Baby Splendor Business Review
Baby Splendor is a company dedicated to providing high quality baby products ranging from baby health care to baby accessories and even mother care products that would benefit a baby. The company operates it marketing based on network marketing through direct sales agents. Agents are recruited by other agents and are provided with training and promotional material to facilitate them to sell the baby care products. The company encourages agents to host parties at home and propagate the sale of products and the growth of its agent network.
The system works in a fairly simple manner. First, to become an agent one has to enroll by making a small investment in a starter kit that comprises of material that would help understand the business requirements. The kit would also contain product demonstration units as well as products for the personal use by the agent. Focusing completely on mothers, Baby Splendor creates a focused target audience for their direct sales agents to target for sales. An agent making a sale would avail up to twenty five percent of the price of the product as a commission. On becoming and agent, the agent would also benefit from being able to purchase the products for personal use at up to fifty present of the product price.
Unlike traditional marketing which relies on channel distribution and advertising to move its products from manufacture to retail and to create the demand by driving desire created by the advertising; direct marketing companies like Baby Splendor rely solely on the efforts of individual agents to undertake the marketing of the product. In a traditional system of marketing, the manufacturer would first utilize the services of a distributor who would undertake to transport the product through a channel of partner distributors, keep the product at various storage facilities and make the product available at retail outlets. This process involves a cost that is charged to the manufacturer ' who adds this cost by apportioning it amongst a certain number of products (in a manufacturing cycle). There is also the cost of retaining shelf space for which the manufacturer pays.
Besides the distribution, traditional marketing also uses the development of advertising content and the placement of this content in various media like television, radio and print to promote the product. Promotion is a continuous and expensive process since desire has to be created in the mind of the potential consumer. When the consumer goes to the point of sale and buys the product, a demand for the product is created. To sustain this demand, more promotional activities must be undertaken. The cost of this promotion is also built into the price of the product.
When a company like Baby Splendor relies on direct sales agents, it bypasses the distribution channel (since the product does not require being available at a retail point of sale) and does away with the need to advertise, since agents would directly identify potential customers and sell products to them. The money saved in not placing a product at a retail point and by not advertising is instead used to adequately incentivize the direct sales agents to promote and sell the products.
