You’re always keen to grow your retail business. It’s a natural impulse for entrepreneurs to want to reach higher.
But retailers are busy people. Between weekend markets and trade shows and your efforts online, when are you going to find the time?
One tool for growth is wholesale opportunities. In this post, we’ll talk about how to scale your retail business through bulk selling. And it’s easier than you think. It allows you to sell a much larger volume of product to fewer people and those people represent businesses who need a bunch of what you’re selling.
What wholesale buyers want.
The primary difference between your current consumer-direct model is the buyer. You’re creating a channel for businesses. That means you need to create conditions that make buying your product simple and efficient.
The interest of these customers isn’t personal. They’re not buying for themselves. They’re buying for their customers and they’re buying because they believe that product is going to make money. They want you, as the vendor, to help them get that product on their shelves and sold, as quickly as possible.
Targets and awareness.
Answering the question about who your market is depends a lot on what you’re selling. If it’s fidget spinners, maybe you want a largescale retail chain like Walmart, or Target. If you’re in women’s fashion, you may want to be selling wholesale to local boutiques or regional fashion chains.
Adding wholesale to your brand means raising awareness of the fact that this channel is something you’re now doing. That means an extensive public relations effort on your part, discussing your products and calling on the skills of online influencers to move the project forward.
Drawbacks.
Wholesale can help you grow your business footprint, but it also has some drawbacks retailers should be aware of.
For one, your profit margin is materially lower with wholesale. With buyers taking on more product, unit price must remain low, so the buyer can make a profit on resale.
You also lose a certain degree of control in the realm of marketing and branding. Once you relinquish control of the product’s journey to shelves, you lose control of the message. If that’s important to you, you may not want to proceed with wholesale.
Wholesale also demands that you await payment. Buyers need time to move the product and most of them work from an accounts payable structure of 30 or 60 days from delivery. That means retailers need to plan for that lag to float the product and ensure they can continue to produce it until they’re paid for outgoing shipments.
But the advantages of wholesale opportunities are compelling enough that it may be worth your while to consider. While you lose some control of the message in the process, you also receive the support of a third party to market your products, while increasing your brand presence and sales.
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