Swadesh Padhi

About ForestNation: ForestNation operates in the gifting and promotional products industry, offering sustainable alternatives to traditional gifts along with unique engagement tools for cause marketing. The problems: They sold directly to companies with a Sales led model. It was a one person Sales team handling mostly inbound leads driven by word of mouth. Sales were seasonal and sporadic, there was no consistent month on month sales when I joined which led to a lot of instability in the business. How I tried to solve the problem: I initiated a hiring campaign to get more Sales people onboard to the team so we can scale outreach. We hired around 20 people on a commission only basis (couldn’t afford salaries). But this didn’t work out as the Sales people were not successful enough to earn sufficiently through commissions. I also felt the new hires weren’t given much freedom in their roles and were micromanaged by the Founder and Sales Head. The solution - Partnerships with Distributors: When we search for key terms like ‘promotional products’ or ‘employee gifts’, websites of promotional products distributors pop up. We saw them as competitors, but with some digging, I realized we should partner up with them instead because these people have got regular clients and huge sales forces that we can’t overpower. So with much difficulty, I managed to convince our management to take this approach. This is what I did: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Registered in PPAI, the promotional products industry association of North America Joined industry groups on social media and started participating in discussions, not with a promotional mindset Revised our pricing model to suit Distributors Created Distributor friendly assets Researched other suppliers to see how we stand and how we can improve our offerings to Distributors Connected with industry peers and a lot of them helped shaped our offerings Partnered with Multi line Reps who represented us at industry events in the US Got the biggest win when we secured a partnership with Reciprocity Road, a multi Distributor buying group who care about giving back ● ● ● ● 🙂 Orders started to come in Worked hard to create successful campaigns for the end clients - this wowed the Distributors and helped us secure repeat orders The Distributors themselves became our clients, purchasing our products for their sustainability promotion and gifting campaigns As an add on, we also communicated the value of our digital offerings, and Distributors started selling that too to clients like Microsoft! Main products sold through these partnerships were custom branded, sold in bulk. Solution to irregular sales - Partnerships with Gifting platforms ● ● ● ● Reached out to gifting platforms like Snappy, Postal, Sendoso, Gifts for Good - these gifting platforms are outside the promotional products industry. Solved an integration problem by setting up Shopify store just for these partners Started listing our products and saw immediate results. Created a steady stream of revenue every month. Results were so good in the first holiday season with partners, that we had to unlist the products during peak season as we couldn’t keep up with the demand (had to revamp our production capabilities after this). Results and Takeaways We had sales worth $22,000 in one month (could have been more in full capacity). Maximum sales that we had before this was $4000 during the holiday season. Overall, the Partnerships channels account for around 50% of the sales of ForestNation today! Without having to spend a dollar on advertising (of course the partners take commissions on sales) This channel is the most promising way for ForestNation to scale by onboarding more and more Distributors and gifting platforms. Efforts need to be put in though in nurturing relationships with the partners. I did this by creating special impact success stories for them to share with their clients and community. And I always thought of new products to add and new ways to make further impact with the partners - which they loved :)