“I want to sell more gloves.”
“Do you have any issues selling more gloves?”
“Yeah. I don’t know which segments to target.”
Our customers often come to us for tips on growing their glove sales. Everybody who’s selling is looking for intel on how to move even a few more cases here or there.
Here are three keys to get you on the path to greater sales.
Select products to focus on
Which gloves should you sell them? That is, of course, important, but the question you should be asking is not which gloves are best for a particular industry. There is nothing wrong with getting caught up in specialization—however, our Top 6 gloves are well-suited for 90-ish percent of industrial applications.
The question, therefore, becomes the more direct and simple, “What is the job?”
There is not that much of a gap between which gloves you need for any given industries—but there is nuance, and you gain that only by becoming an expert on your customers’ needs.
How are the demands of automotive users different from those of foodservice? Get into the granular details of which gloves are right for the job in question.
Identify industry segments
Where do we think the growth areas are? Start with these:
- Oil and gas. Barring any major shakeups in how energy is delivered, these channels will continue to present opportunities. One of our customers in Texas who owns a safety, industrial, and pipeline company told us that in his area, oil and gas drilling has been thriving.
- Even if cars go all-electric, people who service them will continue to need gloves, and better gloves, as the work service technicians do continues to evolve. A Florida customer found that Raised Diamond Texture gloves are a perfect fit for the customers of his multi-branch truck parts firm. You can bet that as the need evolves, he will be there every step of the way.
- Market analysis tells us to expect an uptick in industrial need, projecting a 12%-15% growth in the global demand for single-use gloves annually from 2023. Pricing is lower now because of overcapacity—expected to last two more years—but the demand-supply situation will start to head toward equilibrium by 2025.
Automotive, foodservice, and janitorial are consistent high-volume, recurring categories. Customers, if they’re happy with the level of service you provide, will continue to buy from you. The initial sale matters less than what you can sustain moving forward.
“We see industrial markets remaining strong for the next few years,” says Corey Townsell, vice president of sales at AMMEX. “The post-pandemic landscape is a truer gauge of potential than we saw from 2020-’22. People bought the gloves they could get during the pandemic, and some of those worked out great for them—but others didn’t.”
Prioritize service and support
If you don’t keep up with your customers’ needs, you will be one and done for selling to them. Anybody who uses gloves can find them from any number of sources—but the vendors who deliver the best service, reliability, and support will retain more customers.
“End users are looking for three things: brand, quality, and reliability,” Townsell says. “Variety is available now, but there are still challenges with poor-quality products entering the marketplace due to the overcapacity at the manufacturer level that’s forcing some manufacturers to cut corners.”
Learn what your customers do, and what they use gloves for. The better you can tailor their experience for them, the more gloves you’ll sell in the long run.