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Expanding Your Name Brand Lines

By Art Micklewraith
Reselling a big name line of clothing like Polo or Calvin Klein is the cornerstone of many small online businesses. The drawing power of a highly desirable brand name brings traffic to your website and generates sales. What many online retailers don't know is that offering other products by the same company can inflate sales on both the original line and the new product as well. For example, if you already carry Polo shirts picking up Polo's cologne will improve your chances of finding customers for your shirts while providing a new opportunity for a sale.

There is a very good chance that many of the visitors to your site offering Polo shirts are in fact looking for some other Polo product. It is simple logic that if your site offers this product as well the visitor, who otherwise would have kept looking, will transform into a customer. The prestige that the brand name carries will drive extra sales. Once the buyer has gotten the credit card out the Calvin Klein handbag will follow the blouse the customer was originally looking for into the shopping cart.

Anyone who has done searches for their own site knows the frustration of finally finding your site on page 18 of the search results. It's not only frustrating it is costing you sales. The ranking your site gets with the all important search engines will rise for the brand you carry if you offer more than one product by that company. Since most prospective customers rarely look past the first few pages the closer your site is to the top of the listings the greater the chance of attracting traffic. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment you get from seeing your humble site climb up among the big boys of the web.

A side benefit of expanding your line of big name labels is identification. Once a customer learns that your business offers a variety of Polo products they will come to identify your site with the name and will be more likely to come back to your site first instead of searching for the product on a search engine. As all retailers know, repeat business is a key to success.

A relatively safe manner to test line expansion is to pick up a few of the companies less expensive accessories. If a customer is prepared to pay $100 for a Ralph Lauren shirt then the $20 cap or $8 pair of socks is only a small additional charge. If possible try to match up your lines so that they encourage each other. For example, if you are already offering men's shirts don't add handbags. Instead take a look at the ties or wallets. By keeping the cost of the new items low you can avoid spending too much to expand your line of products.

If you have a customer feedback feature on your site try and determine what other products your regular customers would like to see on your site. A short questionnaire emailed to customers is an excellent way to get a feel for demand. Offering a small discount to respondents is a good way to insure you hear back from them.

Since your supplier for one product is likely to carry others by the same company it should be relatively painless to add the new line without the headaches of finding another supplier. By helping you reach bulk price points it might even help lower your shipping costs. If your present supplier does not carry additional lines from the same company it would be worth your time to try and find one that does.

It should be noted that this strategy will most likely only work with highly prestigious brand names like the ones listed above. Bargain brand names lack the drawing power of the big names and are rarely searched for by name and so will usually not see the level of traffic improvement.

While to high price points of famous brand names can deter the small business from experimenting with additional lines the advantages of doing so should not be ignored. A careful strategy of matching your products together and looking for the best deals in shipping can greatly reduce the risk associated with expansion.