This is a Quora question I was asked to answer. My answer is as follows.
This is a high level plan I recommend based on the very general information you provided.
The first thing is to determine your competitive advantages. You want to answer what will allow you to compete and win against your competitors? Do you have unique characteristics of your product that make you stand out to your target customers?
It does not necessarily have to be just the product that stands out. It could be something about your business that stands out, like you get economies of scale so can sell at a cheaper price, or you have built a more robust supply chain versus competitors.
Once you have determined those advantages, you want to reflect them in your packaging and in any marketing you create. But, this goes hand in hand with understanding who your target market is. You want to design packaging and marketing that will appeal to your target customers.
Next, you want to think through your sales channels. You can either sell direct-to-consumer, sell through third party marketplaces, or sell through distributors and other resellers and retailers.
To sell direct to consumer, you will need an e-commerce driven website and provision monies to pay for advertising to bring people to your website.
But, selling direct-to-consumer is not easy to do because you need to be able to get the attention of your target market. That usually means having an exceptional product with features and benefits that really stand out. This comes from determining your competitive advantages.
Your category in particular is very mature with many competitors. Unless you have something very unique about your product that you can use to quickly capture attention, then you might be best served to not try selling direct-to-consumer, but instead sell through marketplaces, such as Amazon. Here, you are drawing upon the marketplace’s customer base to help attract buyers of your product(s).
Do a search for marketplaces that you can sell through. Amazon, of course, is probably a required one where you should sell through. Look at artisinal food marketplaces to see if you can qualify to sell on their websites.
What you are really doing with selling direct-to-consumer or through marketplaces is testing to find out what about your packaging and marketing causes it to sell.
You want to spend small amounts and test as much as you can. When you start to see what kind of messaging is driving sales, then you have a basis for not just attracting more consumers to purchase, but you can use that data to also approach resellers and retailers.
Resellers and retailers want to see that your product can sell, and there is no better way to prove that than through your own work ahead of time in actually doing the selling yourself by creating ads. If you try to go direct to resellers and retailers without previous sales, it will be more difficult.
