Frequently asked questions:

Who is this program good for?

This program is geared at inventors and product entrepreneurs looking to break into a market to create some sales with their product. In some cases, catalog sales is the best sales outlet for your product and you might even make a handsome profit, in other cases you might need this initial sales success to get retailers or other sales outlets to carry your product. This program might also establish that your product has enough sales potential to justify a regular representative taking on your product. Many types of products can be sold in catalogs and many inventors have successfully launched a product by first gaining sales momentum through catalogs.

Why catalog sales?

Catalogs are an effective way to launch a product because they can effectively build sales momentum and prove that your product can succeed. They are also an effective way to reach specific niche markets that otherwise cannot be reached. If your product has a very small target market there might not be a retail store that would carry it since the sales potential by geographic region would be too small. But catalogs can reach an interest group nationally, thereby justifying a catalog carrying the product. Other products, with a wide appeal, have successfully used catalogs to gain sales momentum and have gone on to sell their product nationally in retail stores. Often, retail stores want to know if your product will succeed before they carry it and catalogs are more open to take products without any sales history. Once you prove that your product can sell well in catalogs, making the jump to retail stores will be much easier. So while many kinds of products can and have been successful with catalogs, for some products catalogs might be the only sales outlet they can be successful in.

How is this program different from other representative programs?

Our Catalog Marketing Program is not a standard representative agreement where we take on a product in return for a 10 to 15% commission.

Don only takes on two to three products at a time that he promotes as a standard representative, where he goes all out to sell the product. He has only one product currently that sold $3 million last year.

This program instead offers certain performance criteria: we send out at least four catalog mailings, we answer questions from buyers (who will contact us if interested) and we work with the inventor to negotiate the final deal. We charge $495.00 for this service, which covers our costs, plus the program includes a 7% commission to allow us a chance to make some money on the program.

Many of the products we will represent will only generate, and in some cases can only support, sales of $25,000 to $30,000 per year. Others might sell less, and others nothing at all. Their potential volume isn’t enough to interest a 10 to 15% representative agreement. This program was designed to be a way for inventors and product entrepreneurs to develop success when they are either too small to attract significant professional support or they need to gain some sales momentum until a regular representative will take on the product. This program only covers catalog sales, so entrepreneurs are free to take their success with us and use it to penetrate other markets, and hopefully this success will allow them to get a full time representative to support future sales.