I know we all are mainly interested in selling online but is there anyone here with experience on direct selling through traditional channels?
Can anyone give me their experience/advise regarding purchasing mailing lists?
Has anyone here ever mailed out their own catalog of products?
Has anyone here ever worked with a local store to supply them with products that you've sourced?
I'm currently using a mailing list to do some direct marketing to a market that I am involved with in regards to an offline business of mine. I was finding it hard to get a reliable rep, so I chose this option and so far it's proving to be a great lead generator.
Now my product isn't an actual product per say, it's a service. So it's far more suited to this type of marketing. Having aid that, direct mail marketing has been proven to be very successful for selling products, time and time again.
The trick is to have the budget to allow you to do it effectively and then understanding your demographic well enough to target it as well as possible.
In regards to forming a partnership with a bricks and mortar store to sell your products. Good idea, I would suggest looking at second hand shops personally, especially ones run by smaller charities.
They may well be very happy to store your stock for a nice little slice of the action.