There is a technical side to understanding how to sell wholesale to retailers. Selling to retailers is very similar to selling to any other type of customer. If you follow the golden rules of online commerce — tailoring them to this specific market, of course — most of your challenges will be in developing and maintaining a desirable product line.
Our team has compiled some tips to help you with the technical side of this part of your business (we’ll leave the creative part up to you!)
Tip 1: Offer Competitive Prices
There’s a lot of competition out there. It might go without saying, but if you want to attract retailers as customers, you need to offer competitive wholesale prices. The key is to attract other businesses while protecting your own bottom line.
Maintain Profit Margins
Though your price per article goes down when you sell wholesale, you’re still aiming for a profit margin that meets or exceeds a retail operation. Think about all of the costs that go into completing a sale:
- Packaging, including materials and labor
- Customer service
- Merchandising and shop design
- Production and acquisition costs
Some of these costs, such as production or acquisition, might stay the same whether you’re selling retail or wholesale. Other costs should be drastically lower in a wholesale operation.
Overall, costs per item are generally lower in wholesale. You spend less time communicating product information, packaging goods, shipping orders, and handling transactions. You also generally need less space to store merchandise (due to less packaging, fewer partial cases in storage, etc.), which lowers overhead costs.
It is wise to pass along some of those savings if you want to attract customers in the competitive wholesale business.
Choose a Clear Pricing Policy
Depending on your merchandise strategy, a simple wholesale discount strategy might be best. The strength is that you can apply one clear discount to all of the items in your inventory. The exact amount is up to you; bulk discount standards vary from one industry to the next.
Keep Refining Your Prices
Prices need to change sometimes. A big part of how to sell wholesale to retailers is transparency, so take advantage of any labor-saving tools available to you. Using a powerful app helps you efficiently populate pricing modifications across your catalog.
Remember that you’ll need the time to communicate and negotiate changes in a way that preserves your business relationships.
Tip 2: Be Professional
A good way to attract and retain retailers as customers is to always be professional. This means offering a smooth, seamless, reliable transaction to your busy clients.
Selling wholesale with Shopify or a similar platform can be simple with the right tools. For example, offering automatic wholesale pricing on your product pages is a great way to show that:
- You’re ready to fulfill large orders.
- You understand the need for bulk discounts.
- You have already realized your clients’ needs.
Having your wholesale price front and center is a good way to show professionalism. It also gives people a way to make an order as quickly as possible.
Tip 3: Find Your Best Clients
Boutiques, brick-and-mortar shops, pop-ups, online stores, e-commerce entrepreneurs: All of these are potential clients for your products. However, some will be better customers than others. A large part of how to sell wholesale to retailers over the long term is finding your niche, so research your market thoroughly.
How To Sell Wholesale to Retailers the Easy Way
Part of learning how to sell wholesale to retailers is efficiently managing your pricing policies like a pro. Download our wholesale and bulk price Shopify apps today. You can also contact us online.
