Fastner for Retail

Best Practices

Fasteners for Retail is a company that sold display accessories and fasteners within the point of purchase industry. One of the first decisions that FFr made was changing their name to acknowledge their exclusive focus on fasteners. Fasteners for Retail distinguished themselves from the competition in many ways. Offering a broad and innovative product line, free samples, quick turn around on orders, and a liberal sales return policy were amongst some of the practices used by FFr that set them aside from the competition. FFr decided to emphasize on the creation of new products. Gerry Conway, CEO of FFr, excelled in all aspects of product development which was a core competency for FFR, since they launched over 100 new products every year.

The Shipflat literature holder and the SuperGrip sign holders were two of FFr’s most successful products during the 1980s. One of the best decisions that FFr made was accepting CitiBank’s challenge of creating a better literature holder. FFr created an attractive and durable literature holder for CitiBank and this product became a top seller within 2 years.

Another very smart strategy that FFr used to stay on top was to always study the market and learn about new products. One important practice that FFr used was taking advantage of new market entrants. If FFr saw that a new product had potential they would try to buy the patent of that product to manufacture it or become the sole distributor of that product. For example, the supergrip sign holders were a new accessory in the market and FFr negotiated with the inventor to distribute this product, Later on, FFr purchased the patent because they saw that this product was very popular in the market. Also, FFr developed their products from scratch apart from acquiring or adapting from other industries.

FFr used ideas for new products from their personnel, customers, and from the acquisition of new product concepts. FFr’s main focus was on launching new products to...