subject: How to start a retail business by licensing [print this page] How to start a retail business by licensing
Before you try to make the leap to multiunit retail, ask yourself these basic questions: Does your product fit a requirement simply waiting to be tapped? Have you ever already found a multiunit retailer that's a sensible fit for your product?
What's it about your product that might build a buyer see fit to require a likelihood on your product? If you land the deal, can your production handle the amount? Do you wish to sell your product directly to the retailer, or do you wish to license your product to a manufacturer who'll then distribute it for you?
Kevin Hester took the licensing approach along with his Cajun Chickcan, a wire caddy he designed to solve the problem of beer can chicken recipes run amuck by the cooking bird's toppling tendencies.
Once patenting his plan and marketing the caddies to local, independent hardware retailers, Hester asked himself all the proper questions and discovered his product was ready for prime time. It didn't hurt that a popular cookbook on creating beer will chicken and a barbecue guru extolling the beer-tender fowl's virtues were fueling demand for his product among Yank barbecue chefs in love with the idea of poultry impaled on a can of suds.
Hester's next step? Knowing that he needed some facilitate obtaining exposure for the Chickcan, he went on the lookout for a licensee. Walking the aisles of Home Depot and Lowes led him to Rodney Barber, owner of Bayou Classic in Brandon, Mississippi, who agreed to license the merchandise, manufacture it and acquire it on the shelves.
"Barber invented the turkey fryer, and he saw what a good product may initiate and do ... He helped me launch into the large box stores, that I would not have been in a position to do [on my own]," Hester said. Now the Chickcan is on the aisles in Wal-Marts throughout the country, and Hester earns royalties from an estimated $four million in sales per year.
