Your Faire Playbook: Exactly How To Win With Indie Stockists

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. and today I'm chatting with Jennifer Burke. She's the Chief Regnu Officer at FAIR. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. We have so much we're going to go through. I'm just going to lay this out for everyone. We're going to talk a little bit about you and the work that you do. We're going to talk about FAIR and how it plugs into businesses that are small, that are big. We're going to talk about Indie Retail, which is the channel that FAIR is really helping these brands scale up and some case studies about how FAIR is being used.

0:30And the big one that I think everyone's going to want to listen to is how to win on fair. Profile optimization, the things you need to be doing, all the stuff that we are like trying to figure out on YouTube and Google. And we have you here to actually set the record straight about what works. And then you have a couple of resources for us as well. So it's going to be a really good, really practical workshop-y episode. Lots of really good topics. And particularly the last one, I get that question a lot. How do I do better on fair? I bet. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about your origin story, your background, what's a chief revenue officer, who are you, what do you do?

1:03Yeah, see, I'm the Ciro of Fair. And it sounds like most of your listeners and viewers are aware of Fair, but if not, we're the largest online wholesale platform that connects consumer brands across sizes and categories with independent retail stores now all across the world. In my role as Ciro, I oversee all of our customer-facing commercial teams. So the individuals that brands and retailers engage with one-on-one to help them optimize their performance on FAIR. So we help brands onboard to the platform, set them up for success, manage their day-to-day performance once they're live. And then we have a team that does that as well on the retailer side, educating them on the value props of FAIR and actually helping them with their first few orders.

1:48My origin story, so I've been at FAIR six years, but I started my career 20 years ago. And probably like most people, like my career has not been linear. I have no idea what I wanted to do out of school. I found that I was a creative person and I really liked businesses. And so ended up somewhat by luck, somewhat intention working for Disney and then in advertising for a couple of years. And it was great. I really learned a lot, like enjoyed those positions, but I never felt like it was like that job that I could be totally fulfilled and enthralled by. So I ended up going to business school, like a lot of people who don't really know what they want to do when they grow up, and then spent two years in consulting and landed in startup world in 2014.

2:37So I joined a company called ClassPass, which are you familiar? Of course. Yeah. A lot of people who like to work out know ClassPass. It was at the time a multi-studio fitness membership. So you could hop around to multiple studios in your city. And I joined when we were just 15 people. They just raised a Series A. And we had a couple of studios that we were working with in New York. And I joined in sales, which my parents were like, what are you doing? Like, you just came from business school and consulting and now you're going into sales. And it really was when I found my, like, ikagi. Have you heard of that term?

3:14Yeah, explain it though. Yeah, it's a Japanese term that means the intersection of what you enjoy doing, what you're good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid for. It's such a good framework to use when you're trying to figure out like what you want to do with your life. Yeah, especially when you're like careers are really freaking long. Yeah. And I stole that. I heard Sarah Fryer talk about Ikagi and I might be butchering the term on a podcast. Sarah Fryer is the CFO of OpenAI, was the CEO of Nextdoor. She's a big deal. but I found that at ClassPass and it was really like three things that resonated with me one is I got to work with small businesses and entrepreneurs every single day so individuals that were bringing their passion and their story to life and I don't think I could ever be an entrepreneur I just like don't have it in my like DNA but it's incredibly inspiring to work with those people and see them put their blood sweat and tears into their business So I just really enjoyed that.

4:15The second was I found out I really liked sales. And I think people often have this vision of sales as like the car salesman trying to trick you in terms of price. But it's so much different than that, particularly when you're working with these small businesses. it's around like figuring out what their goals are asking great questions and ultimately helping them problem solve their challenges with your product solution and it's like that co-creation process that really like intrigues me and then the last is like I found the intellectual challenge of being at a marketplace really compelling where you're trying to generate value for both sides but also extract it for yourself and kind of how do you think about that yin and yang yeah um so yeah i was five years there and then um found fair and it had all of those ingredients and more and it's really what has kept me here for so long let's talk about fair a little bit more for people i mean everyone i think at least has some understanding of what fair is and what you guys do but i i kind of want to dig a little bit in and show people the the scale of what you're doing and the number of brands you're working with and like how big fair is because it's really driving an impact for a lot of people.

5:28Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. So when I joined back in 2019, I thought we were big. Like we were doing a few million dollars in sales, made a thousand vendors, I think 50 ,000 retailers. But today we have over a hundred thousand vendors, hundreds of thousands of retailers. Oh, that's a lot more within five years. Yes, exactly. It's been a crazy journey. But we also do now billions of dollars in sales annually and growing like 30 to 40 percent still year over year. So it's just been kind of a crazy journey. Could you share a little bit about Fez's origin story? Like where did this platform come from?

6:06Who started it? How did it all come about? Yeah. I love this story because it really helps inform our overall mission. So Max Rhodes, who's our CEO and one of the co-founders of FAIR, he always wanted to be an entrepreneur and always wanted to start a business. And after college, he went into consulting. He worked for Square. I'm sure most people are very familiar with Square as a product manager. But while he was there, he started to do a side hustle. and that side hustle was bringing blunt umbrellas. Do you know them? They're actually great. I used one to walk to work today because of the rain, but bringing them from Australia to the United States.

6:49And within that, he was going to trade shows as well as calling up retailers, like literally cold calling them, trying to get distribution. And he was like, there has to be a better way. This is a really great product, but it doesn't have the resourcing or the brand name that a lot of these bigger guys do. And so he's in this like little booth and nobody knows who he is. And he's like trying to get people to stop by. And that was the origin of FAIR. Like there has to be a better way. And he and three other folks from Square all came together and built the FAIR platform. That's such a cool story.

7:22When did it start? 2017. Okay. So you joined pretty soon after. Yeah, 2019. Although I can't take credit for early days. But if you talk to Max, like our CEO, on what it is that FAIR does, he would start by talking about why we're doing what we're doing and who we built this product for. And ultimately, everything that we do is in pursuit of helping these small businesses be more successful. and this like core belief that it is better to live in a world where there are these small, cute boutiques and restaurants on the main streets in America versus these like strip malls and banks and what we call like the sea of sameness.

8:05Not that there's anything wrong with strip malls and banks, but there's a lot of challenges that these businesses have. And the things that we focus on, we think we are uniquely positioned to do as a technology company. are like three main focuses for brands and retailers. The first is around just discovery and connection. We want to be the endless aisle, one-stop shop for wholesale, where any retailer, no matter their price point, their aesthetic, where they're located, can find the inventory that they're seeking on fare. And we do that by adding a lot of supply, but ultimately trying to matchmake retailers with brands that we think will have a high sell-through to their end customer, like ultimately driving top-line sales for retailers.

8:56And we do that because we have a lot of data. We know what retailers are clicking on, what they're searching. And so the experience actually gets better and better the more you use it. So that's the first one. The second is we focus on how do we provide more financial value to both sides and ultimately use our scale to take costs and risks out of the ecosystem. And we have a bunch of ways that we do that, but probably the ones that are most common and most impactful are first, every retailer gets net 60 terms when they sign up for fare. So they have 60 days to hopefully sell the product that they purchase before they owe us a time.

9:41And it like flips this working capital model on its head where, you know, prior to that, you'd have to actually front the capital before you actually get paid yourself. So we do that, but we guarantee payouts to brands. And so brands could do this themselves, but then they're taking on the working capital risk. And instead we do the underwriting, we figure out the kind of credit amounts, we chase down credit cards. And then if the retailers default on us, we take that risk away from our vendors. The other thing that we do in the space, we have a free shipping program, very similar to Amazon Prime, where retailers pay a fee and they get free shipping on a subset of products.

10:19But we fund the shipping for new retailers. We don't pass that cost on to brands. And again, it's this idea of how do you give more value to retailers, help them save money, improve working capital, but take that risk away from the supply side. And then the third thing that we focus on, we're a technology company. So we're ultimately trying to be more than a marketplace. Like we are trying to be the platform that retailers and brands can use to run their wholesale business more effectively. So we plug into their ERP systems on the brand side. We have a big partnership with Shopify. We also plug into POS systems on the retailer end.

10:58And then we're continuing to build different tools and programs that these retailers and brands can use to run their business more successfully on fair. I love talking about indie retail because I constantly hear from brands in our community. They want to get into Target. They want to get into Walmart, Sephora, which is amazing. And there is a time and a place for that. But when I talk to brands who are more established, like, for example, Bala is an example of a brand that I've spoken with and done a lot of programming around this kind of topic with. And they're in like Target and big stores, but they're also really focused on indie retail.

11:35And they use that as this channel that is building brands and building community. And it is like actually like a huge part of the business in terms of revenue as well. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I think people kind of think, oh, I'll just get into a few like cute mom and pop stores and it'll be great. And I'll like whatever. No, this is a massive opportunity. Massive channel. Yeah. Yeah. Hey besties, it's Jasmine. I'm jumping in with a message from one of my favorite brands and our sponsor on the show today. Fair is the one-stop shop for wholesale. They connect over 100 ,000 unique brands with retailers and give small businesses a platform to thrive and to scale.

12:16And if you listen to the show, you already know I'm a huge advocate for Fair and you know that I love indie retail strategies, especially for female founders who are scaling their brands. Building relationships with retailers just takes time that most of us don't have. Fair expands your reach to over 700 ,000 retailers globally, all in one platform. And these are retailers that are already actively looking for brands like yours. Plus, Fair reduces risk with net 60 terms for buyers and on-time payments for use. That means you never have to chase an invoice from a retailer ever again. It's your all-in-one platform for wholesale.

12:52Plus over half of FAIR's brands are women-owned, so you're joining a thriving community. Start growing today at fair.com forward slash FFW. That's F-A-I-R-E dot com forward slash FFW or click the link in the show notes. So independent retailer, we tell our brands that there's really two main benefits for focusing on your independent strategy. The first, as you mentioned, it's just the scale. We've done some research here, and we think that the overall addressable market is$400 billion in volume. That's a global number, but the U.S. is the biggest market. And so just like a lot of dollars flowing to independent boutiques.

13:35And I love this stat, but we have more doors shopping on fare than Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Target, Walmart combined. Wow. And so just the sheer number of doors is massive. But the second reason that I think independent retailers so compelling is these boutiques are really the tastemakers of their community and help curate really unique brands and inventory that maybe you can't find in the big stores or aren't on Amazon or help up level, even if you are. And we've had so many amazing stories from our brands on how they've seen a halo effect after they've invested in their boutique strategy.

14:20And so one example that I love is we work with this brand called Mescla. They're a protein bar based out of Texas. And they joined fair. They got into a couple of stores, including this restaurant cafe called Juiceland. And one of the Whole Foods buyers went into Juiceland, bought the bar, really loved it, thought the product tasted great and the packaging was awesome, reached out to Mescla. And now they're in, I think, all of the Whole Foods stores in Texas. And those stores happen all the time where they join FAIR for access to the independent channel, but it actually boosts their direct-to-consumer business as well as their major account business.

15:02Yeah, absolutely. It's like this discovery channel. And also I think like people kind of sleep on the fact that tastemakers, gatekeepers, like they are looking to a lot of these stores in the same way that they might be looking to if you're in beauty, like reading Allure's Best of Beauty Roundup to discover new brands. Like this is a place where you can get seen by people who make decisions at big retailers, in press, investors. Like this is a really important part of that brand strategy as well. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that like think of it from your perspective, like when you're walking down any like neighborhood in your city and you just walk into one of these stores and it's so well curated and it's all these products that you haven't seen.

15:43It's like you buy it and then maybe you reorder directly or you go back to that store. And there's something fun about the discovery process, like as a consumer, too, and the loyalty that you have to some of these small businesses where you live. Something else that I really like about indie as well. So, you know, when you're trying to get into these big kind of mass chain retail stores, you're kind of at the mercy of some gatekeeper who's making this decision. It might be like three people or one person that makes the decision. And you're just kind of hoping that your email resonates with them or that you know someone who knows someone.

16:16whereas there's so much more control around an indie strategy where you can actually scale it up it's predictable and it's kind of this lower risk way of building out your wholesale business compared to going into a mass retailer early where you have to front like big marketing fees like of often the terms are not very they're onerous yeah exactly um they're not like super favorable to small business and so you have this massive channel which is delivering predictable revenue It's building your brand. You can use a platform like FAIR, which takes away all of the logistical stuff that was stopping brands from scaling this.

16:53Like it really just feels like a no brainer. Yeah. One thing I'll add to that is something we hear from vendors who work with big box retailers is often they have to go through brokers or distributors or some third party. And they actually don't know what's happening with their product in the store. Yeah. Like they don't know how it's merchandised. They don't get sell through information. They don't know who's buying it. And that's very different than the experience when you work directly with an independent retailer. And we make it very easy on FAIR to have one-on-one conversations, to give merchandising advice, to talk through questions on your order or products.

17:31And I think that brands really like that one-on-one connection that they can build with independence. And we facilitate that more easily in our platform. So it's not just kind of small brands that are using Faye. You also have big brands using. Can you talk me through like the different use cases and how people use the platform just so people can get an understanding of, okay, like what can I go and do now? Yeah, absolutely. We are really trying to be the one-stop shop for wholesale where any brand of any size can be successful. And we have various kind of personas of brands that join Faye for very different goals or use cases.

18:05So we have the kind of Etsy type brands who are doing this part time and trying to increase their distribution who join and have never actually been in a store before. And they're using us for access. And we have big brands who have heavy distribution in majors. Maybe they even work with reps and they go to shows. But they're using us to access the long tail of retailers that their reps and shows aren't filling. And then we have brands who actually use us for 100 % of their wholesale business, where they've shifted their existing retailer base that they were facilitating orders with outside of FAIR onto FAIR as just a more efficient play to manage their entire independent business.

18:51I want to talk a little bit more about some of the brands that are using FAIR, if you have any more case studies or examples about what people are doing and the impact that it's having on the business. Yeah. And maybe I can use those personas as examples. So in terms of like a really big brand, we work with a brand named Kitsch. It's a massive wholesale brand. If you're a boutique, you definitely knew them before FAIR was around. They go to shows and they've done nearly$40 million in sales since they joined the platform back in 2019 through FAIR. Wow. But they also have other channels that they stand up.

19:26They're a multimillion dollar business. in terms of the ones that are shifting their business to fair we work with a brand itsy ritzy in the kids and baby space they started actually with a business outside of fair shows and reps and over time have kind of migrated that business to fair to just run it more efficiently and then the last another food and beverage brand fun story there's a olive oil brand in new york called graza yes i think everyone knows yes um but they were kind of new they were more Or like trying to figure out D2C and the wholesale strategy. Yes. That's what they were known for.

20:02And they used FAIR to start to get into these independents and literally like cold calling stores. And then they've been able to scale on FAIR. And now I think cumulatively have done over a million dollars in sales. Wow. That's so cool. Okay. Everyone's sold. Everyone's like, okay, how do I do better? This week, my focus is figuring out FAIR. How do you, how does a brand win on FAIR? You mentioned at the beginning of the show that you're a tech platform and your goal is obviously to match retailers with the right brands and products that they actually want to like purchase and then purchase again.

20:34That's right. It's an algorithm, like in the same way that everything that we're doing is driven by algorithms. And I'm wondering if there are things that we can do to perform better. Yes. I know I mentioned this at the start, but is the number one question that my team gets, which is how do I perform better on FAIR? And there is a lot here, so interrupt me, ask questions, but I'll talk about it in kind of three ways. First is there are just foundational things you need to do to set your business up for success on FAIR. The second is we have a lot of retools that you can use to grow your sales, both on and off the FAIR platform.

21:12And then the third is we've recently launched some paid programs where you can boost your performance further. So I'll start with the first bucket of just the foundational things. The most important thing that you can do to have success on FAIR is to optimize and invest in your shop page. And it starts with making sure your full catalog is up on FAIR and you have pricing parity with your direct channels. And the reason that is so important is because retailers are landing on your page. They're giving it a couple of seconds to determine, like, should I spend more time here? And if they even have an inkling that you don't have your full catalog up or the right pricing, it seems really high.

21:53They're not going direct to your site. They're just checking out another vendor on fair. So you need to put your best foot forward just starting there. And then there's ways you should think about how do I optimize my search and ranking on fair? And three best practices here. The first is make sure your photography looks good. And that includes things like got good lighting, that it's actually centered in the middle of the photo, that it's close up enough that you can evaluate what it is as you're scrolling on mobile and that there's multiple images of that product. And it's different than a direct to consumer experience where maybe they just care about the product.

22:35Like this is a retailer who also wants to know, what does the packaging look like? Is that compelling? Or, you know, what is the size of it? Could this sit on my shelf? And having lifestyle imagery to get proportions, like, is actually really critical for evaluation. So think through that. It's different than your D to Z strategy. The second is, like, product descriptions should be robust. That is how we figure out whether to retrieve your product in search. And so make sure that like they have a full description. You're talking about why the product benefits the end consumer. Maybe you're adding something about kind of packaging or nutritional details if you're a kind of food brand.

23:15And then the third piece is be mindful of your minimums. So minimums are basically a dollar amount that retailers need to spend in order to be able to access your like wholesale pricing and checkout. out. And because this is an online platform and they haven't like touched and felt the product or smelled the candle, they're always like still a little bit hesitant to spend a ton on that first purchase, even though they have net 60 terms and free returns. And so if you have a really high minimum, specifically compared to your price point, people will be nervous to buy. And so So we recommend between like$150 to$200 in terms of your minimum.

23:57But again, like if you have a$2 average price point, that's high. If you have a$100 average price point, that's low. So think about it for your unique business. So that's the first thing. Just set up your shop page so that it is high quality and optimized for search. The second is we have a bunch of tools that brands can use for free, as I mentioned, to ultimately grow their sales on FAIR. The first is our suite of marketing and CRM tools. And what's cool about FAIR is that when a retailer places an order with you, you get all of this information about them in your CRM system. So you can see not just like where they're located, but what store type.

24:39Do they have items in the cart with you that you should push them to check out with? Or are they an insider? Do they get free shipping with your brand? And then we have these like marketing campaigns and messaging features so you can start to actually segment your audience and target them with really specific messages. So, for instance, oh, these retailers used to place a bunch of orders last year but haven't placed any orders this year. You can segment that and then send them a promotion. or I'm launching a bunch of new products and I want all of my really high spending retailers to know about them.

25:15Again, segment by spend and send them an update. So we really do try to make it easy for you and to have that like engagement directly with the retail customers on FAIR. The second free tool we offer, we call it FAIR Direct. Basically a suite of order taking tools that you can use off the FAIR platform. So it includes a link that if you send to retailers, it directs to your shop page. But the amazing thing is, is that it's all at 0 % commission to the brand. So you're able to provide benefits of fare, like the net 60 terms and free returns. But because these are customers you're driving, either your existing customers or when you're prospecting off of the marketplace, we don't believe that we earn commission on that relationship.

26:03So we don't charge you anything. And we're continuing to build out more and more tools under this umbrella. So now we actually have a mobile app where if you're at a show or you're facilitating in-person orders, you can literally like take a picture of an order form and it automatically creates a cart for you for that retailer. It's very cool. AI is coming for us and we're investing more and more in it as a platform. but then you can have the retailer take a picture of the qr code and transact really easily like literally within minutes and then the last thing on this we now have a website widget if you're a shopify user that you can customize that actually shows your fair shop page so you don't need to invest in a specific wholesale website if you have a d2c one you can just direct traffic there use there as your wholesale website experience and again at zero percent So majority of our brands use that.

26:58And I think that we've looked at this, but for brands who use Fair Direct actively, they're doing 50 % more in sales on Fair. So very powerful. And then the last suite of tools, these are our paid tools, optional. But if you're looking for like the extra boost, it's definitely worth investing in. The first is last year we launched paid advertising. I think most brands are familiar with how paid advertising works. It's on most marketplaces, but it's a pay-per-click model. You set a budget on a weekly basis, a monthly basis. It could be as low as$200. It could be as high as$20 ,000,$30 ,000. It's really about your marketing budget and appetite.