Thank you for considering adding BookBones to your product offerings.
As a “Keystone” margin product, BookBones make a fine addition to most retail product offerings and can contribute materially to your bottom line. Your cost is $3.95 each and our recommended retail price is $7.95. With our minimum wholesale order of 24, your initial investment will be a minimum of $94.80 plus shipping (actual postage cost). All wholesale orders are shipped via US Postal Service Priority Mail Flat Rate boxes. Shipping cost per case of up to 48 is $10.20 to anywhere in the US and its territories.
By way of introduction, my name is Dan Fletcher. I invented and first started making BookBones by hand in my garage ten years ago. I first began making them during the week and selling them myself at a local market on weekends. Over time, I personally sold more than 10,000 of them directly to individual retail customers. I can therefore tell you with certainty that the average purchaser of a BookBone is a woman between the ages of 30 and 70. If this sounds like your customer base, BookBones should make the perfect addition to your product offerings. Also, tourists of both sexes and all ages buy our souvenir versions in large number.
Over time, we have grown from my garage to a much larger production facility and, with the exception of our website, we no longer sell retail. I do however pay close attention to comments from our retailers. In fact, most of our standard artwork was created at the request of our retail partners. Also, as an authorized BookBone retailer, you have the option of offering custom printed BookBones to your customers and if you have tourist traffic, let us know and together we can design a souvenir version especially for you.
As you are by now aware, we produce BookBones in four bright colors; Red, Blue, Green and Pink. Over time they will sell in approximately equal amounts. You may have a Blue day or a Red day but by and large sales of different colors will equal out. This generalization does not hold true with regard to our Military designs or the Star of David.
While all of our current designs sell well to retail customers, clearly some do so better than others and your experience with our product will have a lot to do with the demographics of your customers and the location of your outlet. Please click the "Best Sellers" link on the menu bar for a listing and discussion of our best selling BookBones.
As you evaluate our product for potential inclusion in your offerings, please consider the following: In November of 2005 a dealer at the City Market in Charleston South Carolina began selling our product. In the 12 months following, that dealer sold more than 3,000 BookBones. Yep, you read it right, that's three thousand BookBones in one year from a single location. As his average on-hand inventory is approximately 200, his annual return on investment is outstanding by any measure. While he sells many of our designs, his top sellers are the Quick Kitchen Equivalents and a custom printed Charleston souvenir version. It is important to also note that he has repeated or exceeded his first year sales level every year since he began selling our product.
Of course, I'm not trying to tell you that you will do that well but if you have high customer traffic and that traffic includes tourists, there is no reason you can't.
I thank you again for your interest in our product. Please feel free to contact me personally with any questions or concerns you may have.