Marketing isn’t easy for all entrepreneurs, so sustaining and growing a business can be a struggle. Fortunately, by creating a wholesale channel you can pass on all the tension and responsibility to other businesses.
Although most entrepreneurs start with B2C eCommerce by selling their products directly to consumers, wholesaling offers huge benefits making it worth considering.
Basically, wholesalers don’t have to worry about managing individual orders or shipping goods to endless locations. Instead, just form lucrative partnerships with other businesses and enjoy the benefit of repeat revenue as well as reduced marketing costs.
What Is Wholesaling?
Selling in bulk to retailers means saving time and money on dispatching products to one place instead of endless locations.
The practice of selling products in large quantities to other B2B buyers/retailers is wholesaling. Wholesalers typically sell products in bulk at a discounted price, allowing merchants to earn a profit who then sell it to end customers at a higher price. When the merchant purchases larger quantities than usual, the wholesalers sell the items at a reduced price. By building relations with such merchants, the wholesaler can guarantee repeat revenue too. Additionally, continue to sell your items to end consumers and scale up your business.
Benefits of Wholesaling Business
Selling wholesale with eCommerce retail store owners is a simple and effective way to make a consistent income along with many other benefits.
- Higher revenue from lesser transactions
Selling in bulk to retailers means saving time and money on dispatching products to one place instead of endless locations.
You can sell thousands of units of one particular item in one purchase. You can also make recurring income by signing your customers up for subscription purchases.
- Save on lower overheads and marketing expenses
Most wholesalers offer bulk products at a discount to save on overheads by selling good wholesale products.
You can save money on individual packaging and shipping of each unit. You can also save on marketing expenses as you just need a few great relationships with retailers to maintain your income.
- Improved brand awareness
The right exposure through partnerships with retail companies can lead to new opportunities, leverage the existing brand reputation of the retail company you’re working with, and also improve the virtual shelf space for your products.
- Enter new markets with less risk
Expanding your business to a new country or region involves costs like warehousing, logistics, and also local marketing. By building strong relationships with your retail customers, you can open the door for market expansions without investing in research and development, and also save money on marketing by gaining direct access to the retailer’s existing customer base.
Interesting trends observed in products while selling wholesale to retailers in the UK
- Top education products for wholesaling include Arts and crafts supplies, educational software, writing tools, notebooks, computers, laptops, calculators, etc.
- Home décor is one of the best products for the wholesaling business. According to Statista, 76% of UK homeowners made at least one home décor purchase in the 2020 pandemic. Wholesale items to sell from home décor products include frames, candles, pots/vases, furniture, bed sheets/blankets/pillows, etc.
- Undoubtedly, fashion is the largest and ever-growing market. In 2021, the fashion apparel and accessories market alone made $94 billion in revenue in the US.
- Food is an obvious category to wholesale, as there always be a demand for it. Some food products to consider wholesaling are beverages, dairy items, oils/pulses/, Seafood, frozen packed food, chips/crackers, and many more.
- Purses and handbags also have a huge market. About $2.77 billion worth of women’s handbags was imported into the US in 2020.
- The health and wellness industry are huge and all set to make well over $6 trillion a year by 2025. Research shows that the pandemic has driven people to eCommerce purchases for these products.
- The pet supplies wholesale business is profitable. In the US, on average $860 in 2020 was spent on each pet in one home.
- In 2021, the party planning market reached $3 billion. And this market doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
How would you drive online success as a wholesale retailer?
There are a couple of ways on how to start a business selling wholesale items.
- Creating Your Wholesale Channel
The first option is to build your own wholesale storefront from scratch. You can do this easily with an eCommerce platform like Adobe Commerce and Big Commerce. You can also add wholesale functionality to your existing store.
You can create a storefront with the products you already have on your website. And you can separate consumer and wholesale sales too. Track how well each channel is performing.
Creating a wholesale storefront
You can create a storefront with the products you already have on your website. And you can separate consumer and wholesale sales too. Track how well each channel is performing.
- Register with a wholesale market
Many modern retailers find and order products from wholesale marketplaces. So, apart from selling wholesale through your own store, you can register with some of the most popular marketplaces to expand your reach.
- Partner with complementary brands
Partner with complementary businesses in your chosen market who can recommend your business to their customers, which will help you get more exposure and sales with ready leads.
- Start Networking
To unlock new wholesale opportunities and even find collaborative partnerships, start networking at trade shows. Attend local trade shows in your industry, where you can find people who are buying and selling products related to your portfolio and those who buy wholesale products to resell.
- Use incentives to boost buying
Not just consumers, businesses too like good deals. Thus, most wholesalers always offer a bigger discount based on the volume and amount of products the retailer buys. Boost your chances of conversion with good incentives like setting low minimum order requirements on first purchase, offering free shipping to someone who order quantity as per a set amount in a specific location, offering bundle deals, giving free samples and testers on set average order value, and also providing multiple payment terms.
Let’s Conclude
The beauty of having a wholesale channel is you can capture sales from both individual shoppers and other giant retailers. Running a wholesale business might look challenging at first, but it’s much easier if you have the right setup and strategies for attracting retailers.
By selling your products wholesale, you save time and money on customer acquisition, improve retailers’ shopping experience, and you get to enter new markets with less risk and hence improve your profit figures.
Remember, today B2B wholesale eCommerce is experiencing massive growth and driving much higher revenue than B2C eCommerce.
References
How to sell wholesale: Best products and marketplaces (2022). Shopify. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.shopify.com/uk/blog/selling-wholesale
Qayum, A. (2022, July 26). How to sell wholesale online in 2022: A detailed guide. Oberlo. Retrieved October 13, 2022, from https://www.oberlo.co.uk/blog/how-to-sell-wholesale
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