Our experience is in design, engineering, and manufacturing with absolutely no experience in sales and marketing to the gift and accessories market. We have to go outside for this expertise until we learn it and become good at it, or until we can afford to hire someone who has the required skills. We are fortunate in that our product is unique and, therefore, to some extent sells itself. We would need to take market share from someone to grow and expand. There is no argument that sales and marketing are critical.
Nothing happens until somebody sells something.
We are learning as we go and, in the future, we will be much smarter about sales and marketing into our markets. Sales representatives are the answer. All industries have companies whose sole business is representing the manufacturer. In our industry there are hundreds of rep groups covering the country. We located a person who has experience in our market and, for a very reasonable fee, provided us with a mailing list of rep groups across the nation.