An Endangered Species?

It's a strange time for Special Markets types at Branded Goods companies. We seem to be under attack from all sides--from outside channels like Amazon, to internal competition from our own retail stores, to retailers deciding it would be "nice" to score some incremental business.

Add this to the ongoing saga of Gift Cards and how they're stealing "merchandise" business and it all adds up to more than a little queasiness in my stomach. I mean--we don't sell Retailers, so why do they sell our clients?

The answers (and there are more than a few) paint a picture that should make everyone who works for a Branded Goods company uneasy. The barriers to our market (none), the commoditization of our products (daily), and the savviness of our clients (increasing, thanks to the Internet) make our position more tenuous each day.

I believe we need to find new leadership for our market-and this is no small task. Our business is so fragmented, so lacking in a single entity we can all look to for leadership that it looks inevitable that we will become just another incremental business. Brands will start looking at the revenue we produce as something they are going to get anyway (from retailers, or Gift Cards, or whatever), and this might lead them to reassess how they come to our business.

This is a material concern--and those of us who sit in the Special Markets Chairs are the ones that will feel the pain. I'm reminded of the line from Benjamin Franklin--"we must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately". That's not all that far from the truth--we live in a market where no player has even 1% of it--how can we create leadership from such a diffuse constituent base?

So, while I'm on a Crusade kick (see my prior blog about the Chicago Motivation Show), I want to start another one--a meeting of the minds to figure out what we can do to ensure our survival in a rapidly-changing marketplace. A dialogue (to coin a phrase) needs to be started to develop defenses and weapons that will ensure our longer-term survival. Too many Brands are leaving the business, or significantly changing the way they come to the business.

Another one of my favorite phrases is "silence is acceptance", and if we remain silent we will suffer the consequences. I'm issuing a Call to Arms amongst the Branded Goods Supplier community--the challenges are great but the consequences are too. Personally, I'm not a good enough poker player to survive my company's exit from the business...

Pete