Have you ever gone in the grocery store and seen people that didn’t work for the store restocking chewing gum and candy at the checkout counter? Well these people are called vendors or merchandisers. I have always thought that being merchandisers would be a pretty neat job. Here are ways to find vendor jobs, merchandising jobs, demonstrator jobs, and the websites to go to.
About 5 years ago I decided to look into working as a vendor and this is what I found out from the Hallmark merchandiser . She told me that she was a merchandiser and she got paid $10 per hour and she worked up to 24 hours per week she also told me she had other merchandiser/vending jobs that paid a little more and total bring home pay per week was about $600 per week. This was about 5 years ago. Since I returned to nursing school I decided to look into working about 20 hours per week to give me income while in school. I found out that most vendors only work 15-24 hours per week and on the average they make any where from $10-$13 per hour. Through my research I have found that just about all major companies hire independent vendors or merchandisers. These kind of jobs actually save the company money. The company doesn’t have to pay any kind of benefits.
The next step was how to find the companies that were hiring. First I searched the Internet and so far these are the best resources. The reason that I know that they are the best resources is because I am now doing work with these companies. After searching I signed up with NARMS www.narms.com. This stands for National Association for Retail Marketing Services. On this site you can find anything from resets or stocking new stores when they open to mystery shopping. The site offers a quick on line training course and a test to become certified ($10) you don’t have to take this training but it looks good to employers. Even though I have a college degree already, I took this training because I do not know anything about retail or marketing. Then I uploading my contact information and resume. After I did this I started receive emails from the companies asking me to contact them or some would just call me. Also you can search the listings on narms.com independly and contact employer. For example Lego, Kellogg’s and Kraft Food have their own on line application for you to fill out. You will need to go to their website to do this.
Another site that is great for having odd ball interesting jobs such as legitimate Mystery shopping, going into stores such as Wal-Mart, Dollar General, and other stores to check displays is CFA , Certified Field Associates www.certifiedfieldassociate.com. I know that this might sound too good to be true but these are legitimate sites and companies that will pay you. I have received checks from these companies for work. Certified Field Associates takes about 4-6 weeks to get paid.
If you like to do food demonstration The Sunflower Group pays $12 per hour and they have just received a large contract with Super Targets to demonstrate food and general merchandise. They have also received a contract to demonstrate wine and that pays $20 per hour plus Bonus’s. The gigs are normally 4 hours and it is about every other weekend. I enjoy doing this. The good thing is that this organization does a lot of other promotional things that pay a lot better. This company is like a talent agency so the better you look the more work you will get. They use people that are normal looking (good looking), seniors and baby boomers, as well as professional very young, model types. You will need to do an on line resume with picture of yourself at www.events-promotions.com.
My favorite company to work for is www.campaigners.com This company is apart of Advantage Sales and Marketing. Search www.asmnet.com/Careers as well. This company hires food and product demonstrators pay is $10 to start for food and general merchandise demonstrators and up to $20 for electronics. The biggest contracts are with Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart and Best Buy.
I have a friend that works a full-time job and works with Crossmark and makes a nice check with them so I am going to add www.crossmark.com to my list. As I stated earlier, there are a lot of companies out there but these are the companies that I know for sure are legitimate and will pay you. You do not have to pay anything to sign up with theses companies. The only reason that I took the merchandiser test and training is because all I have is a degree in other stuff, I didn’t have any experience in the field. I hope that you will find this information useful.
