Sharing Space in More Ways Than One

Usually, when we talk about co-retailing, we are talking about physically sharing your real estate with other companies and brands. But sharing space can mean more than one thing, and it can make a meaningful difference to many small business owners and entrepreneurs. 

For example, you can share your marketing channels and platform with other brands. Promoting others doesn’t mean that you have to give up anything of your own. Cross-promotions are a powerful and selfless way to elevate other businesses with less opportunities, resources, and reach. It allows you to get creative with your communications and reach new audiences. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of resharing other people’s content on social media. It’s likely that other companies will notice and reshare your content, too.

This can help you business in numerous ways. For example:

• Reduce costs. Obviously, when you coretail with another brand, you are likely to rent out a small portion of your square footage and charge a commensurate amount. Sometimes, this is also how it works with cross-promotions. By collaboration “in kind,” you might not get direct payment, but you can still benefit in valuable ways by making the first move to show support to other companies you respect. If their values reflect your brand’s values, then validating those brands can still pay off with your customers and audiences.
• Diversify audiences. When you work with another brand, especially when you help to elevate a company that is completely different from your own, you gain access to their audience, which is probably also pretty different than your standard shoppers. If you’re looking to connect with those consumers, showing a genuine interest in the things they care about is a great first step. Then, when you reach out to them later, it will come across as more sincere, and you will have a foundation from which to build.
• Expand your horizons. It’s a great idea to deliberately make an effort to share your physical, digital, or promotional space with brands and partners who expand your horizons. Working with female entrepreneurs, minority business owners, immigrants, and high-risk communities is a great start. Of course, you might already fall into those categories and want to look in totally different directions to broaden your horizons. Whatever feels outside the norm for you, and whatever supports others with fewer resources than your brand and community, it could be a big help to pool your resources and work together on a project, promote one another, or share your physical space for a temporary time period.
• Develop new business opportunities. The best part of putting in the extra work to reach out to new communities and diverse business partners is that you are likely to break free of old, repeat patterns of behavior and ways of thinking. By challenging yourself to go in an entirely new direction, you are likely to learn new ways of doing business, new verbiage, and new skills. Just like traveling the world, the more you explore new opportunities all around you, and get to know people from different backgrounds, the more you’re likely to encounter new perspectives and rewards.

SharedRetail allows you to communicate and work with diverse businesses. Learn how it can be a tool for activism and broaden your horizons in 2020.

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