links up with our Shopify.

So the order, we've set it up, you don't have to do this, but we've set it up so the order will ping into Shopify and that gets pulled to our warehouse.

So literally all we have to do when we get an order is just maybe glance over it, check we're okay with it, click accept, put a date in to say when it'll be shipped and then everything else is done for us.

And then afterwards we have to put the tracking number in.

The tracking number doesn't go back through.

But that.

That's all we have to do.

And so it's just sped everything up and it just means we can actually afford to bring in this volume because we can actually deal with it quite quickly and efficiently.

That's great.

Sounds like I say it's an awful lot of admin.

Yeah.

So you mentioned that you've been on fair for three years now, which sounds like you were probably one of the first or among the first to get onto the platform in the UK based on sort of the timings you've given.

So I'd love to know how you started and how you've grown on Fair.

If we could talk a little bit about, about that because it sounds like you obviously you had an advantage from being there right at the beginning because as you say, all marketplaces get busier and busier and it'd be really interesting to talk about how you got set up and yeah, what you've done to grow on there.

Yeah.

So yeah, we are, we're coming up to three years in October, I think.

But Fair, they've just gone, I think last month had their three year birthday in Europe.

So we, that just shows you we were pretty early on in their like European journey.

So yeah, we definitely had the benefit of some of the setup bonuses that they, they had at the start because it used to be that they'd pay give.

So for every customer that we bought onto the platform.

So if I went and I spoke to a gift shop and I say, hey, sign up to Fair through my link, that shop would be given £300 worth of credit to spend on our product, which is a huge amount of money.

Maybe not, I guess in like bigger wholesale, but for these like smaller retailers and us as a smaller brand.

That was incredible.

So I think people thought it was a scam, like.

And again, that's why I said at the start that that's why I came on camera to talk about it because people were like, why are you giving me £300 worth for free?

Like, I just don't believe that this is real.

So we just did loads of videos to be like, is this a scam?

No, like here's why, like we were just trying to get as many people as possible to go through it.

So that first year and we had that from October till June.

We had that offer.

So we put everything into just getting as many people onto the platform as possible.

And obviously because it was new, pretty much everyone we spoke to were new to the platform.

So we did an amazing amount of growth in that space.

And one, yes, we had the benefits of being early, but two, I think we were just one of the only companies, it seems, that was like, oh, this is actually a really good deal and just absolutely go for it where others were really skeptical and I think didn't make the most of the offer.

Whereas we just absolutely went for it and it was a lot of our own acquisition.

So most of the Commission.

There were hardly any fair marketplace orders at that point.

It was mostly our own customers, which was awesome.

And then a few things we did that really helped with this.

So, you know, sending postcards out, I think that was definitely helped with the trust because we had, you know, we're sending emails, but then we sent a postcard on top of that with my face on saying £300 worth of socks.

Scan this QR code.

Also when we had, we got to the point where we had a database where we'd sent them an email, maybe we'd send them a postcard.

We started sending samples out.

Like we just were doing everything we could to get those 300 pound customers in.

And then we found a niche that was so, so powerful for us that we hadn't even considered before.

So obviously we've got like gift shops and zoo gift shops, museums, there's all kinds of places that we can sell into.

But one we hadn't considered was podiatrists.

So people that look after your feet.

We're selling bamboo socks.

They're amazing for your feet, for all, like, loads of different benefits behind them.

And so we realized actually this, like, there's so many podiatrists in the UK and Europe, we could be really tapping into this.

So we started pushing down that route.

We found a good Facebook group.

We went to them directly, we were emailing and emailing them.

But the single biggest thing that we did, and I think lots of people could learn from this, is we went to where they are.

So rather than thinking about the platforms that we're using, we thought, well, what actually platforms do they use?

Facebook was one of them.

There was like a podiatrist selling group.

The second one was we went to the Royal College of Podiatry because they have a mailing list with thousands of podiatrists on them and we paid them to send an email to their database talking about our offer on fair.

And it did have to be more kind of scientific and educational, but we were able to put the CTA in as fair.

And that one email made so much money and so kind of still looking for like opportunities like that where you can find a niche and then go to them from like their own source of trust rather than going to them directly.

And it's just much more powerful than a cold email.

So definitely think about that.

But then after that, I guess in the next, next, the next like year and a half when the offer has gone, what have we done?

So a lot of cold emailing.

So like our kind of acquisition Flows that we've built.

It's a lot of going out and finding our own leads and putting them into those flows, sending samples.

But I think people focus a lot on acquisition.

But don't forget, we had a massive customer base already.

So it's also going back along that customer base and thinking about, right, what can we do to make these customers more valuable over their lifetime?

So it's things like sending them catalogs in the post.

If you've got customers that are quite big and they're ordering quite a lot from you, then it's sending a catalog is a great cost.

Happy to send samples.

We also relationship manage our larger customers.

So customers that are really valuable to us, we're on the phone to them, we're speaking to them, we've met them in person, we go to visit them.

We're really going down all the channels.

It's not just us sitting behind the laptop doing this.

We've actually gone to see them.

So, yeah, as I said, and it's a lot of work and we do have a team that does this, so.

But it was just myself and my partner to start with, so we kind of, you can see how we've grown.

And now there's four of us that work on the account.

So there is so much you can do.

And again, this is why we've managed to build a YouTube channel out of it.

Because every video is like, here's how to do your SEO, here's how to do email market.

There's so many ideas that you can try.

And what I love about it is, you know, we've got a real business behind it, so we're talking about it as experts on YouTube, but we're actually trying everything out ourselves on our actual business.

So we can be like, oh, we tried this and it didn't work, or we tried this and it was the single best thing we did.

So, yes, there's obviously lots to do.

Wow, thank you for sharing all that.

I really think that people find that really inspiring.

And it sounds like as I'm listening to you, I'm feeling like relationships are really key here because I think when you're using any form of technology, it can be really tempting to hide behind it, to send emails, to push things out, but not actually pick up the phone or engage with people in real life.

Because for a lot of us, that can be quite intimidating or a bit of out of our comfort zone.

It is, it is.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's.

And this is the kind of age affair, what is done is it has made wholesale very transactional.

And the benefits of that are those buyers, they can sit at home and really easily shop whenever they want.

It's literally just an online shopping experience.

So it's very convenient.

You know, there's people are not having to go to trade shows and speak one to one with every single person they want to get a product from.

So I get it, it's awesome from that point of view.

But yes, it has made it very transactional.

But because it's such a saturated marketplace, your superpower is going to be being the one business.

Because I'm not seeing many businesses that do this that goes and makes those relationships.

And I'm not saying do it with every single customer.

I actually did a video recently that on customer segmentation.

So we ABCD segment our customer base.

So what I mean by that is you export all your customers descending value based on how much they've spent with you.

And then you just take your top quarter, that's your A customers.

So these are the customers that have spent the most money with you.

So it's your top 20%.

We relationship manage those customers.

So I guess depending how big you are, depends how many customers might be in that pot.

If there's hundreds, then you really should have a wholesale team.

But there shouldn't be like basically.

So we don't have hundreds in that.

In that segment, we've got a really good top 20% who we are able to relationship manage our B customers.

We might relationship manage some of them as well.

And actually what I recommend people do is take some of those B customers and see what happens.

When you do relationship manage them.

Can you push them up into the A customers, C and Ds?

There'll obviously be people in there that will work up, work their way up the ranks.

But it's about realizing that you definitely cannot relationship manage your whole entire customer base and you don't need to.

If there's people in there that don't order much from you, then they don't need to be relationship managed.

But we've got people ordering thousands from us each time.

Then they deserve a really, really good service.

And don't get me wrong, everyone gets good customer service, but the relationship management is slightly different.

And you learn so much from them picking up the phone.

It honestly boggles my mind the amount of clients that I've worked with and I'm like.

And they say, oh, I assume this about the product.

And you assume that.

Have you spoken to your customer?

Are they actually doing that?

And they're like, oh, no, I was like, have you spoken to any customers?

And it is this digital world where we're behind a laptop.

I know it's very easy to not speak to customers, but gosh, they.

Especially if you don't have a retail store, as we don't.

We're just at home and on our website, these retailers are actually meeting the customers day to day.

So they, they know so much about our product and, like, what customers are actually asking for.

So, you know, we get feedback from them about which socks to bring out next, what to do with our point of sale stands.

Like, it's amazing wealth of knowledge when you actually get them on the phone.

And also, as you said, that as things have got so transactional, I think you are probably really helping.

You're probably really standing out among other perhaps similar products because you're the one picking up the phone or, or they've met you and they can see your face.

Do you know what I mean?

There's more of there and I feel like relationships are key.

People want that and I really think it helps you to stick out in people's mind.

And yeah, I think, I think building relationships is key, particularly now that things are getting so transactional and everyone's just at home behind a laptop.

Up.

Yeah, you.

You build a lot of loyalty that way.

Because don't think, like, as soon as it's transactional, they're going to have no qualms about shopping with someone with a different price.

So, like, unless you have an extremely unique product, ours has some uniqueness to it, definitely, like with the animal charity model.

But we're still a pair of socks.

There's loads of pairs of socks on Fair.

So, you know, it basically comes down to you competing on price.

Possibly you're competing on the range that you've got as well, but when it's digital, when they can't even feel the product, you're not even competing on quality, you're literally competing on price.

So that's, that's where you do have to try and build some loyalty back into it.

Thank you, Lucy.

So we're going to talk in a moment about some tips for getting fair to work and also some of the things you see people doing, maybe some of the common mistakes.

Actually, I thought before we do that, if.

Okay, I have got a free Facebook group for product businesses and they were really excited.

We were going to talk about Fair and they've sent over some specific questions.

I thought if.

Okay, we can go through those just so we don't.

Yeah, double up on anything.

Absolutely.

So the first question I have, and I think this does relate to what we've just been speaking about, is this question says, I'd love to know how to get found by more new customers, as most of my customers are repeat ones I've bought to the platform myself.

So I think they're saying they're using that direct link and that's the customers that are buying from them.

And yeah, they're keen to know how to get found by new people on Fair.

Yeah.

Okay.

So getting found.

So I say the first thing you want to make sure you're doing is, and it's great that you've already got customers coming in, make sure that those customers are leaving reviews, because that's a.

We know, we've been told by Fair that the algorithm likes the reviews and then naturally it works from a customer's hitting your page.

So I always want to look at making sure your page is in a good position before you work on like trying to get customers coming in.

So yeah, make sure you've got reviews, make sure your product photos are also like to a good standard and you know, just have a look on the platform or what other businesses are doing.

But always make sure your product photos are in a good place.

Make sure you've got collections at the top of your page as well.

That's a really easy thing that you can just build in Fair.

So just kind of making sure that you've got all of that ready to go.

A few quick tips that you can do.

Think about what your business name is on Fair and if you can optimize it in any way.

So a really easy example was we were obviously just Bear Kind on Fair.

But if most people have not heard of it, no one's going to be searching for that.

So we've changed our name to Bear Kind.

So, so honestly, just something as simple as that I personally think can help.

So, and then it's where else can you optimize for search?

So we have built like a SEO template which we can give to Vicky to share the links.

But basically you want to be optimizing each of your listings.

So it's similar to other platforms because you are able to edit your headings and your description.

So I think you have up to like 60 characters in your heading and something like a thousand characters in your description and you want to be optimizing those for search.

And we've done loads of videos on this because.

So when you come to our page, what you'll see is if I take our Badger socks, for example, it will say badger socks, bamboo socks, blue socks, maybe it might say pink socks if that like fits into it.

But we've just basically described exactly what the product is from an SEO point of view.

But don't get me wrong, it's still from a human point of view.

It still makes sense because this is, you know, these are business owners, they don't want to be looking at really spammy SEO pages.

And we've done the same with our description.

So it goes through like what the soc is and all this, like the standard criteria that we need to include.

But then we've also included a few other things in there, like people also search for this and then we can, we can stuff it with keywords without making it too spammy.

And we've built an Excel template to do exactly this because no one wants to do that manually on every single listing.

So we've built a template that means you can just copy and paste all of it and then re upload it to fair.

So the SEO side of it is really how you're going to get found.

But it sounds like you're doing the right thing.

Like if you're still getting those sales in, don't be discouraged by fan not bringing you sales.

Keep going on your own sales because at the end of the day it's your percent commission.

So it's always nice getting those sales in.

But you're still teaching the algorithm that, look at me, I'm still getting sales in and use the email marketing as well.

So any of those customers that you're, any customer email that you're getting should be going through like email marketing flows.

Whether you're using an external third party or whether you're using affairs email marketing, just make sure you keep emailing them.

And it's easy to be put off with emails as well because most of the time you won't get a reply.

Almost 99% of the time you're not going to be getting a reply.

But it doesn't mean they're not reading your emails, I think because it can take months sometimes for these customers to actually convert.

They're business owners, they're busy, they've got their own buying cycles, they've got their own things to think about.

Do they have enough room in the stock room?

Do they have enough cash flow?

Like it's, it's very different from a B2C customer.

So just keep going.

Thank you so much, Lucy.

And we will link to the template you mentioned in the show notes as well.

So I Have a question.

I had a question about optimizing, but I think we've covered that.

And the next one is actually about reviews and how, how do you get reviews on Fair?

Yeah, nice.

So what people don't realize is you can have a review per order.

It's not just per customer.

So if you have a good relationship with the customer, it is worth mentioning, mentioning to them, like if you can just give us five stars for each order.

So if they're ordering a lot, that's more reviews.

And I've checked that with Fair directly.

So yeah, you can do that.

Obviously asking the customers.

So we kind of do a like, kind of a flow but it's not because it's through Fair dm but you want to be messaging them.

So for example, if you know your order gets delivered fairly quickly, you can go and filter your orders on Fair for like two weeks ago and you can go in there and say, right, I'm sure that all of these customers have one, got their order, two, they've had enough time to open it, make sure there's no issues.

If there are any, they'd have already contacted us.

Three, they might have even started selling in that period.

And then go back and have just a short piece of text that you're going to copy and paste every single time that's like, hey, how's your order doing?

Just checking in.

If you have time, please leave us a review.

It's as simple as that.

And just copy and paste it and do it.

And a lot of the time maybe they won't leave a review.

And by the way, on the, I should mention on the FAIR customer database it will tell you if they've already left a review or not.

That's quite helpful.

So you don't have to ask someone that's already given you one.

So it's about asking them if you want to go even harder than that.

That's what I recommend doing on a regular basis.

If you have no reviews at the moment or very few reviews and you have plenty of customers so they should be leaving you reviews.

What I recommend doing and it has worked for us is going to a specific customer, finding them on another platform, either Facebook or Google, leaving them a review on there, like a five star review being like, oh, such a pleasure to be stocked in this shop.

Like just give them a like really nice review and just talk about their products and stuff.

Just you know, fluff them up a bit.

Go back to Fair, message them being like, hey, I just left you a review review on Google.

Love Working with you.

If you do get a chance, leave us a review on Fair.

It's honestly so, so helpful.

Like, it just, you know, it does amazing things for our business.

Business that is a great.

It's a lot of work, but that's a great way to bump up your reviews when you don't have many, especially with, I want to say especially with British people, because I feel like they feel like if someone has given you a nice review, it's very hard to then ignore that and not like, you know, and it might not even be that ignore it.

It might be that just don't have time for it.

But I have found that way has got us the most reviews.

When we actually sit down and do that, and we don't often do that now, we just do the Fair DM message one because we have so many reviews already.

So we're not too worried about doing, like a big chunk.

But if you're lacking in reviews, that's a really good way of bringing them in quickly.

Oh, that's a brilliant tip.

Thank you so much.

No worries.

And a final question from the Facebook group is, do you have any tips for getting approved to sell on Fair?

Basically, somebody posted and said, I applied to sell on Fair and got denied.

But they don't give you any feedback as to why.

And are there any things you think you can think of that would help you to get approved to sell?

Yeah, that's really tough.

It's.

It is really hard when you don't know why you got rejected.

And I don't.

I mean, I don't have, like a list of the reasons.

I don't know what they go through.

I know they're being stricter on.

They're trying not to saturate the platform too much.

So I don't know whether they're looking and saying, right, we have enough candles, so we're not approving candles at the moment.

That.

I don't know if that's happening.

I know you obviously need to have proof that you're a legitimate business.

You need a website or a shop front to be able to share.

That is the other thing.

But I just keep trying.

Yeah, I really would keep trying.

And I mean, again, it's something I can share is we have our, like, referral link for people, like, signing up, so I can share that.

And what we've done in the past is we found that has worked for people who replied just generally before because we can chase it up.

Like, we can just drop them a message, say, hey, someone's applied on our referral link and they didn't get get approved.

So we can try it via that.

If anyone's sitting there and they've either been rejected or just never heard back, just keep applying.

I've literally had it when I've chased someone fair have come back to say just get them to keep applying every like, few months.

So I think they're just.

They're also very busy.

But yeah, sorry, I can't help further with.

It's difficult when you've not been told.

They obviously don't have time to tell everyone the exact reasons, which is frustrating.

But you can understand it, of course.

That's super helpful.

Thank you.

So please do put your farewell link in the show notes as well.

So we're gonna have lots of use information for people.

So anyone who hasn't applied or wants to apply again can go via that link as well.

Awesome.

Okay, so a few more questions to finish up, if that's okay.

Lucy, what are some of the common mistakes you see on Fair?

So maybe a few things that you see happen quite a lot and you can just help us all out if now.

Yeah, so a really easy one.

And I mean, this is literally so easy.

It's literally the flick of a switch.

But in your settings, so when you go to your shop page settings, there's a setting like halfway down the page, page that says sell to online retailers only.

No, hang on, I got that wrong.

It sell to.

No, it says.

It says sell to online retailers.

And that tends to be switched off as standard.

So it means what you're saying as standard is I'm selling to bricks and mortar only.

So I've had clients that have had that switched off because they didn't realize the setting was there.

What you're doing is obviously cutting off all of the online sellers that are out there.

So unless there's a reason for doing that, I don't know what that might be.

We're happy to sell to anyone online in bricks and mortar.

Then obviously switch that on and then it will open up everyone else to you.

So that's just one to watch out for.

What other tips can I give you?

I think the product range is a big one.

There's clients that come to me who I want to say refuse to work with, but it's more like I won't work with them until they've sorted this.

But your product range, it's very, very difficult to do wholesale when you've got a tiny range of products.

And again, unless you've got something very, very Unique, that doesn't lend itself to having a ra, that's different.

But you know, we sell socks.

If we were selling like a range of three or four pairs of socks and generally I have people coming to me with like four products and I'm like, you're going to find it hard.

You can try but you're going to find it hard because retailers want to know, you know if they're going to the effort to buying from a business like us.

They want the range and they also want to know that the range is growing and there's future options available.

So we make that very obvious when we talk in our videos and everything that you know, here's the catalog, here's our spring summer collection, here's what's coming at Christmas, like you're building a future relationship.

They want to know that if they're offering their customers products that their customers like and want more of that they're going to be able to source more of it.

So just really consider if your range is like suitable for wholesale.

I don't know if there's like a magic number by the way of, you know, that's, I guess that's kind of someone's opinion on the magic number really depends on your products and it doesn't mean you have to have a huge range all the time.

Maybe you have like a limited edition runs that you like change but I think it's good to know that you're not like, you're not stale, you're not just going to sit there with four products and never change.

I just think you're going to find it really hard to grow in wholesale when there's so many other brands out there.

You know, if someone's doing candles and there's a brand that's like I've got five candles but I change them every month or adds to it every month and you're going to find it harder to compete with those.

So I'd say really consider that as well.

And the other I guess common ish mistake that I see is, is your product photography.

This is, this is where it's different from Etsy.

I think Etsy does still have that very at home handmade feel which is fine, you can do handmade but the you want to go more professional where you can.

So I really recommend looking at your product photography and those, I feel like those are two big ones to think about if you need to change.

So I'm just trying to think if there's any smaller tips that use your discount tip tiers fair Give you the opportunity to set tiers of discounts, so definitely use them.

You can do like a free shipping over this amount, 10% off this, 20% off this, etc.

So do use those.

And if you can, if you're not on fair already, if you can get on before fair summer market, which is coming up end of July, definitely take part and it's definitely well worth it.

Amazing.

Thank you.

That's a lot of advice.

Lucy, is there anything else you want?

If you've got your pens out, are.

There any other tips or anything you want wanted to add?

And I mean, you've given us a lot, so feel free to say, actually, no, that's it.

No, no, honestly, like, we're an open book with this stuff.

Like, we're happy to help.

So I think actually, like, honestly, just go to our YouTube channel because we've got about 200 videos on there, so it's candid founders and it's all free and we release a video a week and each one will be focusing on a different topic, whether it's SEO or your product listings or email marketing, whatever it might be.

So really, you can kind of like just work your way through what's relevant for, you know, shop page optimization, looking at your settings, the Shopify integration, like all of these different things.

And then, yeah, I mean, naturally, if you then want further help, we have loads of things on offer.

So I've actually done a discount code for your listeners because we have.

So we have the YouTube, but then we have like a digital course.

So if you go to wholesaleautopilot.com We've got a digital course, but we've also got various different things on there.

So we've got all of our emails, emails, like our cold emails, our newsletters you can download, our SEO templates and stuff.

They're all on there for you to download and use.

So I've done Viki 50 for 50 off and I've only got 20 codes, so go wild.

But then if you want further help than that, we also offer consulting services, so you can use me hourly on your business or we run people's fair accounts for them.

So there's loads of different, like, options.

But honestly, start with a YouTube channel.

That's really the best place to, like, really understand there and work out what's going to be good for your account.

Thank you so much for all of that, Lucy.

Thank you for the code.

That's really generous.

And for anyone who's, I don't know, walking the dog or at the gym, this will all be in the show notes as well, so don't worry if you can't take.

Take notes.

Yeah, this is definitely one you may want to go back to because you've covered a lot.

Lacy, thank you so much.

I have one final question before we finish is what would your number one piece of advice be for selling your products on there?

Number one, I really think it's the.

Yeah, the biggest thing.

Oh, I'm going to have.

So I'm going to have two.

If you're already doing well on FAIR and want to do better, speak to your current customers.

That's my main thing.

Just try.

Just take one customer, your best customer, and try and speak to them if you haven't already.

But my main overall advice is actually go and find the customers yourself.

Think of FAIR as a sales platform that you're using to help with your sales, almost like as an admin and marketing tool.

But you need to go out there and find those customers and bring them into you because the platform is so saturated now.

Just sitting there waiting for the sales to come in won't do anything anymore.

That's brilliant advice.

Thank you so much, Lucy.

No worries.

Happy to help.

Thank you so much for listening.

Right to the end of this episode.

Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website, Vicki Weinberg.

Com.

Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful.

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