One of the natural bi-products of dealing with other brand creators when bringing new product into our catalogue is the inevitable relationships that stem from the business interaction. I’ve found myself very fortunate to have met some extremely interesting people in this industry.
Last week, I started to write an article about this very subject but found that writers block was beating me up pretty hard. This issue was simply that I didn’t know how to show gratitude to one company or their liaison without feeling like I had left someone else out. This is unavoidable when we provide 90+ brands; there are just too many people we work with that have made a positive impact on the business and on myself personally. To alleviate that, I figured I would pick one company at a time and share my experiences with them.
Today I wanted to recognize Austin Grace from TD Distro in the US. TD Distro is the company that brought us Tear Drip, Hi Drip and Salty Dawg. Setting the amazing lineup of products they make aside for a moment, I wanted to recognize Austin for some of the assistance he’s provided to help his product succeed in Canada.
One of the great challenges of bringing in a brand from international origins is that regardless of the popularity the product has in its home country, it usually doesn’t translate across the boarder. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization, but they are few and far between. Some companies are happy to sell us product and leave the marketing strategy to our own devices. This is perfectly fine if we have creative license to promote the product the way we see fit. The other option is that the brand owner works with the international distributor to build the product popularity by providing samples and swag to stores looking to carry the brand for their customers.
What Austin has been doing is something we don’t see very often. In many scenarios, Austin has felt like a part of our team by reaching out to stores directly to promote his brand and filtering the fulfillment through True North Vapor to create a very synergistic relationship that is both profitable and has longevity. We’ve had many conversations on how we can work together to promote his big sellers in the US like Pearamel from Tear Drip (Pear Drizzle in Canada), Blood Orange Pineapple from Hi Drip and Blue from his Salty Dawg line. The end goal is to provide the consumer with an array of products that was otherwise difficult for Canadians to get their hands on, and Austin has been instrumental in helping us achieve that goal.
Although these three lines have only been in the country for a short couple of months, watch out for your local vape shops to be prominently displaying these big winners, they’re here to stay!
Tim Howey
General Manager
True North Vapor
Copyright © 2019 True North Vapor - POWERED BY DVINE