If what you're doing isn't working, do something different.

 As of April 1^st, Amerikan Body Art will start making some changes to our discounting programs. We will now differentiate between reseller accounts and professional artist accounts.  The idea is to make it more attractive for people who want to sell our products with some degree of exclusivity and to still allow professionals to get discounts when buying in volume. In addition to changing the discount program, we are also adding an affiliate program, an instructor program, and drop-shipping services.

Wholesale program for Resellers of Amerikan Body Art products

Resellers will receive 50% off retail prices for ABA branded items, 30% off bulk items and packaging (we will also be lowering prices on some of these items), and 20% off non-ABA brand items (such as face painting books and facepaint make-up).  For the most part, your prices will remain the same as they have been, and we will be able to offer you more products. We are working on a separate website for resellers to use in the near future, but for the time being, resellers will have to email their orders.  In order to be considered a reseller, you must show proof that you are marketing Amerikan Body Art products in your business…i.e. a link to your web page where you feature Amerikan Body Art products or a photo of Amerikan Body Art products displayed in your brick and mortar store.  The minimum purchase requirement for wholesale orders will remain at $200 except for drop-ship orders.

We will begin offering drop-shipping services for resellers as soon as we can get a few little issues worked out.  I’d appreciate any input on drop-shipping programs from those of you who already have a drop-shipping agreement with another company.

Volume Discounts for Professional Artists and Entertainment Companies

The most common complaints that we receive from professionals are about only needing to replenish a few stencil designs or some other item that professionals use up quickly, but not enough to place a discounted order.  So we will start adding volume discounts on stencils and other items that you professionals and entertainment companies go through quickly.  In order to allow for volume discounting on individual items, we are reducing our overall shopping cart discounting, but also lowering the threshold for receiving our highest professional discount.  The new overall cart discounts will be 10% off orders of $100 - $249 and 25% off orders of $250 or more. 

Instructor and Affiliate Programs – Earn money for your referrals and a rebate on your own orders.

A lot of you have supported us over the years by promoting our products simply because you believe in the integrity of our company and the quality of our products.  I feel like we’ve grown from absolutely nothing to this wonderful company that we are today because we have the support and love from so many generous people.  We can’t be everywhere to meet potential new artists, so it really helps our business grow when people like you help spread the word about what we have to offer.  We are creating these new programs not only to market our own products, but also as a thank you to those of you who use our products in your business and in your classes and to help you find more success as an artist and/or instructor.  We want these programs to be fair and mutually beneficial to you, your students, and Amerikan Body Art. 

Affiliate Program

Our new affiliate program consists of a banner or ad placed on your website, which links to the Amerikan Body Art website.  Our website software tracks purchases made through the link on your website and we will pay you a referral fee of 10% of the total purchase (after applicable discounts and before shipping costs).  Additionally, you can use the link when placing your own orders and receive a 10% rebate on your own orders.  Payments will be made monthly. 

The affiliate program is going to be launched on a trial basis and we make no guarantees that it will last forever or that we won’t make changes to it as we go along.  Until we launch the program and see it in action, we can’t know what unforeseen issues could cause problems.  There will be some pre-requisites to becoming an affiliate, and some requirements to maintaining affiliate status such as minimum sales generated through the link, other than your own purchases.  If the link doesn’t generate any sales for us over a certain period of time and only serves as a rebate generator for the affiliate’s own purchases, we will likely withdraw their affiliate status.  We want this to be a win-win situation for us and the affiliate…increased sales and visibility for us, and income/ rebates for the affiliate.  

Instructor Program

Basically, we will offer you and your students a Coupon code (for free shipping or a free product), product samples and literature for your students, a gift product that you can offer as a prize or use for demonstration purposes, and we will advertise your class on our Facebook page.  In exchange, we simply ask that you offer a great class to your students, make a genuine effort to market your class, pass on these samples to your students and promote our products in your class.

Just to be clear, I’ve outlined our expectations below.  We believe that the majority of people are honorable and honest, but we also need to be sure that we aren’t being taken advantage of if we want to continue to offer this program.  At this early stage of the program, we would be happy to consider any suggestions you may have and we hope that you understand that the program may go through some fine tuning changes, based on feedback and experience.  We may find the need to limit the frequency that we are willing to allow each instructor to participate in this program, based on the perceived success of their classes and marketing efforts, but we are willing to give everyone a chance to try it out at least once.

1.  You must contact us at least 2 weeks before your class.

We feel that you need to be marketing your class for at least a couple of weeks (probably a month) ahead of time in order to allow potential students time to make arrangements to attend.  We will give you a coupon code for the Amerikan Body Art website for both you and your students to use between 2 weeks before the scheduled class up to 2 weeks after the class.  You can also earn 10% of your students’ orders by becoming an affiliate and having your students shop through our banner on your website.

2.  You must have both a business website and a business Facebook page.

We want to know that you are indeed in business as a face and body artist (or in a compatible industry) and are qualified to teach.  You don’t have to be an award-winning artist, but professionalism is important. 

3.  Your class must be advertised in at least two places (website, Facebook, newsletter, email group, forum)

We want to know that you are making an effort to bring in students with good marketing practices.  Send us the class information and we will put it up on the Amerikan Body Art Facebook page as well.

4. Your class must prominently feature the use of Amerikan Body Art products.

We consider ourselves to be sponsors of your class, and the purpose of this is to spread the word about our supply company.  It’s fine if you have other sponsors for your class as long as you can be fair about it.

5.  Samples and literature sent by Amerikan Body Art must be distributed to your students.

Let us know how many students you expect or hope to have.  We understand that you may have fewer students than you anticipate, but an estimate will help us know how many samples to send.  We expect these samples and the accompanying literature to be handed out to students, not kept for yourself or your employees.  Use your own discretion as far as what to do with leftover samples, but they are not to be sold unless the funds are to be donated to a charity.

Although we have not set an exact limit on how many samples we are willing to send, we would expect that class size would be commensurate to the instructor’s experience, marketing efforts, and venue….Meaning that we probably aren’t going to agree with an expectation of having 50 students at your house, but if you were teaching at a convention center, a larger class size would be normal and we would be happy to accommodate requests for a larger amount of samples. 

So that's what we've been up to lately....Feel free to email us any questions or suggestions.