Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Natural Products East Expo - Trade Show


Natural Products East Expo
 Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore Convention Center
Sept. 26 - 28,  2013
website: http://www.expoeast.com/expoeast2013/public/enter.aspx

Badge Cost: $400.00
Hotel Cost - $250 per night
Flight: $150.00
Taxi: $75.00
Food: $60.00 


Through our official housing partner, onPeak, we provide reduced hotel rates and travel discounts for your trip to Baltimore.
Book through the simple-to-use reservation website or with helpful and friendly booking agents.
Please note: onPeak is the only official housing company associated with Natural Products Expo East 2013. While other hotel resellers may contact you offering housing for your trip, they are not endorsed by or affiliated with the show and entering into financial agreements with such companies can have costly consequences.

BOOK EARLY FOR THE BEST SELECTION

Visit our reservation website here to customize your search.

ONLINE
Click here or on the hotel name below.
  1 (800) 388 8812 - U.S. Toll-free
+1 (312) 527 7300 - Int'l
   8:00 AM - 5:00 PM (CST)
Hotel Reservation Deadlines Begin August 28, 2013

Benefits of booking in the official housing block

Book through onPeak to ensure you pay the lowest price and get the best service with reservation protection, flexibility and assistance—before, during and after your stay. Click here to learn more.
Best Rate Pledge
• The lowest room rates available have been negotiated at official hotels.
• Other booking channels are monitored to track down rival rates.
• Rates are lowered when necessary and applied to already-booked rooms.














NewHope360.com - Trade Magazine




Marketing with Newhope360.com


So, I've been reviewing Newhope360.com for the marketing campaign for kshamicamd.com products. Its seems its one of the largest trade magazines in the Industry.


Here are three of their plans that interest me so far:












ProjectLibre for Project Management


 

ProjectLibre for Project Management






Overview

Download here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/projectlibre/?source=directory

ProjectLibre is an open source alternative to Microsoft Project. A compliment to Apache OpenOffice and LibreOffice. We have a community site as well at http://www.projectlibre.org It has been downloaded in 194 countries the first month of release and was just voted Sourceforge's "Project of the Month" ProjectLibre is compatible with Microsoft Project 2003, 2007 and 2010 files. You can simply open them on Linux, Mac OS or Windows. ProjectLibre has been rewritten and added key features:

* Compatibility with Microsoft Project 2010
* User Interface improvement

Screenshot of Current Project Plan:

 

 

Basic Tutorial

 

 

 

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Buyers' Best Friend Platform - U.S. National market





After conducting much research, I was able to find an interesting online distribution platform.  Speaking to Kate of bbfdirect.com on Aug. 22nd, was an effort to quickly bring the Kshamicamd brand of organic skincare and herbal compounds to the U.S. National market. She was competent, courteous, and took the time to answer all my questions regarding the platform and the marketing schemes available to us. Below I've copied the email (sent to me from Kate) as an overview of the program:

Hi Henry!

Thank you for for your time on the phone and interest in Buyer's Best Friend.



WHAT IS BUYER'S BEST FRIEND?

We're the world's largest catalog of specialty and natural products, with over 145,000 products from over 2,200 brands. BBF enables buyers and sellers to connect much more efficiently using our online catalog and ordering system. See what buyers and sellers have to say about us.

GETTING STARTED WITH BBF
You can join the catalog for free simply by sending us your wholesale price sheet, images of your products, and a brief description of your company. We’ll create a free basic listing for you, so that over 7,000 buyers (and growing!) will be able to find your brand. To see what kind of accounts we work with, follow the link here: http://www.bbfdirect.com/major-accounts.

INFO ON OUR PREMIUM PLAN
If you are looking to get to the next level working with large accounts like Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Google, The Fresh Market, and many other major accounts, we offer a Premium Plan where we actively promote you (versus the free basic listing, where you’re in the catalog, but not actively promoted).

Our Premium Plan is $1600/year, and we ask for a 12 month commitment and prepayment. This plan also comes with a sales guarantee - if over those 12 months you don't get at least $1200 in sales through BBF, we'll extend your premium subscription until you do hit $1200 in sales (max extension of 12 additional months). In practice, over 60% of our paid sellers retire their sales guarantees within months of joining BBF, and after that are receiving very high return on investment.

AUGUST 2013 PROMO



Join by August 31, 2013, and we’ll give you a free foot of shelf space at our large tradeshow booth at the Winter Fancy Food Show January 2014 in San Francisco.

JOIN THE PREMIUM PLAN

To sign up for the BBF Premium Plan, please view and electronically sign our Premium Plan Agreement here: https://www.hellosign.com/s/755f1e74.

View case studies on successful Premium sellers here:
http://www.bbfdirect.com/premium-plan.

BBF RETAIL STORES
We will also consider ordering your products on consignment for our three new brick and mortar retail stores in San Francisco - to start with, we'd carry your products on consignment, and review and pay for any product sold Net 60. You are responsible for shipping costs of sending product to and from Buyer's Best Friend, including shipping any unsold product back to you after 60 days (in most cases, we don't usually ship products back to sellers since they sell!).

You can view our Yelp reviews here: http://www.yelp.com/biz/buyers-best-friend-wholesale-and-mercantile-san-francisco

PREMIUM PLAN DETAILS
With a paid listing, we ACTIVELY promote you to our buyers. Here's how we do it (both online and offline promotion):
  a) large, beautiful product ads for your products throughout the catalog - targeted to buyers who are looking at your competitors and other products in your category
  b) featuring your product line at the top of the list when buyers browse by category and for relevant searches (some categories have hundreds of brands, so this dramatically increases your visibility)
  c) when buyers are looking at your competitors, your ads will run on their producer pages, so even if buyers aren't specifically looking for your brand, if they are looking in your category, you'll get in front of those buyers
  d) we're constantly working with Major Accounts, so you get presented to appropriate buyers, distributors and brokers, as well as presentations to Whole Foods in all 11 regions nationwide. You'll get unlimited presentations to our major accounts until we get you into one major account. After that, you pay an additional $1600 for access to unlimited major account presentations until we land you another major account.
  e) active recommendation of your products to new buyers every week by email and online: within 24-48 hours of buyers joining, BBF welcomes them and actively recommends Premium sellers to appropriate buyers. BBF will also follow up with buyers on sample requests to convert them to orders.
  f) actively recommending your products to buyers through our Personal Shopper program - many of our new buyers ask for help selecting products, and our Personal Shoppers are trained to actively recommend your brand to appropriate buyers
  g) placement of your products in our wholesale showroom in San Francisco - buyers in Northern California as well as buyers from out of town visit us to see 3000-4000 different products from hundreds of brands all at once. By being in the showroom and available to buyers for sampling, you get lots of exposure.
  h) cost: the plan is $1600/year. This is working so well for our current paid sellers, that we can offer you a sales guarantee: If over those 12 months you don't get at least $1200 in sales, we'll extend your paid subscription until you do hit that sales level (maximum extension of 12 months). This means that it's virtually risk free to sign up for premium. The premium plan works so well that we're able to offer this sales guarantee to EVERY premium seller, and paid sellers get over 4-5 times as many orders as free sellers.

Below are additional benefits available to Premium Sellers:

BBF SMART SAMPLING PROGRAM
Learn more here: http://www.bbfdirect.com/smart-sampling
For an additional $700, you can also join our Smart Sampling Program - you send us product samples, and we ship them to 65 of the best and most appropriate buyers for your products. For about $10/buyer, we'll manage the end to end process of sending a sample to following up to take orders for your products. 

TRADESHOWS
Maximize your tradeshow budget by joining BBF at the Fancy Food Shows (Winter and Summer) and Expo West 2014. Maximize your budget and impact/results, let BBF handle logistics, and meet more big buyers at our large, visible 800+ square foot destination booths. Let me know if you'd like more info.

STRATEGIC CONSULTING PROGRAM 
Need help with the 4 Ps? (Product, Promotion, Price, Place (Distribution))? For an additional $400, let BBF's team of industry experts deliver an overall analysis of your product line. We'll send you a report, schedule a call to go over the results, make 5 key introductions for you (to buyers, other sellers, distributors, brokers, vendors, etc.) and be available for up to 2 hours of consulting time from 3 months of the initial call (use it or lose it!).

SMART SCANDOWNS PROGRAM
BBF Smart Scandowns is a new, smarter way of acquiring new retail customers (not wholesale accounts).  BBF tracks whether a named consumer has purchased your products before or not, and we pay out any first-time consumer discount incentive you would like to provide. Sign up at https://www.hellosign.com/s/95bb8ae9.

Thank you!
Total Cost for full program: $2,700.00


RESOURCES






FEDERAL RESOURCE
WOMEN IN BUSINESS RESOURCE
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT RESOURCE
COSMETIC & CRAFT INDUSTRY RESOURCE

Saturday, August 24, 2013

CRM + ERP 'All in One' Business Application

CRM + ERP 'All in One' Business Application







Open Source Complete Software for Online Businesses! Client Management, Billing, Support Solutions for online businesses. Available powerful business automation tools. Built in HelpDesk, CRM, Simple Accounting, Products/Services and Order Management. Free Powerful modules for business including To Do, DMS, Notice Board.



Live Demo

Admin Portal Demo

URL: http://demo.bmsapp.com/manage/
Username: admin
Password: 123456
Client Portal Demo

URL: http://demo.bmsapp.com
Username: razib@bdinfosys.com
Password: 123456


*Email to Dr. Kshamica on 8/23/13:  I think its a good application to run on our or your server...using the kshamicamd.com domain.

We can have it installed on this domain like this for example:

crm.kshamicamd.com


(CRM = Customer Relationship Manager)

then login from there to manage the Application.
I like this solution for a number of reasons:

1. Its Opensource - so we can customize it and scale as needed
2. It's cost effective - one time expense of $35
3. Supported by email and an active forum
4. Powerful features that fit our business need for organization and productivity

5. Simple and straight forward
We would use this application to manage our offline accounts such as retail stores and distribution houses. In addition, use it to manage those relationships more effectively but using the task management and to do features.
Let me know your thoughts. I have other apps in mind also...but this is the best bang for our buck that I've found so far.


Kshamica MD

Open Source Business Development Plan

 

Overview:

KshamicaMD officially joined forces with GCI in 2013 with the goal of distributing her start up herbal supplements and organic skin care label.  
Kshamica MD Skin Care was founded from Dr. Nimalasuriya’s expertise in natural wellness. KSHAMICA MD Skin Care products utilize vital nutrients that are capable of reducing inflammation, boosting the body’s natural immunity and encouraging strength and vitality in all bodily organs and the skin. She utilizes plants and minerals, which are exceptionally healthy for the body and help contribute to beautiful skin.
Every ingredient in the KSHAMICA MD Organic Skin Care is rich in nourishing and beneficial properties, which promote a fabulous looking complexion. KSHAMICA MD Organic Skin Care delivers the best of nature and science for the Ultimate Skin Experience.
KMD Herbs was created from Dr. Nimalasuriya’s expertise with using foods as healing and natural remedies. This knowledge was acquired over years of travel to many different countries around the world, combined with years of research and application.
Dr. Nimalasuriya’s practice incorporates modalities from traditional Ayurvedic medicine, traditional chinese medicine, traditional unami medicine, native north american medicine and western traditional herbal medicine. Offering a comprehensive range of herbal supplements, KMD Herbs offers the purest of nature to assist you with all your health concerns.

The Challenge

Founder of KshamicaMD is extremely passionate about her product and looks to expand her brand of exclusive organic and herbal compounds into the 'for profit' market sector. KshamicaMD has granted GCI global distribution rights to warehouse, market, sale, ship, and collect monies.
To successfully implement initial marketing materials, tactics and build/expand the brand.

Strategy

GCI conducted an initial assessment to understand and begin to help KshamicaMD further develop the foundations for her brand. From this assessment, said blog was created as an open sourced marketing/business development plan to build/actuate core marketing tactics and more 'target specific' goals.
GCI will act as KshamicaMD 'All-in-One' business development/ marketing team; project managing the online traffic, wholesale/retail distribution, web site SEO and marketing management

Creative

Most Creatives have already been created and ongoing by KshamicaMD with relative support from GCI;
  • Logo, labels, packaging, brochures, pricelist
  • Web site development
  • Filming Youtube videos

Launch event

GCI and KshamicaMD will discuss organizing and staging a launch event to introduce the brand to the public and media.
The event invites are to be sent to brand ambassadors, key distributors, media that we can acquire from NH360 and Chamber of Commerce - to be invited to the launch event. All invited as part of our whole marketing strategy.
The brand ambassadors are to be chosen and used to generate positive word-of-mouth at a grassroots level.
Press releases are to be paired with the media invites. Appropriate media are to be targeted and contacted, a strategy to recruit more distributor partners.
Key people within the skincare industry are also to be invited....i.e. names from linkedin

Distributors and Retail Strategy

GCI has managed to establish key distributor relationships with BFF. Discussions  kicked off August 22, 2013 with Katie of BFF in the marketing process, then will be finalized by August 30, 2013.
The day that the brand is to be officially launched is meant to be the initial introduction to the retailers. In the next 8 weeks we plan to be listed on 4 major online retailers websites (including Amazon.com)  and at least 15 traditional retailers.  In 12 weeks, we look to have 19 retailers in total.

Online marketing and social media

A social media presence has been created with Twitter and Facebook accounts.  Ongoing management of the social media has been done in-house.

Promotional Strategy

Sampling/Samples will be used to introduce the product to retailers and the media.
An Online beauty portal can run a free sampling promotion to garner sample requests. These requests then formed the initial database for online orders.
Retailer and point of sale promotions including free sampling and a “gift with purchase” promotion. GCI is also making this business development plan open-sourced and publicly available for those interested in donating information/assistance and/or funds.

Public Relations

GCI will manage and create ongoing relationships with key media.
We will generated media call outs for samples and product information, respond to online media calls key print publications and bloggers.
This activity will attract a key articles in NH360 trade magazime. They will feature KshamicaMD products twice in the first year. KshamicaMD shall also seek to be featured in Clean Food Organics – Nature and Health, G Magazine, Prevention, Professional Beauty.

The Results

GCI seeks to become a  critical component in the successful official launch and expansion of the KshamicaMD brand.
With clever low cost marketing tactics and with continued marketing and sales initiatives, KshamicaMD will be able to quickly build an initial database. Developing a sales and distribution strategy and then subsequently creating supporting marketing materials helping to reach more customers then generate additional & recurring sales.