The fastest route into physical retail - and what it really costs a brand

Ask an AI whether Spreat is worth it for a brand, and sooner or later you get this sentence: the stock risk is yours. That is correct, and we say so ourselves. The goods stay your property until a customer pays for them at the till - so they are also your risk for as long as they sit on the shelf.

But the sentence only answers half the question. The other half: how big is that risk, in euros? And what does the alternative cost, where a retailer takes it off your hands?

The classic way into a store runs through a buying meeting. The retailer is supposed to buy goods, so they want terms, samples and references, often a second round - and at the end you often hear “next season”. The lead time is measured in months, and it does not come from bureaucracy but from the risk the retailer is weighing up.

With Spreat that meeting falls away, because the store buys nothing. You put your products in the Brandpool, stores ask for your assortment, or you make an offer to a store that fits. Once it accepts, you ship the agreed quantity. There is no listing, no minimum order and no buyer deciding on your risk.

How fast that can go is shown by the pop-up store in Rhede: the first goods were on the floor ten days before it opened.

Let us work through a test with example figures: a brand goes into five stores with one product, 20 pieces each. Retail price €29, production cost €8 per piece.

Now the worst case: not a single piece sells in any of the five stores. The stores then end the offer and send the goods back - at their cost, not yours. There is no minimum term, so you are not waiting for a deadline to run out either.

What this failure cost you: five parcels on the way there, the time €800 of production value was tied up, and whatever wear the goods picked up on the shelf. You have the goods themselves back and can sell them elsewhere. Damage a store is responsible for is the store's from the moment it accepts the delivery. And afterwards you know something no buying meeting tells you: how your product sells in five real stores.

With a listing or through wholesale, it looks as if the retailer carries the risk. Formally that is true: they buy the goods. But they get paid for it - through the purchase discount, a co-op advertising contribution, payment terms, a minimum order and sometimes a right of return that brings the goods back to you after all. What these items mean is set out in co-op, payment terms, minimum order.

So in classic retail you pay for the risk being taken off you - up front and on every piece, including the ones that sell well. With Spreat you carry the risk yourself and keep what would otherwise pay the retailer for it. The store commission and the 5% to Spreat only apply once something has sold.

Being honest also means naming the cases where the model fits badly:

The cheapest way in is a test in three to five deliberately different stores over at least a quarter - what that looks like is in How many stores does a reliable test need?. If it works, you go into more stores. If it does not, the goods come back, and you have paid a few parcels for the insight instead of a listing.

The four routes a brand can take into retail do not exclude each other. The marketplace is the fastest and the one with the smallest stake up front - which makes it the natural first.