What does it mean for a brand to “wholesale”?

"I like my money right where I can see it…hanging in my closet." —Carrie Bradshaw.

One of the most critical steps in building a fashion brand is identifying your customer and determining the best ways to get your product into their hands. You can sell directly to the consumer, but this can be challenging, especially for new brands, as they sometimes need the infrastructure or marketing tools to do this successfully. Thus, many brands choose to wholesale their products to retailers that will, in turn, sell them to their customers. This process can maximize a brand's potential by reaching more customers and growing its business. So, what does it mean for a brand to wholesale its products? 

Wholesaling a product involves selling it in bulk quantities at a lower price to a retailer, who then marks up the price and sells it to their customers. This approach can be valuable for brands, as it can rapidly increase sales and brand awareness. However, it's essential to be aware of the potential pitfalls. Wholesaling can distance your brand from direct customer contact and may result in losing control over your brand and its image. 

Wholesaling means selling your product at a cheaper price but in larger quantities to offset that. Wholesaling also requires a distribution system to be set up to produce more significant amounts of the product and ship it to your retailers. As a boutique owner, our experience with wholesale has been positive but with a learning curve, too. 

When opening a store, finding the right brands that align with your store's aesthetics is essential, but it can be difficult. Many well-known brands you love may not wholesale or only wholesale to larger department stores, so securing brands can be challenging. We have successfully purchased our brands through showrooms at the Dallas Apparel Market.

These showrooms are another layer between the brand and the customer, but they are necessary since you can see and touch the samples at the showroom to see what you are buying versus just purchasing online or over the phone. The showrooms can also help advocate for your store if there are quality, shipping, or special requests, as they have a direct line to the brand.

However, in the last few years, online showrooms like Faire Marketplace have gained a lot of popularity as they are easy to purchase from and have a wide variety of brands available. Also, in today's market, brands can be successful in retail and wholesale. Many of our store's top brands, like Free People, Buddy Love, and Boys Lie, wholesale to us and sell online, too. Some brands have even taken wholesale to the next level by bringing the collection directly to our store so we can decide what we want to carry.

Overall, Wholesale benefits both the brand and the store that decides to carry the items. For small boutiques like ours, our livelihood depends on the decisions we make when going to market, so choosing the clothes we see our customer base buying is crucial. If the customers connect with the clothes, they will buy them, but if they don't, we are slowly turning into a "money pit."

Photo : @lilyrita1 on TikTok