Bye-Bye, Brick and Mortar! Your Business’s Future Could Flourish Online

Have you noticed the number of boarded-up malls? Have you driven down Main Street and seen how many of your old friends’ businesses are gone?  That’s a sign that brick-and-mortar marketplace survivors are becoming increasingly rare, while their virtual counterparts are on the rise. If you want your brand to survive, you have to think inside the box – that little ubiquitous box that’s on your desk – and evolve your online marketing plan so that it will survive the next generation.

Prior to the Great Recession, scoring placement at Henri Bendel would have guaranteed a bath-and-body product line a home run. But in our new economy, are retail sales enough? Gregg Schwartz of Priel asks that very question as he seeks to take his luxury Dead Sea beauty treatment products to the next level.

Lynda Resnick: I speak every day to young entrepreneurs. Some have good products and simply lack the distribution outlets; others don’t. You are certainly in the top tier of my advice-seeking audience. That’s because you started with the right idea, a truly good product.

The Priel line of bath and body products

Gregg Schwartz: I know that I have a great product. We’re fortunate that Bendel’s discovered us. The first time that we were there, they gave us this little table, probably no more than a square foot, in the middle of nowhere in the store, basically as a test. The way it works is that they give you these revenue projections that they want you to hit, depending on location and product and price-point, and we blew the projections out of the water. The response has been unbelievable. I think we beat their projection by about 25% on top of whatever they expected.

We do great no matter what venue we’re at. But the real issue that I have is that when I try and open up new accounts or get into [a new store], I can’t even get a return phone call or email from a buyer. I present myself very well, but I’ve emailed Bloomingdale’s 50 times. I’ve emailed Sephora and made phone calls. I’ve got this great product and nobody wants to even hear me.

LR: Let me just tell you that when you sent me your samples, my reaction was “Another bath product. Oh my god, it’s got a pretty label, but who cares?” But now, if you went into my shower – which I would not allow you to do, because I barely know you – you would see how many bath gels are there. I used [one of yours] so much that when there were dregs in the bottom of the bottle, I poured water in and shook it up so that I would get more. I should be writing your copy, because when you lather up, it fills your shower with a beautiful scent. So, it isn’t just that that lovely scent is going on your body, it’s also filling your atmosphere. It’s fantastic.

GS: Thank you. And the amazing thing about it is that the product that’s gotten us the most attention has been our body lotion and our scrub. The way I like to describe the line is “we use only high-end ingredients,” but the shower gel that you use has so many amazing floral extracts in it that make our product line unique. We like to focus on aromatherapy. We use lavenders and vanillas. We use avocado oil a lot. Ginseng we put in our products. It’s a product for the mind and soul and body.

LR: It really is. Let’s start with my favorite, which is the shower gel, [which sells for] $24. Tell me what the range is on shower gels, as far as pricing is concerned.

GS: They range anywhere from 99 cents to $50 plus, depending on the department store you’re in.

LR: You can’t just think of department stores. I want you to think of the universe, because everything is available to every woman today. She can buy this wherever she wants, and she ain’t going to the department store so much anymore. When she goes in there, she is tempted. Our Mother’s Day dot-com business for Teleflora was up 10% in this hideous economy because people don’t want to go shopping. It can be too tempting.

GS: Yes, I know. I’ve already been told to stay clear. I’d like to keep it in spas and boutiques in this economy. Another thing with bath and body products is it’s not like an electronic product where someone reads the specs on it – “Oh, this is how many gigabytes my computer has, there’s the size of the screen, the resolution” – and then they buy it. My type of line, somebody has to try it. Once they try it, we do a very nice online business.

LR: Who are you emulating in the treatment businesses? Who is your role model?

GS: We’re still trying to find our niche. I like to compare us to Origins, where you’re given a luxury product at a very reasonable price.

LR: Let’s talk turkey. Are you making money?

GS: Yes, we’re making money, but it’s a small business that needs to support two people, me and my business partner. Yes, it is a profitable business, but we don’t really have the budget to go at it aggressively. I work with a lot of the showrooms, and I thought that that was going to be huge for us, [but] it wasn’t that miracle that I had hoped it would be.

LR: I see clearly what you have to do. Let me tell you what I think will make you successful. I only share this information because it’s very rare that you find a product that has so much integrity – especially in the beauty business. Most products, especially at the lower end, have cheap fillers and lots of chemicals. That is the last thing our skin needs, with all the assault we are getting from our compromised environment.

First: Identify your consumer. I think, after using your products, that it is no accident that you do well at Bendel’s. So, your consumer is probably an upwardly mobile, 25-45-year-old woman. She cares about taking care of herself, but she doesn’t want to do anything negative to the environment, and she doesn’t want her body to absorb anything horrible. This woman is shopping less in department stores, she is shopping online.

Second: Create a dynamic and motivating website. Yours is pretty and simple, but there is nothing to grab your attention. Your virtues don’t sing, and the selling part – well, that is pretty weak. Unless you were already intimate with the line, you wouldn’t buy.

GS: I agree with that. I was looking at all my competitors’ websites, and they were all flashing specials and this and that. I wanted it to be very minimalist. You just click on products, you see the products that you want to see.

LR: Read the chapter [of Rubies in the Orchard] again about search engine optimization. Every time a consumer refreshes or visits the site, you need to feature a new product. There’s a certain formula. Let’s say today we’re featuring the body scrub. There’s a big picture of the body scrub. There’s all kinds of text. You need the text to be picked up by the search engines. People love a story. They’re not buying a product, they’re buying a story. There would be pictures of you working in Israel with the people at the Dead Sea.

Third: Go out to the blogosphere and contact every blogger who is interested in women’s natural bath and body products. Send them your two or three best products, with the whole romance and story. They will start to blog about you. Okay?

Owner and Founder Gregg Schwartz shows off his product line at New York's Henri Bendel.

Additionally, the SEO – your search engine optimization – on your site will be naturally increased by the blogosphere’s links and references. You will Twitter. You will have a Facebook page. You will have your own blog. You will have testimonials on your site. You will link to other sites.

I love Henri Bendel’s; I was raised there. But they are only in New York City and their special brand is available to very few. If you want a model that will survive, you are going to have to invest in an online strategy. The department stores that won’t return your phone calls may not be here two years from now; but the Internet is here to stay.

There was a writer in the ‘60s I used to love. He used to say, “If the greatest snow skier in the world lived in darkest Africa, no one would ever know.” You are the snow skier in Africa. No one knows you are there.

GS: I could be wrong, but I think a bath and body product is a thing that somebody needs to try versus read about.

LR: No! Because the bloggers will write about it and love it. Who can try everything? My daughter and I, in the olden days, used to sashay up to the treatment counter and say to the salesgirls, “Lie to us.” We didn’t try the damned thing! We said, “Tell us the five biggest lies about your products,” and we would go home armed with eternal youth. This is a romance story. Offer a money back guarantee. That is always a comfort.

GS: Got you.

LR: The other thing you need to do, once you can afford it, is to hire an event team. You put together a small tester size with two or three of your best products, and you get those in every bag at the Academy Awards, at the movie premieres, everywhere. You don’t even need such high-profile events. Go to art openings and marathons in the New York area. I always say, if you love your product, you have to learn to give it away.

But this is doable. I would say that if you could invest $30-$50,000, you would be off and running. Now, I don’t know where you’ll get the money, but by the time you get a decent firm to design your website and you perform your outreach to the blogosphere and social media work, that’s going to cost you. And I promise you, if you do this successfully, within six months the stores you most covet will be coming to you.

GS: My model up until this point has been retail. Retail, to be able to have them try the product, to get it in their hands, and then bring them online.

Another reason why we kept it minimalist [is because] our entire line has probably about 20 SKUs. It’s just a very small line.

LR: That’s beautiful. They used to say in online shopping that the customer wanted to be empowered, so the more choices the merrier. As time went on, they realized something that I learned 30 years ago with the Franklin Mint: Don’t give them a million choices. They become overwhelmed.

LR: Are there any other products that you’re thinking of coming out with?

GS: Yes. Face products — day cream, night cream.

LR: Now, what are you going to bring to that? Because, honey, that is a crowded category. You’re fighting everybody. Do you really have something special?

GS: Our scrubs are our best seller. We probably sell more scrubs than everything else combined. So, stick with something along those lines, I guess.

LR: What else could you add to a scrub?

The Priel product line offers an array of options from every color of the rainbow.

GS: Fragrances.

LR: What about the applicator? I’ll tell you what I do with my scrub: I put it on one of those plastic loofah things, because otherwise it gets under your fingernails. So, that would be a nice add-on. You could also do a dry brush. You know, it really helps if they dry brush before they go in the shower, and then take off all that dead skin with the scrub. These are things that are cheap that you can buy for a few bucks, and they’re add-ons, you know?

Look at Amazon. There’s a state-of-the-art venture. I just bought Daisy Miller. They will list at the bottom everything else a Daisy Miller buyer bought. And when – Henry James happens to be dead, unfortunately — but the next time that author’s book comes out, they’re going to send me an e-mail blast. You should be e-mail-blasting your customers once a week. So, that’s my recommendation for you. I know it’s not happy news, but it’s worth it.

GS: It’s a reality check. Thank you so much. This has been extremely helpful.

LR: Okay, and I’m placing a big order today, because I ran out of my bath gel.

GS: Whatever you want is on me. I want to pay; consider it a down payment on your new website.

LR: No, no, I’m happy to. Otherwise you’ll go out of business being so nice to people. Have a great day.

GS: Thank you.