August 24, 2026
What to do with a product that does not sell.
As we've talked to other vendors, this has been something coming up from time to time. And we get it, you introduce a new product that has taken off on social media, or that works for other vendors elsewhere in the same niche, and it sits around in your booth and never gets touched. That is what this post is all about and how we have gone about it with several of our products - with this one focusing on tumblers!
Tumblers are an item that is quick to set up in the laser and easy to engrave. It takes some time to get the file and design right, but after that you hit start and you end up with a finished product. We were super excited to introduce tumbles into our stand with unique designs that people haven't seen before and designs that cost a fortune from big name brands. The first market we showcased them at was overall a success! We ended up selling 2 of the 5 we had at the time, 1 of them being a custom order one.
But after that event, people never seemed to look at them, pick them up, or even mention them. We had the occasional custom order request for a business, but that was it. So we took some steps to see if it was really the product, the price, or something else. The first step we took was lowering the price. We had 4 tiers, a kids tumbler, a small tumbler, a medium tumbler, and a large tumbler. Each going up in price corresponding to the capacity. We dropped all of them by $5 to see how that would do. We left it at that for about a month and took it to 4 completely different markets. Only at 1 of those did we sell 1, and at another some people looked at them a bit more and showed interest.
After that month of testing the new price, we made a few more different designs, some more unique and some we knew were trending at the time. We gave it another couple weeks, but still with those new designs, there was just no interest in them as we had hoped. So in the end, we removed them from our stand completely. It wasn't easy to make that decision as we loved having them and showing them, but if the interest is not there, it is taking up valuable space on the table that can be used for your already working products.
And this is where we stand today, a couple months after completely removing tumblers from our stand. So, what did we learn? First, it is of course okay to add new products, it's your stand and your business at the end of the day! However, it is important to recognize trends and customer demand before going crazy and adding tons of a product nobody wants. Second, when we have a product like this we take two main steps. One, we adjust pricing to see if we are charging too much or too little. Two, we adjust designs and styles to see if customer expectation is not being met. When both of these didn't work, we remove them completely and use that space for our already working products and for implementing a different product entirely to test.
So for other struggling vendors, don't ignore customer demand and sign that your customers give. If you have something that never gets looked at or mentioned, maybe it is time to take a look at it and decide what the next steps to take are. For us, it is important to not immediately cut the product out, but rather do some testing like price adjustment and design changes. Once you do that, then you can make a final decision. Sometimes, all it takes is a price adjustment or design change to get a product going. Unfortunately for us, this was not the case for the tumblers and it was something we could not ignore.