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SMALL
(PUBLISHER)
TALK
Orderly Conduct In the first of a series of columns in which small house publishers reveal the thrills and spills of trying to make headway in the competitive industry, John Higgins and Laura Kavanagh, founders of humour card publisher Go La La, reveal how they utilise multi-channel options to make it simpler for retailers to discover and order their cards. Being an old married couple, we were lying in bed one morning having a scintillating conversation about shopping. Or, more to the point, shopping for gig tickets for bands whose heyday was in the 80s. In those days you’d rely on newspapers, posters and fanzines for the information, rally your mates together by phone landline or letter and book tickets using a postal order. Now, you just text your mates and book your tickets online in the space of five minutes without moving from the sofa. So, we all know too well how the internet has changed our own personal buying behaviours. But how do these convert to selling a product and addressing the needs of busy greeting card retail buyers? As a card publisher, in the absence of a network of sales agents, working to Above: The publisher has launched a ‘Trade Only’ website. Right: This Go La La design covers the diversity issue down to a ‘tea’. Far right: Another Go La La design that demonstrates the wonders of the human psyche. Below: John and Laura of Go La La contemplating a publisher’s plight from bed!
market your product pretty much takes over your life. But ultimately, as publishers, we all know how busy card retailers are, and in this competitive market we need to make our product not only as visible as possible, but simple to order. Naturally, and for most of us, our marketing starts with social media. Go La La uses Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin. We circulate tweets, posts, pics, updates, videos, stories and highlights every day. We engage,
discuss, emoji, comment, like, share and retweet. We connect with peers and potential customers. We are nice. We are helpful. We crack a few jokes. Our fragile egos sometimes take a bashing. We pull our big girl and boy pants up and keep going. We circulate printed marketing materials. We research shops to mail out to so that hopefully we don’t send precious resources that will just get dumped into the recycling bin. Each mail out we send to a shop costs somewhere around £4£5. We encourage ordering via email or phone, but frankly, we wouldn’t care if it was via a Facebook message with a GIF of a dancing unicorn or a tweet from Donald Trump. But what more can we do to make ordering super easy for card retailers? Until recently, our website was purely for public sales, but after reading some commentary from retailers and taking feedback from some of our customers we decided to convert it to a Trade Only site for online ordering. Now we have the option of a trade shop front from which to select designs, add to basket and checkout with orders going straight to invoice. Job done. The return from this new system has been extremely positive. But an article on trade brochures in the March edition of PG demonstrated that many card buyers still like a catalogue in their hands. So while not everyone wants an online facility, it’s there for some folk. Often, we hear that card retailers only like to place orders through sales agents, which is great if you’re fortunate enough to have an agent in that area. Most of us publishers can only dream of having all territories across the UK being represented by sales agents; if this is you, then get in! So retailers, finding a new product and squeezing aside the time to see that order through could be just the boost a small publisher needs, and hopefully the start of a fabulous new relationship! Contact Go La La at info@golala.co.uk PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
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