Step 3. Sales and Distribution

The advice was "don't focus too much on the product, just get it out there and iterate...."

As a product manager, the thought of putting a sub-perfect product out to market gave me the shivers. However, as a newly minted female solopreneur, I felt liberated; besides, my family and friends had tasted the product and liked it... 

My first large order (4 cases) was to the local fish and chip shop. They had tried a sample after I “cold-called” them and said it was the best soft drink they had EVER tasted! 

I was beyond excited. The shop was beautiful; it had just been renovated, it was selling fish and chips, and we were about to hit summer in Australia - I was off and running.  

I changed my manufacturing process to cater for the new demand, ordered labels and started hitting up friends who worked in the industry - confident that I was going to make them look great by giving them the inside run to a fantastic functional soft drink that would make their client's clients feel amazing. I would later be coined as saying - STEALTH HEALTH - seriously, you can't make this shit up. The innate marketer in me was getting excited, and my inner salesperson was already planning the trip to Italy.

Two weeks and two deliveries to the Fish and Chip shop later, I was amid a National Recall ( affecting one disappointed Fish and Chip shop ). I can still see the discarded bottles piled up outside the shop (on the main street of the coastal town where I live), waiting for me to dispose of them.

I had inadvertently altered the end product by changing the manufacturing process. It was simple math - double everything, and you will get double the same product, right? Wrong. So very wrong.

We will get into manufacturing later in this series, but for now, let's talk about the driver of a business - cash, specifically how to get sales through distribution or the Go-To-Market strategy.

A "go-to-market (GTM) strategy" refers to a plan or approach that a company employs to bring its products or services to market and reach its target audience. It encompasses the entire process from product development to delivery and promotion. A well-defined GTM strategy is crucial for a company to introduce and sell its offerings successfully.

Here are key components and considerations in a go-to-market strategy and how I thought about them in the context of building Dark Forest Beverages:

Market research: There is a growing number of Australians suffering from health conditions related to high consumption of sugar and alcohol linked to Type 2 diabetes, inflammation, obesity and cancer. 

On average, in Australia, how people socialise harms their health. The medical industry advises people to reduce their sugar intake, which has led to the proliferation of "zero sugar" products and "no added sugar" labelling; however, the health and nutrition industry suggests that this approach isn't going far enough and that people need to repair their microbiome and to do that, we need to consume fermented foods. 

The quickest-growing beverage category in Australia is the non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits portfolio. 

Target Audience: Dark Forest Beverages caters to health-conscious adults wanting to reduce their sugar and alcohol intake whilst socialising.

Product Positioning: Dark Forest Beverages is a premium functional soft drink designed to improve gut health whilst looking like a traditional social drink. Packaged in an amber glass bottle designed to look like a beer, accommodating both men and women who want to fit in while socialising, the bottle has a twist top crown seal with a simple label to sit alongside other social drinks in the fridge. 

The label includes a barcode to give the product legitimacy and a ticket to any large wholesale dance should retail chains want to range the product.

What sets Dark Forest Beverages apart from the competition is subtle, sophisticated labelling and absolutely no stevia or weird ass sugars that taste like chemicals and do nothing to reduce the desire for sugar. The product is slightly bitter, which, if consumed regularly, will reduce sugar cravings and improve the microbiome diversity of the consumer.

Sales Channels: Dark Forest Beverages is sold directly to hospitality outlets utilising face-to-face field sales (Me) and facilitates eCommerce via a website for wholesale clients and a Shopify store for direct-to-consumer sales.

Once the product gains momentum, I plan on targeting supermarket chains and large department stores, knowing they will be a game changer regarding production, marketing, etc. 

Pricing Strategy: As a premium eco-friendly product, Dark Forest will never go on sale and contribute to "Cyber Monday style" hyper-consumerism.

There is a wholesale price based on volume and a direct-to-consumer price, which includes freight - no one likes to add freight at checkout.

There is an acquisition discount on the first order in exchange for permission to market to the client in the future. This allows Dark Forest to establish an ongoing relationship with the client via a channel owned by Dark Forest, not dictated to by the social media companies.

The online shop offers a discounted loyalty price for clients willing to commit to a regular shipment based on a minimum order.  

Sales and Marketing Plan: Due to the nature of the product, I knew an education program would drive product sales. Although the largest competitors would do the above-the-line awareness marketing, Dark Forest acts as a challenger brand for those who have a problem to solve but don't like the mainstream player’s offering. The key is to communicate the differences and make switching frictionless. 

The most cost-effective way to achieve this is via social media and face-to-face sales. 

Sales Enablement:  I developed product documentation and training manuals, eco-friendly sales collateral, nutritional information, recipes on how to use the product and social media content designed to show people how to make the product at home, and I solicit endorsements from clients to attract and promote collaboration with like-minded product owners looking to cross-promote and add value to their client base. 

Lead generation utilises a pop-up form on the website with the hook "Swap your email for my eBook on how to use the product".

Launch Plan: I planned to quietly build momentum and buzz through solid product performance, referrals, and collaboration. I didn't have the Big Bang launch party budget, but I could ask for endorsements and rely on the label's QR code to bring people back to the online shop for repeat sales.

This is where you would traditionally include a PR program - I figured PR would find me, so I had a "PR resource" on the website. 

Customer Support, Feedback and Strategy Iteration: Being a customer-centric micro business, it was essential and prudent to keep it simple. My phone number became the main line, and an online form hanging off the website would channel all enquiries to a centralised database so I could start collecting data and analyse it for future product and process iterations.

Metrics and Measurement:  As a solopreneur, cash flow and profit are all you need. Once you get some wins on the board and/ or losses, you can begin interrogating sales by channel, customer acquisition costs and customer satisfaction.

From day one, I looked at repeat sales and the cost to serve. Once I knew people liked the product enough to repurchase, I knew I had a business. It was just a matter of scale. 

Ok, that is long enough for today until next time when we delve into what went right and wrong and, given my experience, what I would do differently. 

Take care,

Jo.