Gift Trader wholesalers guideMarch 2013

What is Gift Trader?

• Gift Trader (www.gifttrader.co.nz) is an online trading website, built to compliment the NZ Gift Fairs experience, exclusively available to NZ Gift Fairs exhibitors and visitors

• NZ Gift Fairs exhibiting wholesalers have an exclusive ability to promote, and sell their wholesale product to QUALIFIED NZ Gift Fairs retailers and corporate buyers

• A low level of technical ability is needed. If you can use Trademe, or Facebook, you can start selling on Gift Trader

• The ONLY cost to list up to 25 products on Gift Trader is $150 +GST on top of an annual exhibition fee. Gift Trader does not charge any commission on transactions through the site.

Visitors over time

• 31,941 visits from 18,416 individuals in the past 12 months

• Averaging over 3,000 visits a month for the past 5 months. These are VISITS, not hits. (each visit could potentially account for hundreds of “Hits”)

• 44.5% of visits are from repeat visitors coming back for more – like any sales business, repeat business is the key to success

November launch of Online Gift Fair

• 4,644 website visits for the month, with 60% of this being from repeat visitors.

• What does this mean? NZ retailers are coming back to Gift Trader again for more products. They want to find and buy your stock online, in bulk

Gift Trader sales

• Over 20,000 products have sold on Gift Trader, with values ranging from 10 cents to $395 + GST per item.

• Stewart Sales and Service (as one example) have sold well over 2,000 products since first listing products in late November 2012. According to John Stewart, this has also generated further offline sales, when their sales catalogues are sent through.

• Rayma from “The Specialty House” has acquired over 20 repeat customers in a short period of time. These customers are now frequent buyers through both Gift Trader, and their business website

Trends from the site

For the peak 2 months of the Online Christmas Gift Fair, we saw approximately 4,500 qualified visitors to the site for each month

Top 10 searches Since October 2012:

• Christmas products

• Art / print / posters

• Interior / decoratives

• Apparel & Footwear

• Bags/Luggage

• Furniture

• Toys/Puzzles & Games

• Jewellery

• Giftwrap/Packaging

• Candles / Candlesticks

Top buyers by transaction value

• From remote areas, with limited access to wholesalers

• Often online retailers themselves

Top ten retail buyers are from:Te Aroha

Rotorua

Auckland

Rotorua

Oamaru

Milton

Wellsford

Tauranga

Invercargill

Wanganui

What the best wholesalers are doing:

• Over $108,000 of sales have been processed on Gift Trader, and it’s only ramping up

• 40% of this comes from our top 12 wholesalers

• 1/8 of all turnover has come from the top 2 wholesalers

Keys to success:

– Good images of great products. This is your online gift fair, and your opportunity to move volume, while showing the quality of your products. Make sure you select quality items.

– Plenty of details provided on products – dimensions, fabric type, feel, use. Help your customer “see” the product.

– Good wholesale prices, and high stock availability

– Add new products weekly

– Follow up sales with product catalogues, adding the retailer to any mailing lists you have

– Let retailers know when you have new products on Gift Trader – through email, facebook, twitter, etc.

– Regularly review “minimum order values”, “minimum quantities”, and automated sales reports in Gift Trader.

A selection of popular items

Use this admin screen to view all your products, listing up to 25 items at one time

Listing an item. The more detail, the better.

Up to six categories for any product. Remember to enteryour minimum order quantities and total stock available

Your account screen, to update your account details and reporting

The ultimate Gift Fairs compliment

• Gift Trader is now your online fair, with retailers coming back to the site to view and buy wholesale product outside of fair dates. Only NZ Gift Fairs ID verified retailers and corporate buyers will have access to purchase on Gift Trader.

• Keeping up to date listings of products will bring your companies ranges to peoples minds before, during, and after fairs

• Make sure you are editing your listings every two weeks, so retailers continue to see your new and exciting ranges

• Your NZ Gift Fairs exhibitor login details (used for magazine listings and accessing your exhibitor manual) will get you into Gift Trader, www.gifttrader.co.nz

• Any questions? Contact jeff@xpo.co.nz for more help and tips to get your products up.