Launching and managing an emerging brand is tough with many conflicting priorities constantly competing for attention throughout the day. Thankfully, online marketplaces like FAIRE make it simpler and more seamless to manage wholesale sales within the boutique channel, providing brands with reach and simple invoice management and retailer with curated assortments and extended payment terms.

At Kindroot, we’ve seen tremendous success launching our store on Faire and being awarded the TOP SHOP seal every quarter since the beginning. Below I break down our approach to managing our presence on FAIRE with clear steps you can take for your store.

Overall, I think of our FAIRE strategy in 3 buckers:

Stage 1: How to make your store attractive and get noticed

Stage 2: How to gain trust and build relationships with your stores

Stage 3: Ongoing management and continuing improvement

STAGE 1: OPTIMIZE YOUR STORE

Visuals and Copy

When you get onboarded with Faire, you will have an opportunity to build your store page within their platform. You can absolutely re-purpose your existing assets like product photography and copy, but make sure to add any necessary language that might make you stand out from the retailer perspective. 

Always keep in mind who your ideal retailer is. 

Are you looking to sell into a boutique hotel and potentially be added to their minibar selection? Then add an image of your product in that setting as well as copy around your product being great on the go or in single packs. Make it easy for your store owners to envision how their customer might benefit from your product. 

For kindroot, we added pics of our bags beautifully displayed on product shelves as well as pegged to give our partners merchandising ideas and also added notes on our best-sellers to make assortment decisions easier since we have multiple SKUs.

Pricing and MOQ

Margins are important and considering Faire takes a commission, you need to make sure selling through this channel is profitable for you, but with that said, consider that most Faire retailers are also small businesses, so set your barrier to entry the lowest you can without breaking the bank. 

Consider tiered benefits for free shipping with multiple cases and offer samples. 

Once you get some traction, you can also increase some of your threshold, so initially it is best to optimize for trial and discoverability.

STAGE 2: BUILD RETAILER COMMUNITY

So now you have beautifully optimized pages and maybe are starting to see a few orders come in. Initially traffic will be slow, but as you get ratings from store owners and sell-through data, you will start to see nice increases. 

Here is what we do with every order that comes in. Yes, it can be very manual, but it is important to build a strong community and support your retailers. Key takeaway → be a partner!

1. 1. Email store owner after the order is placed. Thank them for the order and offer to help with any questions or promotion. 
   2. If you can, add samples packs to your shipment. Initially, when kindroot was just starting out, we didn’t have samples, so I would add a few extra bags into each shipment along with some stickers etc and I would let the store owner know that these were for employees, customer delights or sampling. This helps them get excited and drive trial. The more success they have with selling, the more they will come back and re-order from you.
   3. Have an asset pack ready to go. We have an updated asset link that I send via messages to store owners the first time they order – it makes it easy for them to promote you on social or to add you to their sales channels. This also ensures that they are using the best imagery and copy possible, therefore representing your brand in the best possible way and yes… driving sales!
   4. Follow them on social media. DM them and tell them you are excited to be working together. Repost, feature and tag anything they share.

(Kindroot Asset Pack Example)

When other stores reach out to you directly, consider sending them to Faire via your direct link. It helps boost your status and also gives you a lifetime no commission from that account. Plus it drives new retailers to FAIRE, so you are, in turn, helping the entire community as well.

STAGE 3: OPTIMIZE AND MAINTAIN

Review data on your store traffic, conversion etc like you would with your DTC store, which will give you clues for how to optimize your offering. Also, make sure to regularly check reviews to understand what worked and what didn’t. I have a scheduled in hour once a month to go through all of our sites and read customer and store owner reviews to understand what is happening. 

Participate in all of Faire’s marketing activities. They usually do Summer and Winter Faires where they match your discount and when you see increased traffic on the platform, so these are good opportunities to get new customers and get existing stores to stock up.

Utilize their email feature to drive other seasonal promos, notify retailers of new launches, or back in stocks etc.

Finally, you can also consider installing a Faire widget on your site to drive traffic directly to your wholesale page. 

I believe that Faire can work really well for most brands and that with following the above steps, you can build a powerful community of independents to be advocates and product. 

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