So, what actually is Sellar?
So, what actually is Sellar?!?!
So, what actually is Sellar?!?!
“A route to market? A trade store? A better version of Eebria? “
All are answers we often hear when we ask breweries what they think Sellar is after they’ve applied for access, and the reason I think we’ve had a hard time answering this question is that… we’re building something quite different for the industry.
When we started Sellar, we understood the problems we were setting out to solve. We were also very clear on our mission of building the best trade-selling experience for craft breweries but, we didn’t know what exactly that something would become.
And because Sellar, whatever that is, is constantly evolving, the answer to ‘what is Sellar?’ has shifted over time too.
To help with the challenge we’ve had in answering this question, we even recently invented a new word to represent the future that we are striving to build → Sellar is: The Marketspace for Craft Beer.
So, what is it? I think you can break Sellar down into three parts:
Sellar Lists
Your new supercharged availability list
The first part, the core of Sellar, at the possible risk of oversimplification, can be distilled down to a very simple concept: Sellar is your availability list.
So not a trade store? No. Not quite.
Today, you’re probably sharing pricing and availability through PDFs, spreadsheets, or email. Maybe a combination. The big problem with offline availability lists is that they go out of date. This leads to admin as they are in constant need of revision. Think about every time you release a new beer or another sells out. Think about the back-and-forth this creates over email sucking your time away from more important areas of the business.
Plus, trade sales are often not one-size-fits-all. One customer might get different pricing than another. Maybe there are certain products that are only available to local customers. Maybe there are just different delivery charges or minimum order quantities to communicate depending on where they are based. Maybe one customer gets 30-day credit terms, but new customers pay up-front. Whatever the differences are, communicating this type of info on a 1:1 basis with each and every new trade customer isn’t scalable.
What if instead, that PDF or spreadsheet you were sharing always knew what products you had in stock, what price book every customer was on, what products they were supposed to see and when they were supposed to pay? What if this magic spreadsheet not only saved you this time and hassle but also helped increase your conversion rate of prospects into paying customers?
That’s what Sellar Lists do. At its core, Sellar is a smart availability list that solves all these problems by personalising the buying experience for any trade customer. You load in your delivery areas, products, pricing books and any bespoke customer terms and now you can offer any customer (new or existing) the industry's best trade buying experience.
What’s cool is that with one simple link to your Sellar List, buyers can actually place their order. If you’re using one of our integration partners for inventory management, their order gets put straight through without any manual order entry. If you’re not using production or inventory management software, Sellar takes care of this by organising all of your orders and customer data in one place. We’ve spent a lot of time glueing together workflows to automate a lot of the annoying little manual tasks that add up with every single order.
What’s even cooler is that through using your Sellar availability list you can expect to see a 6% increase in average basket sizes, an 8% increase in the average number of orders per customer each month, and a 26% higher conversion rate from traffic into actual orders from your online presence.
Sellar Shipping
Your new nationwide logistics solution
Back in the early days of Sellar, when Sellar was just your availability list, one of the biggest problems we used to hear about revolved around distribution.
Direct trade sales were typically limited to local areas which drastically reduced the size of your potential market. The exception was working with couriers and hauliers.
These options were okay for certain use cases. For example, if a customer was prepared to order by the pallet or limit their order to just small pack. However, getting a new customer to order a pallet's worth of beer can be a tough sell, and using couriers often means limiting your product range as most won’t take heavy casks or kegs.
Also, depending on the volume of packages you’re sending, it’s likely the rates you’re getting aren’t as good as they could be which either means a lower profit margin, or running the risk of putting off buyers with high delivery charges that make the price of your products uncompetitive. If you are sending high volumes via couriers, while you might have better pricing, you’ll already know how painstakingly manual the process of booking shipments is.
We knew there was a better way so in the summer of 2022 we launched Sellar Shipping. Leveraging the shipping volume across all the breweries we were working with, we could negotiate better rates, better weight limits, better service levels, and build an experience that was completely integrated.
Now some of our partners are saving up to £10k per year on courier costs, growing their average order size through being able to offer their entire product range at more competitive prices and expanding their obtainable market to the whole of the UK.
Gamechanger as they say.
Sellar Market
Your brand in front of 20k+ trade customers
One of the best parts of using Sellar as your availability list is that you can also make your products available to the fastest-growing network of trade buyers across the UK.
Due to the challenges breweries face in growing beyond their direct delivery area, the answer for many is to work with middlemen. I understand the appeal. Typically you can tap into the customer base they are already serving and leverage their sales team to help get your name out there. However, the trade-off is giving up margin, control and the ability to build and foster real relationships.
In craft beer, margins are under attack and as a result, people are shifting towards higher-margin, direct sales channels. At Sellar, we’re of the opinion that direct sales are the gold standard. Nothing replaces them. They are the strongest form of trade sales. Not only are they the highest margin, but you can also build real relationships with real people and trade buyers have always pointed to the importance of relationships and service when it comes to deciding who to order from.
But, nothing worth having comes easy and as with any business, success relies on getting your sales function right. The challenge? Direct sales are hard. It’s costly. Costly both in terms of time and money. Either you are running sales (prospecting through to account management), or you’ve got sales staff on the payroll. You can’t escape building a solid process. Sellar Lists and Sellar Shipping were built to help you with this. Sellar Lists help to make sure your sales resource is focused on actual sales rather than just sales admin while Sellar Shipping enables you to sell directly to anyone across the UK.
But wouldn’t sales be a hell of a lot easier if qualified buyers rocked up on your doorstep with an order? That’s Sellar Market. A way to supplement your existing direct efforts. Designed in a way we feel breweries deserve. Where breweries are not commoditised. Where breweries own the relationships they form. Where Sellar doesn’t just become an extra channel for faceless orders but a way for you to build real relationships with real people.
By using Sellar Lists, you’re able to opt-in to Sellar Market. This makes your products searchable across a wide catalogue of real-time product info from the best craft breweries across the UK. It’s better because trade buyers can access your full range of products, you’re in control of how it gets there, and trade buyers get your actual direct pricing means more margin for you and a better price for your customers.
Despite being relatively new, Sellar Market is the most cost-effective customer acquisition channel available on the market. Designed for breweries to control what they depend on.
If you’ve made it to here, you should now have a pretty good understanding of What Sellar actually is. To sum it up: Sellar is the better way to run your trade sales. We are building The Marketspace for Craft Beer. But, WTF is a Marketspace?!
To learn more about if Sellar could work for your brewery, fill out this form and one of the team can arrange some time to learn more about how trade sales are currently working for you and advise if we can help.