What Products can be Sold Directly?-2

Let us look at each of the key criteria in more detail.
Novelty
It was, I recall either the advertising guru David Ogivly or another great advertising man, John Caples, who first said that the word ‘New’ is the most powerful word in the lexicon of any copywriter. Anyway, it still is.

John geeson, a former managing director of Tuppaware’s UK business, had an equally succinct dictum for the guidance of all those writing company literature and sales force communications. It was that every pice should use as many as possible of the following words – ‘new@, ‘now’, ‘free’ and ‘fresh’.

For direct sellers, whether they rely on catalogues or wheyher they create ‘live advertisments’, these words are all-powerful in attracting attention and creating interest in what they have to offer. For a brief period it suspends any consideration of price and is a natural introduction to the process of gaining conviction.

Novelty, in one for or another, is the essential ingredient for any new direct selling business and it is instructive to look briefly at the history of Britain’ first substantial direct selling company.

In the Preface of this book I referred to the formation of Britain’s longest-established DSO – the Kleeneze Brush Company. At the time the business was started there was nothing new about such a basic household item as a brush; everybody used them. What was novel was the idea of selling them door to door and the way in which they were made , a simple twisted -in-wire design that Harry Crook brought back from the United States.

The new design gave the sales people something to talk about and to demonstrate. Today the business is still going strong with annual sales approaching £40 million.
Although there have been substancial changes, both to the selling methods and in the way the sales operation is structured, the continued success of Kleeneze is based on continuing to offer novel product lines and other household products that are not readily available in multiple retail stores.

This has been achieved despite strong competition in recent years from Betterware plc – a company that was originally founded in the late 1920’s by some former Kleeneze salesmen. Although structured in a slightly different way by exploiting the same gap in the retail market for novel household products by achieving sales in 1995 of over $50 million.
Along with quality and style, a novel product concept can be conveyed to a prospective customer through media adverts, but it is not always possible.

Skincare is a good example.

Reference: Direct Selling: Richard Berry

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