Starting up selling cloth locally.

I am not sure if this is the right place to post or not but here goes!

I have been thinking for about a year that I would really love to set up as a cloth nappy advisor and selling cloth locally. MAYBE eventually move onto selling online but certainly not till I have more time on my hands to get that set up.

Would love to do this but have no idea where to start. I did look into it a few months ago but goggle just led me to looking into becoming an advisor for a certain company (eg lollipop) but then I could only sell what they sell. I want to be able to choose what I sell, and possibly include some cloth san pro etc.

I am assuming I would need to register as self empolyed, which is fine. What else do I need to know? Do I just contact companies indervidually about stocking their stuff?

Can I then take my kits to toddler groups etc?

I currently do Usborne books but just don't love them as much as I love Nappies! Although ELouise loves the books more!

Don't know the answer but bumping incase someone can help

You could either become an agent for someone like Babykind who sell a large selection of nappies so you can choose what you sell and you make commission on your sales. Or I think you will need to source nappies wholesale by contacting the manufacturers or UK importers.

In terms of then taking things along to toddler groups, you will just need to contact them, some places can be funny if you are doing it as a profit making thing rather than just advice. Other options are doing stalls at places like NCT evenings, I have does this a few times, for profit making people they will charge a fee for the stall but it isn't alot as long as you make some sales.

Other than that you just need to get your name out there - sign up to all the websites you can that can advertise local child related business and we have a few free magazines in which you can pay for adverts, perhaps your council could put your details on their website?

HTH

I am happy to also offer free advice etc. I sell Usborne books at the moment and do that at toddler groups which is profit based, but then usually give the toddler group a few books to say thanks. Not sure how that would work with nappies!

I know my council have a list of nappy advisors in the area so thats good.

I am just not sure on the actual BECOMING a nappy advisor. As in how to do it. What acxtually makes you an official nappy advisor?

Hi,

sorry to barge in, but thought I could offer some advice here!!

If you want to sell nappies, by far the easiest way is to become an advisor for one of the big companies, If I was to recommend anyone it would be babykind. But and there is a but, you have no control over prices etc and those prices need to be high enough for the supplying company to make a profit and still pay you a commission, then there is the initial outlay for your demonstration kit, I would say for a good spread you are looking at a couple of hundred pounds at least. The return on investment really needs to stack up for this to work out.

Now onto becoming an independent nappy advisor/seller, pretty much the same apart from you source the stock from suppliers yourself and have to generate your own leads, but you have full control, the only drawback really is minimum order quantities from suppliers, some are fairly low at around £30 which is great but some are as much as £250 which is rubbish if you dont want to hold several hundred pounds worth of stock with no confirmed orders. A website is cheap and simple to setup but will probably take over your life (mine has, although not complaining yet), the most important thing to start of with is getting yourself known, advertisin is probably the key thing, and sites like this do wonders for a sites popularity, one post with a link praising can be worth a thousand CPC ads on google.

In addition I found that when I setup, most suppliers wanted to know in quite some detail where there products were going to be sold, how they were going to be displayed and some even stipulated requirements on how to display etc so as to not 'damage' their brand

The most important ingredients you will need are lots of determination, effort, some more determinaton, some more effort, lots of time and some wine for when you do get a moment to yourself, hope that has helped a little (probably hasn't) If I can help you with anything else just let me know.

Best of luck and I hope it all works out for you!!

Hi Jenny - I have worked for Lollipop for many years and as you know also have my own webshop aswell so know how both worlds work. Email me if you would like to chat about being an advisor for any company and how it all works.