Faire Report #23: We met our clients IRL in the USA! 🇺🇸

What’s on my brain this week?

Over the last few weeks we've been meeting clients in person across America.

We started in Boston, road-tripped around New Hampshire, and then headed south for more client meetings and the Dallas trade show.

Meeting clients in person is always special. We get to see the real impact our work has on their businesses and, because we work with so many family-run companies, often on their families too. That's something that means a lot to us as a family business ourselves.

It also gives us a chance to step back from the day-to-day account work and ask a bigger question: what's actually moving the needle, and what's the next biggest lever we can pull?

Show the people behind the brand

One thing that's come up again and again is video.

Retailers want to understand who they're buying from. They want to see the founders, the team, how the products are made, how they're used and what makes the business different.

That doesn't mean highly produced brand films. Often the opposite works better. Simple videos showing the people behind the company, new products arriving, what's happening in the warehouse or a founder talking through the range can make the brand feel much more real.

The answer is often simpler than you think

When brands are trying to work out how to grow, it's very easy to create an enormous list of things they could improve.

We prefer to simplify it.

We often ask: what is the next thing this business needs to do to make its next million?

Sometimes the answer is better imagery. Sometimes it's stronger retailer communication, better retention or getting more out of Faire.

But for a surprising number of the businesses we've met on this trip, the answer is much simpler.

More products

Every client we've met so far is one we have helped build out the product catalog with.

More genuinely good products create more opportunities to be discovered, more reasons for existing retailers to reorder, more ways to merchandise the brand and more chances to increase the value of every retailer relationship.

There comes a point where endlessly optimizing the same small catalog can only take you so far. If the existing products are working, sometimes the biggest growth lever is simply giving your customers more things to buy.

That's also one of the things we love about the way we work with clients. If we're taking Faire growth, optimization and the day-to-day marketplace work off their plate, the founders can spend more of their time doing the thing only they can really do: building the next great products.

Final thought

Growth doesn't always need another complicated strategy.

Sometimes you need to show more of the people behind the brand. Sometimes you need to stop trying to optimize twenty things at once. And sometimes, if the demand is already there, you just need more products.

Ask yourself this question - where will your next million come from?

See you on the marketplace,

Andy