Transcripts
1. Welcome to Class!: As a small business owner, you're fueled by big dreams. You have visions
of your creations being in retail stores. You dream about the moment
when your products take that leap from online platforms into brick and mortar stores. But the path to
making that dream a reality comes with a whole lot of
uncertainty and doubt. There's not a clear roadmap to navigating the
wholesale journey, especially for artists or handmade business owners
with a smaller audience. But what if I told you, it doesn't have to be
that intimidating. By taking small steps in
a strategic approach, you can make that transition without all the stress
and apprehension. Welcome to your wholesale one oh one crash course.
My name is Pria. I'm a watercolor artist, lover of all things stationary
and wholesale enthusiast. But that wasn't always the case. When I first opened
my Etsy shop, I made a few sales
here and there, but I knew I wanted
to go bigger. I wanted to see my artwork on the shelves of my
favorite stores. I wanted to be packing
huge orders for buyers. I wanted to be able to reach
more people than I could by just having an etti shop and
hoping people would find me. I so badly wanted these things, but I had no idea
where to begin. I dove in head first anyways and made a lot of
mistakes along the way, but I did it, and now I have
a robust wholesale catalog. My products are stocked in retail stores
across the country. Wholesale is now a pretty significant revenue stream
in my small business. So if any of that story
resonates with you, you're someone who wants to get your foot in the door
in the wholesale arena, this class is for you. I'll be sharing all of the
beginner information that I wish I had when I was first getting started
with wholesale. We'll cover the basics and
the benefits of wholesaling. We'll talk about pricing, profit margins, how to
initiate outreach to buyers, and so much more, including my top
tips for getting started with minimal
upfront investment. Now, if you're already
in the wholesale game and you're just looking
to scale your business, this class might not be
the right fit for you. This is tailored to those small business owners or artists looking to make those first
few steps into wholesaling. And I'll be right there with you every step of the
way. You can do this. You can have your
products in stores. I did it, and I know you can
too. So let's dive right in.
2. Class Project: We'll go over this more
later on in the class, but one of the very first
things you'll want to do before reaching out
to potential buyers is to create a wholesale catalog or at least a catalog preview. This is a nicely designed PDF that displays your products, pricing, and other details
that buyers want to see. For your class project, you'll create one or a few pages of this catalog to
help get you started. We'll talk more about
how to do this later on, but just as a quick example, this is what my catalog
preview looks like. I have an opening page,
my product pages, And then the last page has my contact information and the
link to my wholesale shop. It's a simple step
that really makes a big impact and helps your business look
more professional. So don't skip out
on this project. In the next video, we'll get started on the basics
of wholesaling.
3. Wholesale Basics: Let's start by covering the absolute basics so that the rest of this
class makes sense. I'll be honest, when I
was first entertaining the idea of offering
my products wholesale, I really didn't know
much about what that actually meant or what that
process would look like. I just knew that I wanted to
get my products into stores. At its core, wholesale involves selling
products in bulk to retailers at a
discounted price for them to then sell in their
store at retail price, and both parties are
benefiting in this exchange. Most commonly, you're selling your products at a 50% discount. So, let's say, for example, you sell hand poured candles, and let's say you
sell those candles for $40 to individuals. You're going to sell it
for $20 to retailers, who will then sell it for
$40 to their customers. We'll go more in depth into pricing structures
later on in the class, but that's just a very basic
example to start with. Now, let's cover some
of the common terms and keywords that will
be helpful to know. The first is the wholesaler
or the supplier. That would be you, the artist, and small business owner. Then there's the
retailer or the buyer, that would be the
store or the buyer for a store that you're selling your products to.
Wholesale price. This is the price that you sell your products for at
the wholesale rate. So in the example
of the candles, the wholesale price is $20. Then there's MSRP,
which stands for manufacturer's
suggested retail price or sometimes just referred
to as retail price. And this is the price that the product is sold
to the end customer. So again, in that
candle example, the retail price or
MSRP would be $40. Next up is MO Q, which stands for
minimum order quantity. This is the minimum quantity
of a product that you're willing to sell to the
retailer at a wholesale price. This can be a
quantity of products, so let's say your MOQ
could be 20 candles. Or it can be a spending minimum. For example, in my
wholesale shop, my order minimum is $75, regardless of what
products make up that $75. Moving on to profit, that's how much
money you earn on a sale or an order
after expenses. As a simple example, if it costs you $5 to make a candle and you
sell it for $20, your profit is $15. And then there's profit margin, which is the percentage of
revenue exceeding cost. For that same example, your profit margin would be 75%. If any of this sounds
confusing to you or you're starting to feel overwhelmed
already. No need to worry. We'll go more in depth on all of these terms later
on in the class, but I just wanted
to start out with those common phrases before we get into the really
meaty part of the class. In the next section, we'll talk about the benefits
of wholesaling, and there are a lot of them.
4. Benefits of Wholesale: You know the basics of
how wholesale works. Let's talk about why a
small business owner like you or I would want to
participate in the first place. I mean, as we talked
about in the last lesson, you're selling your
products at a 50% discount, which can be hard to
swallow at first. But there are a
few main reasons. Number one, you get brand
exposure and you reach customers that you would likely never be able to
reach on your own. For example, one of my retail partners is a botanical garden
gift shop in Florida. That's almost 5,000 miles from where I'm located
here in Hawaii. So I would never see those
customers at a local market, that's for sure, and likely I'd never be able to reach them with my own marketing efforts. But now my greeting cars are being sold in
the gift shop there. Those customers that already know and love that gift shop or that botanical garden are
now able to see my products. They're able to purchase them, and ideally, they
become a follower, a fan or they even visit my website to see what
else I have to offer. Number two, wholesale orders are large volume and often
result in repeat buyers. So Although yes, they are buying all your
products for half off, they're also buying
such a large volume that your average customer is
not going to be purchasing. In AC or Shoppy or
square space customer, they might buy an art print, maybe a couple
cards or a sticker, but your wholesale client
is ordering 80 cards, 40 art prints, and 20 of each of your
stickers, for example. In a lot of cases, as long as those products do
well in their shop, they're going to reorder to
restock their inventory. So, yes, you're not making
as much per product, but you are making more in
total than you would from a single or even a handful
of individual customers. Number three, there's a
certain credibility that comes along with having your
products in retail stores. And that's not to
say that you're not credible if you only have
your own online shop, that's far from the truth. But it does add
an extra layer of credibility and trust
with your customers, knowing that your products
are stocked in a real store. And at the very least, it should give you a confidence boost knowing that hey this awesome
boutique in California, Not only likes my products
enough to purchase them, but to then sell them
in their own shop. And that's a pretty
special feeling. To recap, the top
three benefits to wholesale are brand exposure, large volume orders,
and credibility. In the next section,
we'll talk all about pricing and
profit margins.
5. Pricing Structures: Let's talk pricing and profits. Now, this is where
things can start to feel maybe a little intimidating
or overwhelming, but it really doesn't have
to be that complicated. To keep things simple,
I'm going to be using my greeting
card as an example. So as we mentioned earlier, your wholesale price is typically half of
your retail price. So my wholesale price for greeting cards is 2705 per card. Which makes my retail
price five 50. Now, when you start to offer
your products wholesale, you need to make sure that
you're still able to profit, and that includes being
honest and aware of how much time and money it costs you to make your products. A healthy profit
margin for wholesale really ranges depending
on the product, the industry, the market. But typically is somewhere
between 30% to 50% at minimum at the
wholesale rate, ideally, even higher than that. So let's take a look at
what it would cost me to create one single greeting card and what the profit
margin would be. But keep in mind,
greeting cards are by far my highest
profit margin product, so keep that in mind as we
go through this example. The paper is $0.20 per card. The ink is also about
$0.20 per card. The envelope is $0.10 per card, and the clear sleeve that I
use for packaging is $0.06. In total, it costs me $0.56
to make one greeting card. When I sell this
retail for five 50, my profit is 4904, and my profit margin is 89%. When I sell this at the
wholesale rate for 2705, my profit is two 19 and
my profit margin is 79%. Again, that's on the high side of margins for my product line, so don't feel like you
need to be getting 70 plus percent margins
on all of your products. So you're going to
want to price for wholesale first and
then double that to get your retail price
to make sure you can still have healthy profits
at the wholesale rate. Now, what I didn't
mention is the time and skill that it takes
to create your product, because that's going to range so widely depending
on your product, your skill set,
and your timeline. But that is another
important factor to consider when you come up
with your pricing structure. This is especially
important if you're selling handmade products
that take a lot of time to create like hand poured candles or ceramics or
pottery or jewelry. Compared to if you're
selling something like stickers and you
order those from sticker mule or sticker blitz, the time it takes to create those products is going to
vary pretty drastically. That's something you'll
have to evaluate. Depending on your own situation and add that into your
pricing structure. You'll also have to
figure out what products that makes sense to
offer wholesale and what products don't because not every product is going to be the right fit for
the wholesale arena. Let's take a look at
my fine art prints. On the screen, you can see my profits and
margins for offering a fine art print at the five
seven and eight by ten size. Pretty decent. The five by
seven has a 66% profit margin, and the eight by ten
has a 47% margin. But look at when I go up
to an 18 24 size print. My cost to produce them
increases so much. I'd have to charge $80 per
print for wholesale and $160 for retail just to maintain a 50% wholesale
profit margin, which is just not
very realistic. But an individual
customer might actually want to buy a print
that large for $100, which is what I actually charge for that size on my website. In that case, it's
okay to keep the price lower and only offer that
size on your own platform. Plus, if you think about it, most shops or boutiques aren't selling prints
that large anyways. So your market for it would
likely be pretty small. But you could still offer those five by seven and eight by ten prints for wholesale because those ones make
sense financially. Those are just some
things that you want to keep in mind as you develop your pricing
and profit strategy. Always know your cost and
time to produce a product, set your wholesale price to
give you a healthy margin, and then double that for the
retail price and make sure you're choosing products that actually makes sense
to offer wholesale. Next up, we'll talk
about entering the wholesale space with
minimal upfront investment.
6. Upfront Investment: One of the biggest hurdles
for people starting wholesale is the fear
of the upfront cost, and that's a totally valid fear. If you see other
businesses who have really taken off in
the wholesale space, you'll see them leasing
huge warehouses. They have stacks and stacks
of shipping supplies. They've hired employees. They have a whole
team dedicated to it. But all of that comes later if and when
you decide to scale. When you're first
getting started, you can start small, see what works well for
you, what doesn't. Then as your business grows, you can tailor your
decisions to fit your needs. For example, I started
by buying a pack of 25 small shipping
boxes and a pack of 25 large shipping
boxes on Amazon, and it cost me a total of $47. That was it. I use
my own printer to make little branding inserts
to go with each order. I already had packing
tape in my office, and I just reused
packing paper or bubble wrap from
random Amazon orders I had from my personal life. I started small, I
used what I had. It worked great for
my first handful of orders, and that was it. Now, had I gone all out from the beginning and
bought thousands of supplies and shipping boxes and professional
branding inserts. If I ended up not liking
one of them or heck, even if I ended up not liking the wholesale
route in general, I would have been out hundreds or thousands of dollars and I'd be left with materials that I would never end up using. Now, keep in mind, things usually are cheaper
when you buy in bulk. I paid $47 for 50 boxes, whereas if I bought a much
larger pack of boxes, it would have been
even cheaper per box. But like I said, it's
a bigger upfront cost, and I wouldn't even know if
I liked that type of box. Doing it this way
allows you to start small with not a whole
lot of upfront cost, and then as your business grows and you have more
capital to work with, you can start buying things in bulk and increase
your profit margins. That example was just
of shipping supplies. Your upfront costs are
going to be very different depending on your business and what products
you're producing. But in general, you
can start small and then scale as
your business scales. In the case of products,
when I first started, I want to do experiment
with selling notepads. Now, my main product has
always been greeting cards, and those are pretty
cheap to make and I make them myself on demand
as orders come in. But note pads for something
that I was going to have to order in bulk from
a manufacturer, and I had never sold
note pads before. So when I browsed different
manufacturing options, I didn't want to go
all out and spend all my money on thousands
and thousands of notepads, plus I didn't have the space
for that in my small studio. Even though had I
bought in bulk, it would have cost
me less than $1 per notepad to produce. I just didn't feel comfortable investing all that
money up front. Instead, I opted to only get a couple hundred
of them to start. My cost per note pad
was quite a bit more, but it allowed me to
spend less upfront. And since I work out of a
small studio, like I said, I wouldn't have had room for
much more than that anyways. Since it ended up costing me a couple dollar per notepad
to have them manufactured, since I wasn't ordering
a huge amount, I priced them for
wholesale and retail accordingly to still earn
a healthy margin on them, even if I had to
price them a bit higher than I had
originally anticipated. Again, doing it that way just allowed me more flexibility and less stress because
I wasn't putting a huge amount of money
into those products. It also allows you
to experiment and see what works well for
you and what doesn't. Note pads, especially compared
to my greeting cards, they're not a huge seller, and I also like designing greeting cards a lot
better than the notepads. So had I gone all out and
spent thousands of dollars, I'd still probably have hundreds of note pads left in my studio. Ultimately, these decisions
will have to be up to you and your business and
your financial situation. But I did just want to demonstrate that you
can start small. You don't have to invest a
whole lot of money up front and you can scale along
with your business. Next up, we'll talk about different wholesale market
places and platforms.
7. Marketplaces & Platforms: Once you're ready to launch
your wholesale shop, there are a couple of different
ways you can go about it. You can host everything
on your own website. You can join a wholesale
market place like fair, or you can have a
combination of both. Let's talk about the
pros and cons of each. For hosting everything
on your own platform, the pros are that
there are less fees. Those marketplaces
typically have fees just like Etsy does. You also get control
over everything. You can make it look how you want and everything can
be your own branding. However, there's the manual labor of having
to set everything up by yourself or paying a
developer to help you do it. You have to do 100% of the marketing and outreach
to find customers, and you'll be in charge of
handling customer service, returns, shipping, and all of those logistics
that go along with it. If you host your wholesale
shop on a marketplace, a lot of those headaches go
away, but there's a price. One of the most popular
marketplaces is called fare, and that's the one
I personally use. The upsides are that they have
an existing customer base, so it's easier to get orders coming through in the beginning. It's also very plug and play. So similar to ts,
you just have to upload your items and you're
ready to rock and roll. There's very minimal
set up time. They also run seasonal events and promotions that you
can participate in. And the biggest
benefit, in my opinion, is that they handle all
the customer service, returns and all of that messy stuff that can be tricky to deal with if
you're on your own. However, there are platform fees and they've been
increasing over time. The exact fees
change periodically, but you have to factor that
into your pricing structure to make sure you're
not ultimately losing money from the fees. There's also competition
on the platform. Because it's so easy to join, lots of businesses are on there. Retailers have tons of
options to choose from, which can make it
hard to stand out. You could also do a
combination of the two, so you could be fair
and take advantage of their existing
customer base and do your own marketing to get people to order from your own website. But the pros and cons for
each one will still be there. Now, I also want to mention a few other ways that you
can get wholesale clients. The first is through
consignment. There is a local art
gallery boutique here that I reached out to at
the start of my journey, but they stock products on consignment instead of
ordering the wholesale route. How that works is they tell me what they'd like to
stock in their store. I deliver it to them,
and then I'm paid only based on what
actually sells in a month. On typical wholesale orders, the buyer pays for
whatever they order regardless of if it ends up selling in their
own shop or not. But consignment pays you
only if that product sells. That means it's a
little riskier for you because you're not guaranteed
a certain amount of money. But because it's not risky
at all for the retailer, it could mean a
higher likelihood of them taking on your products, which can be a great way to
get your foot in the door. The other way is through
custom inquiries. For example, there's a local hospital that
reached out to me interested in stocking some of my greeting cards in
their hospital gift shop, but they requested some
cards that I didn't have. They wanted hospital related
cards like get well soon, thinking of you, take
care, those things. I used my existing designs. I altered the text to meet
their specific needs, and then I created
a custom invoice for them before delivering
those products. If you take on custom
orders like this, you could also choose to add on a custom design fee
for the extra work. It's up to you. So,
all this to say, there are lots of
different ways you can get started with wholesale. I would personally recommend getting started on fair
because that's one of the easiest ways to just upload your products and have
orders start coming in. But if you do go
that route, again, just be aware of the fees
and make sure you're pricing your products accordingly so
that you're still profiting. Next up, we'll get into outreach and marketing
to retailers.
8. Outreach to Retailers: Once your shop is all set up, it's time to start finding
your retail customers, and there are so many different
ways you can do this. The first thing I
recommend is creating a line sheet or a
wholesale catalog. I mentioned this
earlier in the class, but this is a PDF that
showcases your brand, your product offerings,
item details, prices, all of that information
that lets buyers know who you are and
what you have to offer. If you missed it earlier,
this is a quick look at mine. I have my intro page, my product pages that have uniform images,
pricing and sizing. And then a closing page
with all the links to connect and the link to my
wholesale shop on Fair. There are a lot of
ways to create these. Canva even has some templates
that you can just use as starting points to drag
and drop your own info. The next step is
researching stores. You're not going to
get your shop set up and then just have the
orders start rolling in. You're most likely
going to have to do a little bit of outreach
and marketing work. So start looking
at shops, markets, or boutiques that you think your products
would fit well with. And although I'm
sure we would all love to be at Target
or home goods, it's going to be a
lot easier to start small and start local. That is my absolute
biggest tip here. Local shops are much more likely to support other local artisans. Once you have your
shops in mind, you want to tailor your pitches
to those specific stores. Don't just copy and paste to the same exact cold pitch
to every single one. You would be much better off
with a customized approach. For example, a lot of
my greeting cards and art prints have tropical plant and flower designs on them. I visited a few local
plant shops and boutiques. I observed their stores. I saw that they were
already selling some other little plant
themed gifts and cards. I knew that my products
would fit well there too. So when I e mailed the owner, I introduced myself, I let her know that I
lived in the area, and I made my catalog focused
on the plant cards that I have because I knew
that would have the highest chance
of catching her eye. And sure enough, it did, and that shop has now ordered cards and prints for
me several times. In my outreach e mails, I also make sure to
tell them that I'm happy to send over
physical samples of my cards or prints
so that they can see the quality of my
products in person. And likely if they do ask for samples as long
as they like it, They're most likely
going to order from you. I included a
downloadable resource below with my sample
pitch e mail. Of course, you'll want to tailor this message to
fit your business, your offerings, and your
personal information. But it's at least a
starting point if you're not sure what to
say in your e mails. Just please be sure to
edit it to your liking and make sure that it sounds
like it's coming from you. Another thing you can do is
send out sample packages. They don't have to be elaborate, huge gift boxes with all of
your products and goodies. Just a simple package
with a couple of samples and a catalog
works just fine. Now, be careful with this
approach because obviously it can get expensive to give away products and
pay for shipping. Just pick and choose
which ones you think it would be worth
it to send packages to versus sending an e mail and make sure you don't go
overboard with samples. One or two things is
plenty and then they can view your catalog to
get the full picture. Now, as with a lot of other things as a
small business owner, you'll likely get a lot of
rejections or empty responses, and that's okay.
It's all part of it. That doesn't mean that your
products are terrible. It doesn't mean that
you're a failure, even though sometimes
it might feel like it. And it also doesn't
mean that you can't reach back out again
later down the road. In fact, I recommend reaching
back out to your contacts, especially if you
have new collections or new products that
you want to showcase. As an example, I had a retailer who originally
turned me down, but he ended up ordering several months down the road when I sent a follow up e mail, and he actually told
me that he only said no originally
because they had just restocked their
entire store and they didn't have room for more
products or inventory. So sometimes it really is
just a matter of timing. We'll move on to packaging and shipping tips in
the next section.
9. Packaging & Shipping: Packaging and shipping, it's
so unique to each creator, but I'll share some of my top
tips and tricks for putting together professional packages that delight your customers. First things first, you want to make sure
that your products are packaged appropriately
for a retail setting. So if you're used to selling, let's say note pads, let's say you just have
the note pad by itself. But in a retail setting, products like these are
often encased in plastic. Or other packaging
to safeguard them from thousands of customers
touching them in a store. Now, it does seem
that retailers are becoming more
accepting of products that aren't encased in
plastic because obviously it's best if you can reduce the amount of plastic
in your packaging. As an example, I package my
note pads like this and I actually use compostable
plastic sleeves from eco in clothes. It's a nice way to
bridge that gap. There are lots of options
for packaging your products, but just keep in mind
you want them to be presentable and appropriate
for that retail setting. You also want to make
sure your products have your branding on them. So when customers buy them, they know who it was created by. Like I mentioned earlier, one of the benefits
of wholesale is your reaching customers that you likely wouldn't have been
able to reach otherwise. So you want to take
advantage of that and direct them back to your
website or your Instagram. So for artists, for example, even if you have your artists signature on your art print, you'll also want to include
a little business card or about the artist
sheet in your art print, so they know who it is
they're supporting. Now, for the actual package you put together to ship
to the retailer. I also recommend
including a thank you note or a branding
insert like this. I mentioned earlier that
I print these myself, but you can also
order these from third party printing sites
like Vistaprint or no issue, and you can even
design them on Canva. It's a nice extra touch, and you can see on
my example here, I even left a little blank space so that I can write
a personal thank you note to my buyers to help establish those
closer relationships. You also want to include
the packing slip. The packing slip is a document that outlines what
has been ordered, the quantity of each item, the price and the to and
from shipping addresses. It's basically a very
thorough receipt. I always use these
packing slips to double check that I've
packed everything correctly, and I actually mark each
item off with a pen. That way, it shows the
buyers that you took the extra time to make sure
every item is included. You also want to make sure
everything is packaged safely. Use packing paper or
compostable packing peanuts, and my best advice is to overfill your boxes so that when you close
it and shake it, nothing moves at all. The worst thing would be to gather all of your
beautiful products, pack them all up and ship it off to your first time
wholesale client, only to have them arrive damaged or smushed
from poor packaging. Finally, you'll ship it out. If it's not a local
store, that is, it's always important to
factor in shipping costs. Wholesale orders are
usually very large, oftentimes very heavy because
they're ordering in bulk. You want to make sure
that you're pricing shipping accordingly so that you're not losing out
on shipping fees. If it's a local store
buying your products, it's good practice to deliver the order in person if you can. I always do this for
my local orders, and it's just a great way to establish those face to
face connections with your buyers and the store owners and you're saving
on shipping costs. In the next video,
we'll go through a sample wholesale order
from start to finish.
10. Sample Process: Now that you know the ins and outs and the basics
of wholesale, let's go through a
sample scenario of what that usually looks like
for me from start to finish. And keep in mind, this is
just a made up scenario. So I already have my
wholesale catalog ready and my shop
is set up fair. So let's say I'm just
starting out and I have a store in mind
that I'd like to target. I'm going to put
together an e mail and attach my catalog PDF. Fast forward, a couple of days, I receive a positive
response via e mail and a new order
comes in on fair. Let's take a look at
this packing slip. Again, this is just
a sample order, not a real order, but here's
what the buyer wants. They would like six
monstera reading cards, six floral thank you cards, six banana leaf birthday cards, four Aloha note pads, four patterned note pads. Ten pineapple stickers,
ten Aloha stickers, ten Plumeria stickers, and
ten pink ginger stickers. I'm going to package up the stickers together
in this clear bag. Next, I'm going to gather
the note pads and make sure they're packaged
in their clear sleeves. Next up, since I make all of
my greeting cards on demand, I'll need to actually make the greeting cards
and package them up. And while I do this, I
wanted to give another tip, especially if you're also someone who makes
greeting cards, and that is to create
your own belly bands to package greeting cards with the same designs
on them together. And to do that, I just cut
paper into two inch strips. I seal them with a
clear circle sticker, and then I use my custom
logo stamp from no issue, and I stamp it on the front to give it that professional
look and feel. Now, as I pack each of
these items into the box, I'm using the packing
slip to cross reference, and I'm physically checking off each item with my pen as
it goes into the box. I add plenty of packing paper to keep everything
solid in there. I add my little you note. Tape it up and I add my
branded sticker to the box. Then I measure the box. I
weigh it on my digital scale. And if you don't want
to invest in a scale or a label printer yet,
that's totally fine. You can also just take your
packages to the post office. But if you do end up
liking wholesale, I would recommend investing
in a label printer, as well as a digital scale. It will make your
life a lot easier. Once it's ready to go, I'll deliver it in person
if it's a local shop, or I'll drop it off
at the post office. And then I mark the
order as fulfilled. I also like to follow up two to three months later to
ask how things are going. Let them know about any new
products I've launched or even send a little discount
code to encourage a reorder. There you have it.
That's pretty much what a typical wholesale order
process looks like for me. Again, your process might
look different than mine. It all depends on you
and your business. What products you're
selling if you already have them in stock and you can just grab them and throw
them in a box, or if you're having to hand make items as the orders come in. But my biggest tip is just to communicate clearly
with your buyers. You want your retailers
to have a good experience with you and you want them to
come back and order again. Just be kind, set realistic expectations
and timelines and keep that line of
communication open as you expand your products and
you add new collections. Next up, we'll discuss some more wholesale
considerations.
11. Considerations: All right, so we have
covered all the basics. We've gone through
a sample scenario. I hope by now you're
feeling a little bit more knowledgeable and
confident about starting your
wholesale business. Here are a few more things
you'll want to consider. Is wholesale right for
me and my business? And maybe you don't have
the answer to that yet. That's why I emphasized
starting out with minimal investment and
starting small and local. That way, if you get going
and you really don't like it, or it doesn't feel like this is the direction you want
to take your business, you can still pivot
pretty easily. How will I handle
fulfillment and inventory. Do you have an inventory
tracking system, or are you creating products
as the orders come in? Or maybe you're doing a
combination of both like I do. How fast can you realistically create and ship out orders? What should my MOQ or
minimum order quantity be? And how should I
price my products to allow for healthy
profit margins? Make sure you're calculating
the cost of materials, time, and talent to produce
your products, and price them accordingly to hit your target profit margins? And remember that
every single product you sell doesn't have to be in your wholesale catalog if it doesn't make
sense financially. You can pick and choose
what works best for you. What's my production capacity? If you've only sold
to individuals so far or you've just made a
few sales here and there, think about what it would
look like to create 50 or 100 products at once. Is that something you
feel ready to take on? What adjustments
to your workflow would it take to
make that possible? These are all things to
start thinking about as you gear up to launch
your wholesale pursuit. Next up, we'll briefly
go into some of the additional
considerations to keep in mind if you decide to
scale your business.
12. Scaling Your Wholesale Business: When we talk about scaling
your wholesale business? This is a topic for later
down the road if you decide to continue
expanding your business. But there are still some things you should
keep in the back of your mind as you
go, because likely, if your business
continues to grow and you keep bringing
on wholesale clients, you'll likely not be
able to run it out of your small studio or just buy small packages
of boxes anymore, you're going to have to
think about scaling. You'll need to
think about things like production planning. How can you keep up with the demand or the
influx of orders? Do you need to hire people to help you produce more products? Inventory management. When
you're starting small, it's still important to
keep track of inventory. But once you're managing
thousands of products, you're going to
need an inventory management system of some kind. Outsourcing and
hiring employees. You'll need this to help with production,
customer service, shipping and packaging, admin, all those things that simply cannot be done by one person. There's managing space. Do you have space to scale? Do you need to look
into a warehouse? How will you handle large
deliveries or outgoing orders? Again, these are not things you need to stress about right now. There are definitely not reasons to not start wholesale
in the first place. There are just going to be
things that will come into play if your business
continues to grow and expand.
13. BONUS Q&A: Before we finish up the class, I wanted to include this
bonus lesson in a Q&A format. I asked my newsletter
subscribers and my Instagram
community if they had any specific questions
regarding wholesale, and they came through
with some good ones. So I'm going to go through
these in no particular order. Is there any difference between
licensing and wholesale? Yes. Those are two
different things, and sometimes artists do
a little bit of both. So as you know, by now, wholesale is when you
make your own products, and then you sell
it to retailers who then sell it to
their customers. With licensing, you're
creating the artwork, and then you license
that artwork to other manufacturers or companies to use on their products
that they sell. As an example, I turn a lot of my artwork into repeat
patterns like this one. I could potentially license this monstera design
to a company that makes shower curtains or bedding or gift bags
or really anything. In the case of
licensing, typically, you're earning some
small royalties based on how many products they
actually end up selling. But you're not the one actually making the products or
selling the products, you are just in charge
of making the artwork. Licensing also
includes those print on demand sites
like Society six, spoon flower or red bubble. Where again, you're
creating the artwork. You make a small percentage of revenue based on what sells, but you're not the one actually
producing those products. Licensing isn't something that I do a whole lot of personally, but if you are interested
in learning more about it, I recommend checking
out either at Coke or Juliet Meeks on Instagram
or on their websites. They have a lot of
really great resources for licensing artists. Can wholesale be
profitable if I only make art prints?
Yes, definitely. I know a lot of artists who have really successful
wholesale lines, and they only do art prints. Also, as we mentioned in
the beginning of class, one of the big benefits here
is you're getting a lot of great brand exposure from customers who shop at the stores that stock
your art prints, likely, if one of those customers buys
an art print from you, that means they like your
artwork, they like your style. Most likely they're
going to want to check you out on
Instagram or check out your website to see what
else you have to offer and maybe buy some more art prints that go with the one
that they purchased. Make sure you're
taking advantage of that expanded reach and include your artist info in your packaging of
the art prints. How can I optimize my product listings to get
more attraction on fare? This is a really great
question because SEO or search engine optimization
is really important, especially if you
want to stand out. The most important thing to keep in mind is your keywords, so that includes your title,
description, and tags. You want to be as descriptive as possible without keyword
stuffing, of course. Instead of just listing
my card as greeting card, I would title it something like tropical Monstera
Thank you card with envelope to utilize
those keywords. You also want to upload high
quality product photos, aim for at least three to five that showcase your
products accurately. Beyond that, ranking on fare
depends on other things like retailers prior engagement
or purchase history, your brand's reputation,
and product reviews. Beyond SEO, just focus on getting your
orders out on time, make sure your products arrive safely and they're
packaged safely, and try to maintain
positive item reviews. Do retailers have to price
items based on MSRP? No, they actually don't. So the S and MSRP stands
for suggested retail price, but the stores can actually
price however they want. Most of my retailers do
follow my standard MSRP, but I do know of at least one that sells my greeting cards for 5705 retail when my
MSRP is five 50. This really just depends
on the retailer, their customer base, how they
price their other products. But again, it's not going
to impact how much you make because you get to set
the actual wholesale price. Should I create
products on demand as orders come in or should
I stock up on inventory? This is a really hard
question to answer because it depends so
much on your business, what products you're offering, your capacity, and your time. And the answer also might
change as your business grows. So for me personally, I create all of my greeting cards as
they come in on demand. And that's just mainly because
I have my process down. It doesn't take me
too much time and it actually saves me
money at this stage in my business because I'm only buying the supplies for cards
that are actually selling. If someone buys them, I then have the supplies
and I make them. Whereas if I had hundreds of each of my designs sitting
around in my studio, if they didn't sell, I
would be left with all of those just sitting
on the shelves. That being said, if my business
continues to grow and I'm getting orders left and right with a bunch of greeting cards, I'm probably going to have to
look into outsourcing that just to save my own time
and keep up with demand. For things that I don't create myself like my vinyl stickers, I buy those in bulk,
and I just keep them on hand when
customers order them. So you'll just need to assess your business, your products, your time, capacity, and see
what works best for you. So that is it for
this bonus Q&A. I hope you found it helpful. I know a lot of my answers were it depends on you
and your business, but that's because it's so true. What works for me might not necessarily work best
for you and vice versa. My best advice is to
start small if you can, try different things as you
go and as your business grows and do your best
to stay flexible. Thank you to anyone who
submitted questions and we will wrap up the
class in the next video.
14. Final Thoughts: Congratulations. You completed the wholesale crash course, and now you're equipped
with the skills, knowledge, and most importantly,
the confidence to enter the world of wholesale
as a small business owner. Let's take a moment to look back on everything
we've learned. We covered the basics and
benefits of wholesaling. We dove into pricing, profit margins, and getting started with minimal
upfront investment. We weighed the pros
and cons of hosting your catalog privately versus
on a wholesale marketplace. We talked through how to conduct outreach and marketing
to retailers. We covered packing, shipping, considerations for
scaling your business, and you got to see my wholesale process from start to finish. But beyond the practical skills, you've also discovered
something even more valuable. The courage and determination
within yourself to pursue your small business
dreams relentlessly. The fact that you even
took this class means you are motivated to make
those dreams a reality. It's not going to be easy. You'll likely face
some setbacks, but you'll learn so much about yourself and your
business along the way. And once you get that
first wholesale client, It's just a feeling I
can't even explain. If you have questions or you'd like some feed on your business, please feel free to post
a discussion down below. I truly believe there's
enough space for all of us creatives and small
business owners to thrive, and I want to be
there cheering you on every step of the way as you venture out on this
wholesale journey. Thank you again for
joining me in this class, and I look forward to seeing your products in stores soon.
Petals by Priya Watercolor, Watercolor Artist & Teacher
