Do you ever find yourself just overloaded with ideas? Do you dream big, and have a drive to take these ideas and make them into reality?
If so, come and have a seat by me. I’m a keeper of an entrepreneurial spirit myself, and I love nothing more than helping people get their products to market.
But let me back up a moment. I’m Nicky, founder and CEO of RangeMe. I’ve been where you are—amazing product, ready for the market…and slim chance of getting a major retailer to talk to me and about getting that product into the hands of consumers.
About three years ago my little girl had just horrible eczema. A local chemist had created a compound that worked wonders on her skin. And I soon found out that this compound had a wide and wild following—so many people were devoted to this product. And that’s an opportunity, right?
Needless to say, my CPG drive kicked in, and I started working with the chemist on formulas, developing packaging, trademarking the name—all of the things you do when you’re creating an innovative product for the general public.
And then I started working on the retailer pitch to gauge interest.
What I found was that unless you are a big brand name, it’s incredibly difficult to get access to major retailers. It’s the ultimate frustration for innovators, to be so close and then come to a complete stop.
But I didn’t stop.
“I’ve been where you are—amazing product, ready for the market…and slim chance of getting a retailer to talk to me and about getting that product into the hands of consumers.”
From my time working for blue-chip consumer goods companies like Pepsi and Kellogg, I was fortunate to have contacts in the retailer space, and I started doing some research. What I found was that retailers had their own problems with sourcing innovative products —they didn’t have a good mechanism to contact suppliers, and when they did get proposals, the suppliers often didn’t know what information the retailers needed to make a decision on their product.
And from that, RangeMe was born. Take a look around our site, and you’ll see that this platform is a love letter to all of the innovators—big and small—who want to change the face of the marketplace.
From the beginning this has been a labor of love for me—I drained my savings for the initial funding, brought on investors who have the same entrepreneurial spirit I do, and developed this from my living room, as my daughter—really the impetus for this entire company—and my second child watched on.
There’s so much more I want to tell you about, but I’ll save it for another post. For now, I can just say that it’s been an incredible journey so far, and it’s just getting started.
