Why you may not find Wet n Wild collections in your area: explained

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while now, I want to apologize because the following post contains information that I know you've heard before (from me or from others). I'm writing this for newer readers who may not understand what's going on with Wet n Wild limited edition collections and would like more info.

One of the most common complaints I receive goes something like this:

"I've gone to ten stores in my area and I still can't find [insert collection name here]. Why won't Wet n Wild put their products in stores near me? They must hate [insert city here]."

I'm hoping that this explanation will help you to understand exactly why you may not find certain collections in your area (from Wet n Wild or even from other brands, for that matter).

1) According to Wet n Wild, they offer their products to ALL of their retailers, with the exception of exclusive collections that are only going to be sold to one particular retailer. In other words, each retailer has the option to buy, or not to buy, Wet n Wild limited edition collections.

2) Once Wet n Wild sells their collections to a retailer, it's my understanding that the retailer then decides which locations (aka which individual stores) will get the displays. In other words: Wet n Wild doesn't decide if the drugstore in your town is going to offer their latest collection. From what I've been told by people who work in retail, there's usually a team of people who purchase merchandise, and THEY determine the distribution.

3) Because Wet n Wild doesn't decide which stores will get their LE collections, I came up with the idea to create sightings maps for each LE collection. The maps were my personal response to how many of my readers were willing to share information with me. I thought it would be helpful to create maps so that we all could easily share info in one place, and it seems to have helped many fans so far. Therefore, I'll continue to do it for future collection.

4) It's my understanding that each individual retail location pretty much decides WHEN that location is going to put up a display. I believe they have guidelines as to roughly when they should put out certain displays but, as we all know, some stores put things out quickly, while others do not. In other words, it's impossible to say, "OK, the Wet n Wild On the Prowl collection will hit stores on [insert date here]!". It could be shipped to all stores on the same date, but that doesn't mean each store will put it out for sale on the same date.

As a blogger and a 20+ year fan of this brand myself (I wore their pink lipstick in my senior picture in high school, class of 1989!) I still get excited every time Wet n Wild releases something new. The one thing I don't get excited about is hearing that other fans can't locate their products, so I'm doing the best I can to help.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments. I may not be able to answer your questions but, as an Ambassador, I can certainly pass them along to Wet n Wild.