Nobody Is Going to Pioneer Your Brand For You
When I launched Abaco Polarized I thought my industry relationships would open doors.
For years I had been on the buying side, purchasing brand name sunglasses at volume, attending trade shows, and building what I genuinely believed were strong relationships with the sales reps who called on me. I had spent good money with those reps. I had taken their calls. I had bought their lines.
Then I walked into my first trade show on the other side of the table with my own brand.
Surf Expo. Same building. Same reps. Same handshakes. Different role.
I was excited to share my new brand with the reps I had been working with for years. The conversation went very differently than I expected.
Every single one of them said no.
Most of them told me flat out that they were not interested in pioneering a new brand. Others gave me the "I'll get back to you," which they never did. They only wanted established lines with proven reorders and a foundation already in place. The relationships I had built over years of buying turned out to be buying relationships. The moment I stopped being a customer and started being a brand, the relationships stopped with it.
Not one of them would even make an introduction.
I Did Not Know Anything About Wholesaling
Here is something that surprises most people when I tell them. When I started Abaco Polarized it was never intended to be a wholesale brand. The reason is simple. I did not know anything about wholesaling.
I was a retailer. I knew how to open a store, buy other people's products, and sell them. I knew how to efficiently list thousands of products online by scraping supplier inventory and connecting it to our website. I had figured out drop shipping before drop shipping had a name. But walking into a store and pitching my own brand to a buyer? That was a completely different world and I was starting from zero.
Abaco Polarized started as a DTC brand. We were selling sunglasses online and building the brand one customer at a time. And then something happened that changed everything.
The Flyboard Sponsorship That Started It All
A professional flyboarder named Rush who lived locally came to me and told me that he and his team loved our sunglasses and asked if we would sponsor them. I had never heard of flyboarding. I did not even know it was a sport. But he told me he was ranked number 8 in the world so I looked it up and sure enough he was.
I sponsored Rush and his team with 8 pairs of sunglasses and honestly did not expect much in return.
A few weeks later Rush called and asked if I wanted to bring Abaco Polarized to the 2017 Pro Watercross Flyboard National Tour and World Championship in Naples, Florida, about two hours from where we were based in Palm Beach. I knew nothing about selling at a local event. It did not exactly excite me. But I figured I would give it a shot.
They set us up at the entrance next to a BBQ tent selling ribs. A green Coleman tent from Home Depot. Cheap display stands from Amazon. Looking back I am genuinely surprised anyone stopped to buy based on the presentation we had.
But they did.
People walked into that event wearing Oakley sunglasses, the hottest brand at the time, $200 pairs, and they stopped at our booth and bought Abacos. At the end of the day I turned to my employee Maureen and pointed out into the stands. Every person we could see was wearing Abaco. They had come in wearing Oakley and left wearing us.
It was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
The promoter came up to us at the end of the event and said people clearly loved our product. He asked if we wanted to come back the following week for the Pro Watercross Jet Ski Championship. I told him I would gladly return.
Same setup the following week. Green Coleman tent. Cheap display stands. And another great day of sales.
Then a man stopped at our tent and bought a pair for himself, his wife, and his two kids. He came back about 15 minutes later and asked me a question I was not ready for.
"Do you wholesale your sunglasses?"
My immediate response was no. As a retailer purchasing brand name designer eyewear we had always been required to agree that we would never resell those products to other stores. It is called diversion in the wholesale world and it was printed on the back of every invoice we ever received. That conditioning was so deeply ingrained that no came out of my mouth before I even thought about it.
Then I stopped.
Wait. This is my brand. I can sell to whoever I want, whenever I want.
I asked him what he had in mind. He told me he was the buyer for the Marco Island Marriott, the flagship Marriott in the country, and that if we sold to his hotel I should not be surprised if other Marriott properties picked us up as well.
It did not take long to reconsider.
I told him he could purchase our sunglasses at 50% off retail and we shook on it.
The First Display
I called my local contractor that same week and told him we needed to build a display for our sunglasses. I drew what I envisioned on a piece of paper, went to Floor and Decor to pick out materials, and we built our first display out of dark grey wood. It looked great.
I shipped the display and sunglasses to the Marriott and three days later the buyer called me.
"Your sunglasses sell fast. I sold more Abaco sunglasses in three days than the brand we currently carry sells in two weeks. And they are in two locations in our hotel and you are only in one. Send me a reorder and another display."
That was the moment I understood the power of wholesale. No longer was I fighting to sell one sunglass at a time online and hoping that customer came back. I was selling 36 sunglasses at a time and getting reorders.
I walked into my office like a scene from the Wolf of Wall Street and told my team to pump the brakes. We were shifting gears. We were pausing DTC and going all in on wholesale.
The decision was not just about revenue. It was about respect. I had spent years as a retailer watching the brands I carried compete with me online, undercut my prices, and make it impossible for me to make a margin. I did not want to be that brand. Going 80% wholesale and 20% DTC was a deliberate choice to build a brand that actually supported the retailers carrying it. That ratio is by design and it still is today.
The Drive Around Florida
One week later I packed my Suburban, told my wife I was driving to Naples for the Jet Ski Championship and I did not know when I would be home. After the event I was going to drive around the perimeter of Florida and walk into every store I passed.
She asked when I would be back. I told her when I felt like I had opened enough accounts. I did not have a number in mind. I only had one account at that point and I did not want to guess. I knew I would know when the time was right.
I made myself one promise. I would stop in every single store I passed. No exceptions.
I kept that promise.
I remember one moment in particular on my way back from the panhandle, the furthest point from my home in Palm Beach. I was rubber necking into a shopping center trying to spot anything worth stopping in and I had already passed the entrance before I noticed a shoe store called Lifestyle Shoes. There was no easy place to turn around. I was tired. I had been on the road for weeks.
I almost kept driving.
But I had made a promise. So I turned around.
I walked in with my samples and asked for the buyer. I was introduced to Tiffany, who told me I was in luck because the owner Joy Hardy was also there. They both loved the sunglasses. They placed an order on the spot.
That was one of the proudest moments I have had as a business owner. Not because of the order. Because I had almost talked myself out of going back. Because I kept my promise when it would have been easy not to. And because that one store I almost skipped became my first chain account.
I kept driving. I kept stopping. I did that until I had 200 accounts.
That is when the independent sales reps started calling me. They had been seeing Abaco Polarized popping up everywhere and now they wanted in.
Funny how that works.
The Lesson
Nobody is going to pioneer your brand for you. Not the sales reps who know your industry. Not the distributors who promise to open doors. Not the contacts you have built over years of being on the buying side of the business. When you are new and unproven the only person who is going to do the work is you.
Get in your car. Walk into every store. Make the pitch. Keep your promises to yourself even when nobody is watching and even when it is inconvenient.
The reps will call when you have done enough of the work yourself.
Abaco Polarized is now in over 500 stores throughout the US and Caribbean. It started with a green Coleman tent and a promise to stop in every store I drove by. Getting to 200 of those accounts was the hardest thing I had ever done. Keeping them turned out to be even harder, and that is a story for another post.
If you are at the stage of building your wholesale channel and want to talk about what that looks like with the right software and strategy behind you, we would love to hear from you.
Book a free consultation at sellifyhq.com
Greg is the founder of Sellify, the wholesale growth platform for modern brands. Before building Sellify he grew his own sunglasses brand Abaco Polarized from a local event tent to over 500 stores throughout the US and Caribbean.
