3 Tips for Keeping Off-Spec Products off the Gray Market
Businesses thrive because they share their products with paying customers. Often these paying customers find the products through vendors. Unfortunately, the gray market diverts interested customers away from official product vendors so they can sell off-spec products for cheap.
How can you keep off-spec products off the gray market? We offer three tips below for protecting your brand, products, and customers.
Educate Customers So They Can Recognize Off-Spec Products
While you can target the gray market directly, the best way to protect your products and customers is to educate those customers. If your customers can recognize that a product is off-spec, such as something that’s been discontinued or damaged, then they will not buy it.
Social media and direct contact such as email are good ways to educate your loyal customers. Share information about what off-spec products look like, names of official product vendors, and what to do if they see a suspicious site.
Invest in a High-Quality Monitoring Program
Educated customers may spot gray market vendors for you. However, your business needs to do more to find and stop those vendors. A high-quality monitoring program is the best investment for doing so.
Monitoring programs can analyze minimum advertised pricing online, which can help you spot unofficial vendors selling off-spec products for unofficial prices. A high-quality system can also scan marketplaces, vendor sites in the area and abroad, and known gray market sites.
Destroy Off-Spec Products
Gray market vendors can’t sell off-spec products if those products don’t exist. While you may hesitate to destroy something you worked hard to create, it’s the best way to prevent those products from falling into the wrong hands.
Partner with a trusted waste management company to safely destroy off-spec products. They will take your products and dispose of them in a safe manner so no one else will ever get their hands on them.
Our tips for keeping off-spec products off the gray market is to prioritize client education, invest in monitoring software, and find someone you trust to destroy certain products. Clean Management Environmental Group offers secure product destruction. Our services are confidential and certified so you can trust us to get the job done right.