If you are an entrepreneur who wants to get their product directly into a consumer’s space, the expertise of today’s guest is unmatched – he is Ed Hauck. Selling directly to the consumer – what are some of the challenges of going to retail? The first challenge is you need to have some velocity behind your product; so as a startup or an entrepreneur who hasn’t sold the product in any other channel – the retail channel is going to be asking about success rate, how many units are projected to sell per week, per store. Then your products will be judged on the velocity, and the retailer will use this to determine whether they are going to carry your product; besides that, there is the cost of getting the product into retail – inventory costs will be higher.  There is also the issue of product placement on the shelf – there is a cost to that. Other channels The big one is direct to consumer – this comes in many different ways such as digital through email marketing, Facebook, Amazon, Google pay per click – where you are either driving people to your website or a third party e-commerce website.  There is also direct mail which is catalog marketing, postcards, and letters and then there are infomercials, and then there is multi-level marketing. Do people still do direct mail? Absolutely, but it’s part of a multi-level strategy, and that wouldn’t be the only level used – direct mail would work directly digital marketing.  As an entrepreneur on a budget, the digital strategy is recommended as this has the lowest costs and then tie that in with some direct mail at a later date. The digital gives you the best ability to test, and you want to be able to do that to make sure you have the right message at the right price and the right product. Stay in touch Join us again as Ed will be back in a later episode to discuss the ins and outs of Amazon; you can directly contact Ed by checking out his LinkedIn page or via Email.