Trying to find new products to film shoppable videos about? You can always browse around on Amazon looking for products in your niches, but let’s face it, they don’t always surface everything you might want to see. You can run searches on Amazon, but how do you find things you haven’t yet thought of searching for?
Let me show you one of my favorite things to do while I’m watching Netflix and sipping a glass of wine: exploring convention, trade show, exhibition and conference webpages to find new brands with products I might want to create content around. There are trade shows intended to be order-writing B2B shows, but we can utilize the information on the trade show webpages for product discovery.
These conventions and trade shows would be fun (but expensive and time consuming) to attend in person; but most of them require business licenses, trade references and the like to even get in. Never fear – we can easily browse their brand/exhibitor listings from the comfort of our own homes.
(Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, we will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you)
Here are just a few examples of websites you can use to find new brands to possibly create content about. Be sure to use the most recent conventions (from 2023 if possible) so the exhibitor lists are still up to date with companies currently active.
CosmoProf
I dove into the Cosmoprof exhibitors list and started off by scrolling down and checking out company names. Since I’m not in the beauty niche, I hadn’t heard of many of these. Those of you who are beauty influencers may have heard of many of these already, but there’s the chance of finding hidden gems in this list too.
The name Ella + Mila caught my eye, so I clicked on the link to explore more info about them. I took just a brief glimpse at their website and social media, but didn’t want to waste too much time researching them if their products aren’t on Amazon.
Yes, their nail polish products are on Amazon! They have a cute little elephant logo. I see some gift sets for $55, which is a nice price for bigger commissions; and several nail polish colors for $11 (not a big commission there of course.)
I visited the Ella + Mila Amazon store to see which products they are featuring, and how many of them are currently in stock and available to customers. Perhaps I might not want to feature any of their products other than the Shimmer collection of polishes, or perhaps just the Duochrome.
My main concern right now is finding out how many of their products have influencer videos already; later, I would worry about other metrics to help me make my decision on whether it’s worth investing $ and time in these products for Amazon and Amazon Live. I see that most (but not all) of their products have one influencer video, and most are from different influencers, not one person who specializes in this brand.
I probably wouldn’t buy a bunch of their nail polishes to do videos I’m going to make less than 20 cents on. But if it’s a color I would use and enjoy wearing myself, I’d maybe grab one and hope to make adjacent commission sales from other colors that don’t have influencer videos on them.
The next company I took a peek at from the Cosmoprof exhibitors list is Bee by the Sea. It’s a Canadian company I hadn’t heard of, with a line of skin care products that tend to get used up and need to be repurchased. Think sunscreen, body butter, face cream, and shower steamers (which are trendy right now). I don’t see any influencer videos on their products yet (but I didn’t dive in too deeply). One of the metrics I would use in this case is do I personally want to try these products on myself (I’m intrigued by their use of sea buckthorn and honey) and keep using them after I’m done filming my videos?
The third company I discovered via Cosmoprof is California Mango, and I’m really excited about it. I love the way the packaging looks! I haven’t smelled any of the products yet, of course. If I were in the skincare or beauty blogging arena I would definitely be giving this a go. Their products include hair care, body care and nail care.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of exhibitors listed at CosmoProf – it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Besides hair care items, cosmetics, lotions, skin care items etcetera, there are adjacent products here such as brushes, application tools, storage boxes for cosmetics, organization supplies and other accessories you might want to create content about. Of course, not all of these companies items are available on Amazon.
Natural Products Expo West
Here’s another list of exhibitors in the skincare, bath and body beauty niche. But wait, there’s more! There’s also food, tea, vitamins, and home care products.
Browsing around, I found the Al Dente Pasta Company. Never heard of them, and I love pasta, so I checked out their website and then headed over to their Amazon storefront. I was excited to see their gluten-free, colorful pasta offerings, most of which do not yet have influencer videos. (You’d want to use your own system for determining if there are enough reviews, sales etc to make it worth your time and $ to film videos for these).
Now, I suppose I could have just browsed the Italian Pasta Node on Amazon and run into these products, but with pages and pages of results I might not have noticed this particular company’s pasta. And I might not have known, browsing Amazon’s front page at some earlier time, that I was looking for pasta. Seeing the company on the exhibitor’s list helped pique my curiosity and spark an idea.
Also, not every item a company carries is surfaced on its Amazon storefront. Sometimes you can visit the company’s website, find out about a new offering, and go search for it (and find it) on the Amazon storefront. Sometimes that product is not yet being featured prominently in the brand’s storefront presence. You wouldn’t have known that product existed if you hadn’t browsed the brand’s website first.
(Hot tip: You can often find strange and unusual Italian pastas at places like Cost Plus World Market, HomeGoods, Marshalls, TJ Maxx and the like. Of course, you aren’t making a big commission on random pasta videos; but sometimes they’re sold in 8 packs for $35 or more, you might also sell someone a big expensive jar of olive oil and some gourmet pasta sauce in bulk, etc).
Chocolate in your niche, or interested in buying something delicious to eat after you film a video about it? Type “chocolate” in the Natural Products Expo search box, and a list of companies that sell chocolate as part of their product line will show up. Or for companies with Chocolate in the name, tick the checkbox for “Only in Exhibitor name” to save yourself some time.
I learned about Belvas Belgian Chocolate which didn’t have any influencer videos but barely has any products on Amazon; and Hippie Snacks which tempted me with the lovely packaging and interesting flavors, but had too many influencer videos – mostly from the same creator.
MAGIC
I’ve attended MAGIC in Las Vegas in past years as a retail buyer for a small home store. It’s a fashion buying event for retail buyers, with sportswear, footwear, apparel and accessories on display. There’s also quite a bit of home decor (candles especially), gifts, and some beauty and jewelry items.
The brand list for August 2023 is quite large. Better pour yourself a nice mug of coffee or glass of iced tea and get comfy for a long “rabbit hole” research and browsing session.
Just browsing around quickly, I discovered Mata Shoes (I hadn’t heard of them before) with no influencer videos on any of the eight or ten shoes I checked. But also, something to think about, most of the shoes didn’t even have ten reviews. Not popular enough to sell many, or just waiting to be discovered and promoted by the right shoe influencer? I’m not in that niche anyway, so I’m moving on.
Take a look at Oooh Yeah Socks. Ok, we’re not going to get rich making videos for $12 socks. However, I might buy a few pairs anyway as gifts for my quirky nieces and nephews at Christmas. I might as well quickly film some sock videos before I mail them out. And remember – my two or three sock videos might show up on the other 40-60 related sock product listings from this company that nobody else has made videos for.
Las Vegas Market
Las Vegas Market is where you can find new accent furniture, home decor, tableware, housewares, home textiles, gifts and other home items.
The Las Vegas Market exhibitor list is here. Have fun browsing! It’s way too easy to lose an afternoon just exploring here. Try searching for products in your niche in the search box – try “candle” for example.
Gift Marts – B2B
Seattle Mart is where every retail gift shop owner in the Pacific Northwest goes to see items in person, shop for their stores, and write wholesale orders. It’s a three story building south of Seattle with dozens of showrooms. Seattle Mart also hosts “gift shows” at the Convention center, which are order writing shows.
None of us influencers would need to go to the Seattle Mart showrooms or the gift show, since we don’t own stores and don’t have wholesale licenses and aren’t buying wholesale products to resell. However, we can utilize their website to discover brands and products or get inspiration for products we want to buy to do videos and livestreams about.
Prepare yourself for a long afternoon or evening of browsing and getting product inspiration!
The Seattle Mart website has two very useful areas where you can find out about their showrooms and product reps: Showroom Listings page is more visual, showing some of the products each showroom carries, and making it easy to click on their websites; and a more text-based Directory of Showrooms.
How do we put this into practice? Ok, let’s go to the Showroom Listings page and click on the very first showroom: Accessories the Showroom. From here we can see that they carry at least four lines: Athena Designs, Benjamin International, HOBO, and Silver Sparrow. From the pictures, they seem to be handbag and jewelry lines. I’ve personally only heard of Hobo before. Next, I click on the Accessories the Showroom website and start looking at it, too. I can now click on subpages for every brand to learn more about them. Sadly, the website is out of date and the most recent Hobo catalog is from Summer 2021. Still, I head over to Amazon to see if any Hobo bags are available. Sure enough – there’s an entire Hobo store on Amazon. I start exploring to see if any of the “New Arrivals” have influencer videos on them yet – no, not yet. Now I do the same thing for Silver Sparrow jewelry and Athena Designs jewelry. I don’t see either of them on Amazon, but my search leads me to a really cool jewelry company I didn’t know about and might not have stumbled upon: Ian and Valeri Co. I see some nice pieces I might like to own anyway, and they don’t yet have influencer videos on any of their jewelry pieces I looked at so far.
From the Seattle Mart website, we can also discover the showroom webpage for Cards & Gifts Northwest. If you’re not in the cards, stationery, gifts, calendars, mugs, books niche this won’t mean much to you. But I like browsing their website because I can easily find out about new puzzles, books and calendars coming out later in the year to help me plan my editorial content calendar for my affiliate blogs. I also can view the new Meri Meri Collection catalog of paper party goods and entertaining supplies. There’s tons of Meri Meri party products on Amazon, most without videos.
One last showroom we’ll learn about via the Seattle Mart website is the Crown Pacific Fine Foods distributor. Any of you in the gourmet food niche? Check out their giant list of specialty food brands!
Grabbing one brand at random, I discovered the Bear’s Breath Ketchup line. Yes they’re on Amazon, and so far only manufacturer videos are present. I probably wasn’t going to be sitting on Amazon searching “gourmet ketchup” to research doing videos, so this is a different way to get product ideas and start doing research.
Now let’s take what we learned and venture forth to explore other regional gift mart showrooms and trade shows, such as Dallas Market Center (their list of showrooms is here); Shoppe Object (home furnishings); Atlanta – America’s Mart; Midwest Market Days; SuperZoo (pets); High Point Market (furniture, home decor, tabletop; North Carolina); California Market Center (mostly apparel); Tabletop Association (dishes); the Sweets & Snacks Expo; Las Vegas Licensing Expo (toys and gifts); Toy Fair;
Summer Fancy Food Show
The Summer Fancy Food show is held in New York City.
I particularly like doing shoppable videos for food products because my household goes through a lot of food, so the products I buy to film videos on aren’t wasted afterwards. I always have some hungry nephew, cousin or kid willing to eat the rest of a snack package I’ve opened up on camera. You don’t, of course, make much commission on low dollar gourmet food items, so be sure to look for listings that include multiples of the item bundled together, making the price above $40 when possible.
The Fancy Foods show has an Exhibitors list with over 1000 companies/brands that sell gourmet foods.
From browsing, I discovered a new brand of chocolates on Amazon with no influencer videos – Mathez. One thing to keep in mind though, is if your viewers/followers haven’t heard of the company before, are they reluctant to buy since they haven’t tasted? Or will watching your video make them want to try it even though some of the items are expensive? Some of what we do is persuasion, some is curation.
Just scrolling through, I discovered Alice’s Sweet Tooth cookies, which are both gluten-free and vegan. They don’t seem to have influencer videos yet.
Other Markets and Trade Conventions
I’m going to turn you loose with this helpful list of retail trade shows! All of which feature exhibitor pages! And here is a list of consumer trade shows too.
Good luck finding your next products to promote!
-Creator Inspiration
@creatorinspirationblog