The Power of Collaboration: What to Sell
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The Power of Collaboration: What to Sell

The Power of Collaboration

As a potential seller, how are you determining what products to bring to market? In sourcing or it is part of your job is to have trendy products available for purchase or anticipate products that will realize value as quickly as possible. Microtrends lasting anywhere from a couple of months to a few weeks, products gain and lose popularity quickly. You need to know what to sell to outpace competitors. 

Unfortunately, in this line of business, product sellers need to be able to identify a popular product, source it, and deliver it to the buyer before the demand drops. Luckily, there are several methods that direct-to-customer sellers can use to keep on top of trendy products and predict new ones. These methods include identifying popular things to sell, determining the best online sales, and developing new products. 

identifying what to sell

When determining what to sell, it’s obviously best to spend your time, energy, and resources on popular things to sell. However, with millions of products to sell, it can be overwhelming. The first two steps in identifying popular items to sell are to determine your niche and start using social media as a search engine.

Determine Your Niche

Determining your niche allows you to focus on your business and the type of product or products you want to sell. Customers are less likely to purchase from companies that provide numerous choices. By focusing on your product type, you also limit the competition you have to contend with. For example, your niche could be fashion accessories or kitchen tools. From there, you can decide what to sell.

Use Social Media as a Search Engine

After determining your niche, it’s time to find what people are raving about online. You can use popular social media platforms to search for similar products to yours and what people are saying about them. In determining popular things to sell, you can observe what products in your niche are trending online. Selling products that offer better, newer, or unique features helps separate yours from your competitors. Using social media as a search engine to see how similar products fare is a form of market research. After identifying popular things to sell, the next step is to look at the numbers by identifying which products sell well.

Determining the Best Online Sales

online sales

Determining the best online sales helps solidify what to sell. Finding data on the type of products you want to sell will confirm whether or not these products are worth your time, energy, and resources. To gather this data, you can research through e-commerce websites or see what people search for on search engines. 

Product Research and E-commerce Websites

When determining the best online sales, you can look to ecommerce websites like Amazon or others that facilitate reselling or direct-to-consumer sales. At these sites, you can conduct product research. If your niche is kitchen accessories, search for a specific product type, such as portable hot plates, and look at reviews. Take note of what features are included in the best-selling and most popular items so that your product can combine these features. Your search can also be broader, such as researching general kitchen accessories and seeing which products sell the best. This second method works better for determining overall product demand. 

See What People Are Searching For

In your search for what to sell, you can use Google Trends, which allows you to see how often people search for a particular word or phrase. In our kitchen accessory example, let’s say you want to see if people are searching for hot plates. Upon entering this phrase in Google Trends and limiting interest over time to 90 days, there is no worthy uptick in interest, so maybe hot plates aren’t the product to invest in. However, upon searching “grilling tools” under the same parameters, we can see a slight upward trend between December and March. This is likely because summer is approaching. In response, you can consider offering unique grilling tools to meet anticipated increased demand.

Selling products similar to those that have already made best-seller lists is a tried and true method of determining what to sell. However, the market can undergo saturation, depending on the product type you’d like to offer and the niche you’re focused on. This is where developing new products or iterating on features can help your products stand out. 

Developing New Products

develop new products

Developing new products can be difficult, but with market research and brainstorming, you can identify gaps in the market or iterate on features that could lead to a new product. When you introduce something novel to the market, you’ll have a unique opportunity to establish your brand and become synonymous with that product effectively.

Identify Gaps in the Market

How do you develop a product that could be useful if you don’t know what the product is? You can conduct market research to find which products people wish existed within your niche. Or, you can brainstorm. Think about your niche. What are some of the weaknesses of products within your niche? Are there unmet needs within your niche? As you contemplate your niche, consider these questions. For example, could you design a kitchen product that tracks when your vegetables will spoil rather than relying on remembering the date you have to use them by? You can also start by thinking about products you use within your niche and writing complaints. What new product would address them?

Iterate on Features

With your list of complaints, how would you change an existing product? Developing a whole new product can be overwhelming, so you may consider iterating on features of existing products. This method can be a stepping stone to creating an entirely new product, even one that combines distinct kitchen tasks. 

When determining what to sell, there are many product possibilities and opportunities. However, focusing your business on a specific niche and a couple of product types is a good recipe for success. Identifying popular things to sell, determining the best online sales, and developing new products require market research. Using social media as a search engine and Google Trends, collaborating with online tools has facilitated this process for resellers worldwide.

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Here at Gembah, we are united by our mission to help you create value faster with transparency built in from start to finish. Leading experts in the field have developed our platform to support product innovation. If you seek a single-platform solution for your product design and manufacturing process, trust Gembah.