My experience with locators

[JEREMYTINA]

I said before I was going to post my experiences with locators on here and initially I was going to post them all separately, but I think I'll post it all in this thread.  I am going to list each locator I've used the pros and cons, and some general stats.  I have preface this by saying that I one truly negative experience, but I learned from it.  We were brand new when we joined this forum at the beginning of the year, and it has truly been a God blessed and amazing journey so far.  A lot of stress,  more hard work than I would ever have imagined, but extremely rewarding.

Kick Start- Rob and his team had my initial order for 3 locations in the beginning of February.  My wife and I had located 4 or 5 machines prior to using a locator.  It wasn't as easy as we thought it would be, but certainly not impossible.  We both still work fulltime, so a locator seemed like a solid option.  The first three machines had locations in a weeks time.  A Chinese restaurant,  a pizza place, and a BBQ.  We were refused at the BBQ, and the Chinese place kicked us out the first day, because the owner wasn't the one who approved the machine.  An auspicious start if I do say so.  Rob and his team replaced the two kick outs within a couple of days with comparable restaurants.  We placed a second order for 3 locations.  These took closer to a month to place, the first came within a week, but the rest were taken care of in a reasonable amount of time.  We placed a third order right after the second order out of eager anticipation.  This order is still unfulfilled.  I have been in regular contact with Rob, and he is a solid guy who seems to care about refining the process to increase placements for his customers.  He has given us a couple of locations for the third order, but they had a couple of machines in one, and wouldn't support a third, and the other place wanted me to leave my machine outside, which would have melted the candy in January here in Florida let alone April.  Rob appears to be exceptionally busy, with new orders coming in much faster than he can clear the backlog.  Hopefully his coming changes will correct this and smooth things out for him.  My machines are averaging  $17.45 per month for the six locations with doubles we have at each one.  I have one location that is truly underperforming at $7 per month, but is very close to one doing $25 a month, so I am keeping it.  All in all my experience is favorable with Rob.  Most of the locations are solid and within a mile of each other in two groups of three. 

On site locator-  We hired a guy to work for $20 a location and got nothing to show for it.  He did however not return my placement letter copies or laminated pictures of machines, or brochures, so I'm out a few bucks there.  This irritated me beyond belief, because I am a firm believer in doing the job your hired to do.  He wouldn't even answer the phone after two days of supposedly no success.  Lesson learned.

Ethical Locator- Robert at Ethical found four locations for me.  He actually found six, but I refused to place at two of them.  Of the four placements, three of them were sketchy at best, but he asked me to place them on the condition that he would move them after 30 days if they weren't viable.  The best location was a hair salon that made $12.24, the others did $0.25 (florist), $6.50 (car lot), $3.50 (answering service).  I paid $80 and got one mediocre location, with a half hearted promise to care of the non performers when he could, no that he has a full time job.  No further communication from him in a couple of weeks.  Not very Ethical.  I averaged $5 a location.  Just 11 more months to get my money back from the net of the one good location.  Picking up the others on the next cycle.  Guarantees are only as good as the company offering them.  Lesson learned.  Robert if you read this and make good, I will revise, but otherwise this is a huge thumbs down from me.

DJG locators-  Debra had a local ad looking to locate via phone, and agreed to place five machines for me initially at $20 a location.  I couldn't pass up this opportunity so I promptly paid her a $100.  The next day she found me five locations.  I placed three machines the next day, two were no go.  I paid for a second order of five.  She found two more to close out the initial order.  The second order has had 2 locations placed and 1 that I still need to place on Monday.  The locations have been okay so far, but I am being asked questions about how long the machine will be left at the location, which is weird since I have never been asked that question before.  She also asks what kind of candy the location wants, and does a ton of follow up almost to the point of being too thorough.  When I told her we are trying to avoid certain places ie(ones with another machine), and that we were going to refuse a couple of locations she seemed to take it extremely personal.  I explained to her that I am running a business, and that as the owner of that business I need to make sure that the company is going to be making a profit everywhere I choose to invest my money.  Because that's what each location is, an investment.  She didn't seem to get it.  She told me she needed to make money too.  I agree.  But she should raise her prices if she doesn't like some of the locs being turned down.  I have decided that since the price is so low that I will just not tell her when I am not going to place at a location because of multiple machines.  Based on the current average,  I should be able to still average paying less than $26 a location this way.  I don't have any financial information since I just started using her Tuesday of this past week.  Once I do, I will post.  I don't know yet whether I would recommend her or not yet.  Time will tell.

Eddie Bauer- I placed an order with Eddie for 10 locations on a Buy 10 get 3 free deal.  He placed all ten of my locations in a couple of weeks, and I placed another order.  Eddie has great communication via phone and email.  His people have found a number of locations over what I ordered, but I turned a number of them down.  I feel that is my prerogative, and will continue to do so as I see fit.  Eddie has been very understanding that I want to keep the route as tight and as profitable as possible.  Eddie is thumbs up the best locator I have worked with to date.  I know there are mixed reviews on him, but I have not had any problems.  He takes on work only when he can be sure that the order will be completed in a timely fashion, and that is a huge plus.  I see my company having a long term relationship with his.  His prices are competitive with the market, his guarantees are as well.  His pace of locations is very steady.  I always feel like my business is important to him, and this is important to me.  My locations are averaging $17.25 from Eddie for doubles.  This will change as I haven't had many of the locations long enough to do the first pull.  I will update as I continue to service the route.

Self locating- My current locations that are self located are averaging  close to $25 a month. 

We just placed our 50th location today.  Just 19 to go and I will need to pick up some more machines.  We plan to be over 100 by the end of the year.  By buying machines in bulk, and selling most of them on EBay or Craigslist we have brought our cost per machine down to $8.60.  The location placements are costing between 0 and 38 bucks, and with our monthly average of about $17.75 gross with a net of $12.43 a machine after fuel, product, cleaners, paint, etc, we turn a profit on each machine in 1-4 months at each location.  We were in the black including machine sales on-line, but this last round of location purchases has put us back in the red again until the next collection. 

A lengthy post I know, but I tend to be long winded anyway...

Thanks for taking the time to share a little bit of our life with us. 

[vendman0729]

thanks for all the info jermey.........i myself have started vending not too long ago and i went ahead with eddie bauer...............the one reason i like eddie is that he gets you locations fast..........so fast my machines weren't even ready to be placed............his communication is great............he always e-mails you back..............not knowing much about locations and being a newb that i am..............i accepted all of the 5 locations i recieved from him..............to be honest, there is really only 1 location that i am happy with................the other three are kind of a dud...............i haven't recieved my 5th location in a while for some reason and so i will have to e-mail him again.............well that is my experience with him

anyways can you tell me if you have the option to refuse a location or 2 that eddie gives you.............i was thinking to be fair i might as well just try all of the locations............but again like i said im only happy with 1 location unfortunatly...........i can understand why your picky jeremy...............a lot of trial and error in this business will waste our time..............if locatiing machines or whatever should be done, it should be done right the first time...................anyways i think eddie is an okay guy............i just wished his location quality was a little better............but then again im sure he won't mind replacing a location or two if i explain to him my situation

[JEREMYTINA]

Eddie always lets you refuse a location before placing there.  I will almost always place unless they have other machines, or if the place is a real dump and looks like it has no business.  This is not always a surefire way because it only takes 1 or 2 people to make a location great if they work there.  Email and see what happens, he might help you out.  The key is to be diligent before placement.  If you could make your money back at the locations including the cost of the machine and placement in say 8 months, they might be worth keeping if they are close together.  We have 50 locations within 10 miles of my house, and no location is more than a mile from another.  Many are in the same plaza or on the same road.  This reduces time spent servicing, and gas burned doing it.  I have a couple locations that do only 6 or 7 dollars, and I will leave those because they are so close to others I already have.  I just make sure we don't have any wasted product.

[mainor5251]

I was gonna try a couple different locator's to see where I got the best results.  Filled out the info sheet on Eddie B's site, never got a response.  From what I read he doesn't take new work when he has a large back log, but he could at least let the vendor knows he will get back with them later. Also got the same lack of response from Ethical, that's a good thing as it turn out.  Kickstart was the only one to provide me with locations and 4 out of 5 were good solid locations, one looks to be on its way to gravey status.  Good locations, good communication, I'll stick with Kickstart.

[alyssamma]

JEREMYTINA,

Excellent post. Very thorough and honest review. Keep up the good work and good luck to you.

Kevin