How to sell soap wholesale
How we scaled our small handmade soap business & sell to wholesale customers. Wholesale selling tips
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hey everyone and welcome back to our
channel are you a small business who is
looking to perhaps gain a little bit
more custom and branch out by selling
wholesale but you're not quite sure
where to start or what it involves if so
then stay tuned because today's video is
for you
[Music]
my name is anne and i am the co-owner of
the sussex handmade soap company we are
a small bath and body business based in
battle in east sussex and we sell our
products to both retail customers and
wholesale customers
in today's video i'm going to be
discussing the wholesale side of things
covering the basics from what wholesale
is through to things like terms and
conditions and other points you may want
to consider such as advantages and
disadvantages if you are looking at
branching out and perhaps selling your
items wholesale now although we are a
bath and body business this advice will
be pretty much applicable to any kind of
small craft business so perhaps you make
something like jewelry
or perhaps you knit anything that you do
that is a small craft business that you
are looking to sell to the public um the
advice in this video will cover
any kind of general craft it doesn't
have to just be soap so the very first
thing we're going to cover today is
right back to basics and that is what is
wholesale and i imagine if you're
watching this video you probably have
some idea or already know but if you
don't wholesale is generally where you
will take your products and you will
sell them at a discounted value to other
businesses
and those businesses will predominantly
do one of two things with your products
they will either then sell them on to
their own customers perhaps through a
retail high street store or perhaps
online or the other thing they may do
with your products is they might use
them within their own business and
examples of that would be in for us be
in a bed and breakfast or a holiday let
where they're using our soaps for their
guests who come to stay so there are
generally let's say two sort of things
that wholesale customers will want to do
with your products the main thing to
distinguish them is they are not retail
they're not going to be buying one or
two soaps and being done with it they
are going to be placing larger value
orders and hopefully they will be
placing repeat orders as well so it
won't be a one-off if you get a good
relationship hopefully you will get
repeat ornament orders from those same
customers so that is in a nutshell what
wholesale actually is
and in today's video we are going to be
focusing on selling to customers who are
then going to be selling your products
on to other customers so we're talking
about the high street stock shops the
online shops things like that we're not
going to be focusing on things like the
bed and breakfasts and the holiday let's
so much we are going to generally be
focusing on uh selling your products to
another person who is going to then be
selling them on through their store
and there are
three types of wholesale that you're
probably most likely to encounter when
you first go out looking for places to
sell your items the first is what we'd
like to say or what we will refer to
today as a kind of traditional wholesale
where a customer contacts you they want
your products
and they get the discounted value and
they then take them off your hands and
they sell them on and they are fully
responsible for those products you don't
see those products again you don't worry
about those products they are off your
hands and gone
the second type of wholesale that you
may encounter is people who wish to do
sale or return and what sale or return
is it's pretty self-explanatory it's
where you
sell your items to well rather you
provide
the customer with your items
and they either sell them and that's
great then you get the money all sorted
or if they don't sell them they return
them to you
so in that instance if you have produced
a lot of stock and they've said yeah we
can sell it and they take it off you
a few months down the line they could
potentially come back to you and say no
it didn't sell here you go have it back
i want a refund or you know if they
haven't paid you you don't get paid for
the whatever they return to you
so that for us is not such a great thing
the only advantage with sale or return
is that you can likely charge a lower
percentage so
with wholesale we tend to sell our
wholesale stock to our customers at 50
off our retail price
if we were doing sale or return we
wouldn't offer 50 off we would offer a
lower percentage because it's more risk
for us so we would probably go 20 30
off of our retail price if we were
offering sale or return
and the last kind of wholesale that you
are likely to possibly come across is
where you rent a shelf in a shop
and this can sometimes come with a
commission as well sometimes it will
sometimes it won't and what you're
basically doing is you are going in and
you are paying in advance for renting a
shelf or a couple of shelves within a
shop
and you can then display your products
and your products are then sold in that
shop if you are lucky and the shop is
not charging commission that means that
when your products sell you get all the
money or you may find that the shop also
wants a commission as well so you may be
paying for your shelf and then giving
the shopkeeper say 10 20 something like
that of your actual takings
again we're not so keen on renting a
shelf because it is more risky um it's
kind of akin to selling a craft fairs in
that respect in that you are paying
upfront for a pitch or a shelf and you
don't know if you're going to sell
anything so say you've spent
20 pounds for a week selling in a shop
and i have plucked that figure out thin
air because we don't even entertain
selling um where we have to rent a shelf
so i don't know what the figures are
like so say you're paying 20 pounds a
week you could have a great week and
sell a whole load of stock and in that
case you've probably done well and you
haven't paid such a high commission um
so it's all good but
similarly you could have a rubbish week
where you've paid your 20 pounds to rent
that shelf and absolutely nothing sells
so then you have just kissed goodbye to
that money and there's nothing you can
really do about it
so those are the three kind of types of
wholesale that you are likely to
encounter and as you may have guessed
from the way i've been talking about
them the one that we do is the first one
i told you about the kind of traditional
wholesale
where we charge our customers 50
of our retail price and they then get to
keep whatever profit they make but you
know if they can't shift the stock uh if
we've sold them some seasonal lines and
they haven't sold them all that is then
their stock for them to dispose of or
sell off cheaply or do with what they
will it doesn't come back to us and we
don't have to worry about stock coming
back say in january we sold christmas
stuff it comes back to us in january and
they want a refund because they can't
sell it
it's not
and i just say hate to see i say it like
this but it's not our problem because
they have purchased and they have taken
the risk by purchasing at that much
lower price so if you are interested in
selling wholesale another platform you
might have come across is fair
and you may notice the background has
now changed in our video ever so
slightly that is because um i am
re-filming this part of the video uh
approximately two weeks after the
original video was filmed because in our
last video i said that we didn't sell
unfair and i listed our reasons why not
um we've actually had a little bit of a
change of heart and we have decided we
are going to give it a go
just to see how it works out for us
i'm not sure if it'll be something that
long term we continue with but
it's worth a go to see how it works out
now our main reasons for not selling
unfair for so long were that they
charged 25 commission on new orders so
when you get a new customer that finds
you through fair you're paying 25
commission on whatever they purchase
which is a huge amount to be giving away
as a small handmade business and that
was kind of something that really did
put us off we thought is it viable is it
going to work um since then we have had
a few fares that we've been out to and
they are definitely slower than usual
and i think that is down to everything
that's going on in the economy at the
moment
so we thought you know what yes they're
charging 25 commission but i have done
one of my famous spreadsheets and i've
worked out that selling our products
even with the 25 commission we are still
going to be making a small profit and it
is a small profit but it's still a
profit we're still going to be making
money and it will potentially get our
brand and our name out a little bit
further um
there was a couple of other things i was
slightly concerned about with fair in
that if you get customer returns they
get sent back to fair and fair can then
do
what they wish with your product so
there is that concern at the back of my
mind of if they get a return are they
going to sell it on really cheaply to
somebody else who's then going to sell
it on to
a shop who's then going to sell it off
cheaply and kind of devalue our brand a
little bit if that does start happening
we will come off fair because we don't
want that to happen
but i thought you know what it is worth
a go um because i've read stories of
lots of people who are saying that every
other kind of outlet that they're
selling through at the moment is quiet
but they're actually doing well on fair
and i know fair have just actually
finished a promotion where they were
giving people free credit so we're
probably joining at completely the wrong
time um but it's worth a go we're gonna
see what happens so i probably will do a
video on that later on when we've had a
little bit of experience on there and we
can see how well it goes so that is
another wholesale platform for you to
consider
obviously you will have to make sure
that your
product markup does allow for you guys
to make a profit as well because i say
that 25 commission is huge um it does
drop to 15 if somebody has ordered from
you unfair and paid the 25 if they come
back for a reorder that drops down to 15
but i'm not sure how many reorders we
can realistically expect to get that is
something that will only kind of come
with time and with using the platform
for a little bit so we're going to
experiment with that there are i think
some other platforms like that i believe
there's anchor store and creote
and a couple of others are springing up
too so there's plenty of them to have a
look at and just kind of get a feel for
so that is potentially something for you
guys to consider as well um and
obviously the nice thing about fair is
that it is less risk you're not paying
unless you sell anything so you're not
paying a fee to actually be on the
platform you're purely paying that
commission when you sell
and the other nice thing about fair is
that because it is online
it is going to be a lot easier if those
wholesale customers come and find you as
opposed to when we're going out looking
for wholesale customers we can spend all
day out and if we're lucky come back
with a new stockist but if we're not
lucky we can come back with no new
stockist so we've spent a whole day out
searching somebody to stop our products
we haven't found anyone and that's a day
gone and fuel spent so at least this way
those stockists are kind of coming to us
and they're finding us rather than are
spending our time and money going out
finding them so we're going to give it a
go and we're going to see what happens
now when it actually comes to selling
wholesale it is a good idea to have just
a few terms and conditions written up
and these don't need to be pages and
pages long just think of the kind of
things that you would want to know if
you are a wholesale customer and also
think of what you want to say to say to
your wholesale customers as the retailer
just to kind of cover your own backside
a little bit
our wholesale terms and conditions are
very simple it is about one page and
they are simple because we predominantly
sell to small independent businesses
that are kind of run by the owner so
there's not a lot of middlemen and
higher management and it's easy to
distill you know business person to
business person and you can keep things
that little bit simpler if you're trying
to get into much larger stores like
chain stores and that is going to be a
whole other ball ball game that i'm not
going to talk about because we've never
tried to get into chain stores because
there would be a lot of hoops to jump
through so when you are selling to small
independent stores you can get away with
kind of
short but concise terms and conditions
and the things we like to cover in our
terms and conditions are things like our
retail price we don't mind if our
stockists want to try and raise our
retail price a little bit our bars are
soaked for five pounds each we know that
some of our stockists do sell them at
six pounds each and that is fine that is
up to them one of the things we do say
in our terms is that we ask people not
to sell our products below our retail
price so we're selling that bar of soap
for five pounds we ask our stockists not
to sell it below five pound pound five
pounds
first reason is it kind of devalues our
business a little bit and if people are
seeing our soaps being sold cheaper by
somebody who is not asked they're gonna
question why that is
and the second reason is we have quite a
few stockists and it's not fair to the
other stockists who are charging our rrp
if there are other shops around that are
actually undercutting them so that is
why we ask people not to sell below our
rrp
the other things you will want to think
about covering is whether your stockist
is going to have exclusivity and by
exclusivity i mean in a certain
geographical area so let's take the town
of battle which is where we live
it's a small town
and you need to work out if you are
selling to a company in that town do you
want to sell to another company in that
town
and you may think well there's no
problem with that then i've got two
stockists that's great what you will
probably find is that if those two
stockists realize that you are selling
to both of them they're not going to be
overly happy with that and we actually
made that mistake when we very first
started selling wholesale
we sold to two companies in the same
town they were at very different ends of
the town
but one of them found out that we were
stopping the other and she wasn't very
happy because she said she wanted to be
the only stockist in that town and at
the time we didn't even realize that was
a thing so that was a mistake looking
back um
as time has gone by the lady who
actually said she wanted to be the sole
stockist is now the sole stockist
she didn't force us to you know get rid
of the other company or anything she
said it's fine we'll carry on um but the
other company actually relocated to a
store that was virtually opposite her
and we said to them then because they
weren't selling as much as this other
lady was so we said we can't continue to
supply you now you're virtually opposite
her because that's not fair so you will
find that quite often
if you are selling it within a certain
small town
that
probably one shop is enough to go with
because otherwise you do risk the
retailers getting upset
and then they're not going to order from
you and also it does dilute the sales
which means that shop a
perhaps they would have sold 20 bars a
week but a new stock shop b and they're
each only selling 10 bars a week
that's the same amount of bars being
sold but you might find that they then
say 10 bars a week isn't enough and
neither of them buy from you again so i
would recommend if you are selling in
smaller towns to just stick with one
stockist
what you can do is if they specifically
ask for exclusivity grant it to them but
you could potentially say that they have
to hit certain ordering targets so you
could say yes we'll grant you
exclusivity but we want you to order at
least 150 pounds worth of products from
us every couple of months and then if
they don't place consistent orders you
can bring this up with them and they can
either raise their orders or you can
look at stocking another shop or you can
look at you know just moving on and
trying somewhere new
so those are a few ideas regarding
exclusivity
right what was next on my little list
that's down here
ah
minimum orders very important when you
are selling wholesale you should have a
minimum order which is how much that
stockist is required to spend in order
to access your wholesale prices because
you can't have them ringing you up and
spending saying 10 pounds and they want
your cheap prices because that's not
worth your time and it's not wholesale
wholesale is not small orders wholesale
is large orders and our minimum order
value is 100 pounds and we actually made
a mistake again when we first started
selling wholesale
we started with a minimum order value of
50 pounds and i think perhaps it was
because we were so desperate to get out
there and get everyone trying our
products that we actually
had our minimum order value too low
and we actually get plenty of retail
orders that over 50 pounds so it's not
really a wholesale figure for us um we
learned very quickly that working with a
50-pound minimum order really wasn't
worth our time um and i don't mean that
in like oh it's who you know we don't
even get out of bed for 10 grand a day
or whatever that famous line is what i
mean is that it will take you time and
effort preparing these wholesale orders
and your time is money so if you're
preparing a low value wholesale order it
can actually end up costing you
more than it's kind of worth if you see
what i mean so we then raised almond and
mortar to 75 pounds and after another
few months we got busier and again we
were dealing with lots of smaller orders
and we thought it's again it's not worth
our time we were running ourselves
rugged so we then raised it to 100
pounds um
and we were debating raising it again
but we're kind of happy with that 100
pound figure especially at the moment in
the way the economy is we don't want to
kind of price ourselves out of the
wholesale market most of our wholesale
orders are over 100 pounds but we do get
smaller businesses where it is under um
under
not under 100 pounds where it where it
is around the 100 pound mark
and it's worth noting that there are
smaller companies who don't want to
spend huge huge amounts so we stick at
100 pounds the other thing that you will
potentially be able to do with wholesale
orders is you can have a minimum order
quantity
so perhaps you could sell your
lemongrass soaps and they have to buy a
case of six of them so they're buying in
case quantity so that's generally sixes
or twelves don't ask me why it just
seems to be how it goes with wholesale i
see a lot of things sold in sixes or
twelves probably something to do with
old imperial measurements or something i
don't know
um
we do not sell or insist that our stock
is to purchase a minimum
uh
minimum order quantity so we don't
insist on case quantities if they want
to buy one lemongrass site one orange
soap one mint soap that's fine so long
as they hit our 100 pound minimum order
value and the reason we don't insist on
case quantities or things like that is
because again a lot of the companies we
sell to are small and they don't have
the funds to be able to have a nice
selection of our products if they have
to buy six of each of them or more so no
minimum order quantities for us but we
do have a minimum order value and the
other thing you want to consider is
postage and packaging
now our post and packaging is free if
our customers spend over 175 pounds but
if it is under 175 pounds we do request
that they pay six pounds postage and the
reason for that is that they are already
getting discounted prices um and courier
costs because a lot of these parcels are
heavy royal mail will send parcels up to
two kilograms i don't think we've ever
had a wholesale order go out
that has been under two kilos so we have
to send via a courier and our careers
actually cost us eight pounds and ninety
um so even when we charge our customers
six pounds postage we are actually
subsidizing that ourselves a little bit
so we pay the extra two pounds ninety
but we can't afford when we're giving
them already lower prices to then give
them free postage on a lower value order
as well
and we do find that having our free
postage at 175 pounds plus does actually
encourage our wholesale customers to
place slightly larger orders because
they want the free postage so it works
twofold one you're not paying for
postage and two you are encouraging to
spend encouraging them to spend that
little bit more
so now we're going to chat a little bit
about the advantages and disadvantages
of offering your products wholesale
and the first advantage is that you can
sell a lot of stock quickly and with a
minimal financial risk and what i mean
by that is that your customers will come
to you they'll tell you what they want
you can shift off an invoice to them
they'll pay it you send out the stock
and there is little financial risk in
that as compared to doing something like
a craft fair with a craft fair you are
paying out for your table and you don't
know if you're going to make any money
you could go and spend eight hours
standing behind a table and come back
with absolutely no profit which
incidentally is what we did just one
week ago when we went to a fair and we
came back minus 60 c 66 pence richer
thankfully that hasn't happened in a
very long time um
but yeah it's not nice when that happens
at all um but you just kind of move past
it and look forward to the next fear and
hope it doesn't happen again with
wholesale you're not taking that risk
because it's a confirmed sale and it's a
lot stock in one go and you are making
the money and the stock is out the door
and it is sorted the second advantage to
wholesale is that you are gaining
visibility for your product if your
brand is in a few little local shops
then more people are going to see it and
if you've got your website address on
your packaging like we have you also
have the chance that those customers are
then going to come directly to you and
place their retail orders through your
website and you're then going to be
selling more stock which is great so
there is increased visibility which is
fantastic the other advantage is that
you will get some companies that you
work with who have been going a lot
longer than you and a lot of them may
offer you advice or
tips we have got a couple of our
wholesale stockists and he does one of
them he does is very helpful he gives us
a lot of time a lot of knowledge and he
will suggest things to us which perhaps
we haven't thought of and things that we
can implement um
one of the things he said to us was that
we didn't email our customers enough
telling them about new products and you
know making them aware that we're still
about so we have tried to start emailing
people our stockists a little bit more
often and it has actually worked on a
few occasions where we've sent emails
and people have then come back to us and
placed orders so
stockists can actually give you some
really good help and advice in relation
to your business
the other advantage of wholesale is that
you can kind of map the trends and you
get more of an idea of your most popular
products when we're at fairs we do know
what sells well for us but it's nice to
also know what sells well across all
kind of
um
all kinds of
avenues that's the word i'm looking for
so our salt bars for example when we are
at fairs we sell them really well and
they are very popular what we have
learnt is that they are not the most
popular seller through our stockists um
and a few of our stockists have said
they're slow moving and they have
trouble selling them
i don't know if that is because when
we're affairs we can really chat to the
customers tell them what they are tell
them how they work or whether it is
something else but you do get a feel for
what products are your kind of all-round
fantastic sellers so you know what
you're going to need to make more of and
you know what is generally going to
always sell quite well for you for us
it's our lemongrass soap that is
probably our number one seller and it
sells consistently well at our fares on
our website and through all of our
stockists too so now moving on to some
of the disadvantages of wholesale
selling the first one which is the
glaringly obvious one is that you are
making less profit although you are
selling your items in volume and you are
perhaps taking more money in with an
order those items are actually being
sold at a lower price so you are making
less money or rather less profit per
item
um
there's no other way to do it really you
want to sell your products so they can
sell them on and make money you have to
sell them cheaper um we have priced our
products so that we can make a fair
profit from our wholesale it's not
absolutely mind-blowing but you know
it's certainly worthless doing it so
when you are pricing your products even
for retail you need to take into account
and if you're even thinking about doing
wholesale make sure you price your
products at a retail price that means if
you want to offer wholesale you can cut
the price right back down and you can
then
sell wholesale prices and still make
money
because yeah you are making a lot less
when you're selling wholesale it's just
the way it goes there are other things
that are slight disadvantages to selling
wholesale and it is things like when you
need to change your rrp um recently the
price of citric acid as many of you will
know has gone through the roof our
citric acid acid has almost trebled in
price and that is one of the main
constituents of our bath bombs and bath
bombs were one of our lower profit items
anyway so we've actually had to increase
the price of our bath bombs just to take
into account
the extra price in citric acid and the
fact that we generally run a hube
dehumidifier although we haven't had too
recently but we you know we always used
to run a dehumidifier and with the
electric and gas prices going up too it
is becoming more expensive to make those
bath bombs so we have had to raise our
prices now if we were just selling
retail that'd be a really quick
five-minute job you know we raised the
prices on the website we changed our
signs for our fares done when you are
selling wholesale if you are changing
your retail prices you're going to need
to contact all of your stockists and let
them know about the updated prices and
you're probably also going to have to
change your wholesale price so it's
going to take you a lot longer to
implement any necessary changes
um
there's also the case of when new
legislation comes in like recently they
were going to ban the leo lillian
lillian they were going to ban lilial
here in the uk
and i had to contact all of our
stockists who had any of our products
containing lilial and i had to tell them
that from the first of march you can't
sell them you're going to need to take
them off your shelves or sell them at a
discounted price so that took a fair
amount of time to do that
then of course they decided they weren't
going to ban the lille just yet so i had
to contact our stockists again
and tell them no actually it's fine you
can still sell those items at the moment
so when there are
price changes or legislation changes it
takes a lot longer to implement those
changes across all of your different
selling platforms one of the other main
disadvantages of selling wholesale is
you have less control over your products
and if you're like me you will treat
your products like little children like
you love them you know you have
made them you have produced them you
have nurtured them and they are like
little children that you love your
stockists are not going to see your
products like that as much as you may
want them to as fantastic as they are to
your stockists they're just the products
and they may love your products but you
know they're not something that they
have created so they're not going to
have that same level of love and care
for your products that you have
so there are instances or we have had
instances where our products haven't
been stored correctly and we've gone in
because we do tend to go in and have a
little look at our stock and there's a
couple of places where we've gone in and
the packaging's been tatty or
uh there was a place we were selling
that was in quite a humid area and our
salt bars were getting affected the
wrapping was going a little bit wet and
it doesn't look good and it does
ultimately reflect back on our brand so
you have less control over how your
stock is cared for and how your stock is
looked after and that leads on to
another disadvantage is that those
people those stockists who are selling
your items they are not going to have
the same level of knowledge about your
products as you do nobody's going to
know your products as well as you do so
when they've got customers buying from
them
they may not know the answers to some of
the questions that you would know
yourself so it is important to try to
the best of your ability to make sure
your stock is slow all about your
products you know shout the benefits
from the rooftops and the chances are
your stockists won't remember half of
what you tell them so it is perhaps a
good idea to have a little bit of pos we
just have a little you know a5 sheet
that tells people the basics about our
company so where we are that the fact
that there's only two of us that it's
all handmade it's eco-friendly it's palm
free it's vegan
and we hand out those little pos
documents to our stockists so if they
don't know about our product they can
put our little sign up and it will tell
people the basics but yeah those
stoppers as lovely as they are and as
brilliant as they are and i love all of
our stockists they're all fantastic they
don't have that same level of knowledge
and you can't expect them to
uh the other thing that we have had a
couple of times once or twice
it's where we have sold products and the
stockists then want to unwrap them
because your soaps are so pretty we just
want to sell them naked to everybody
um
luckily we've had everybody that's
wanted to do that actually ask us if
they can and we've had to say no you
can't because it's got all the
ingredients on the back it's got our
details on the back and we need to leave
those details on the product because we
have registered it on the scpn
and we've registered it in this
packaging and you can't change the
packaging from what we're advertising
and you need to have our name and you
need the ingredients available
so you do run the risk
and i don't think it's happened to us as
far as i know and as far as i've checked
nobody has ever sold our products naked
but there is always the chance that
somebody might they might think i want
to sell these naked and they don't know
the legislation they think is as easy as
unwrapping the soaps popping them on the
side and then they can sell them
so you need to watch out for things like
that and also if they're unwrapping your
products i know with our soaps they'll
lose us they'll lose the scent and we
don't want our soaps to be sat there
naked
no details no ingredients and losing
their scent so you do have to keep an
eye on what your stockists are actually
doing with your product which leads me
on actually to our online stockists we
seem to have
more issues and it's minor issues it's
really minor issues but most of our
issues seem to be with our online
stockists
um
and i say it's such minor things but one
of our stockists we only found it a
couple of days ago they've done a lovely
write-up about us
where they
have described how we use the
old-fashioned technique of using a cold
press to make our soaps
and i read that and i you know it it was
at the point of being
a little bit cringy because anybody who
knows anything about soaps knows there
is no such thing as a cold press that
you use to press your soaps with it is
cold process and you know
our stoppers clearly didn't know that
and he's tried to do a write-up and he's
tried to do a really nice write-up but
because he has lacked that knowledge he
is mistaken cold process for cold press
he presumes as a press i think that we
make the soaps in and it doesn't sound
good and ultimately again that could
reflect back on our brand which we don't
want so we've got to contact him now and
tell him that cold presses don't exist
and uh well unless you're making cider
or apples or something i presume there's
cold pressed apple juice does that exist
i don't know i don't make apple juice if
i did i'd learn more about it the other
thing when you are doing wholesale is
your stock control while you're trying
to get used to what you're selling and
you're taking on new stock is your stock
control is likely to go a little bit
haywire um
we seem to be in this situation where
we'll chug along quite nicely we'll
think we've got plenty of everything and
then all of a sudden we will get like
four or five of our stockists in one go
all wanting large numbers of rose
geranium soap and it happens so often
it's kind of crazy
um we think we've got loads in stock and
suddenly everyone wants it and it's gone
and then we're out of stock so the stock
control is harder when you are selling
wholesale because you can't quite
predict what everyone's going to want
but guaranteed when they want it they're
all going to want it at the same time
and you're going to run out and then
have to turn people down or not have
enough for yourself so stock control
when you are selling wholesale is harder
and the last thing i'm going to touch on
with the disadvantages for wholesale
is if you offer credit and we don't we
offer credit to one of our stockists who
is a really good stockist they are
absolutely fantastic they pay on time
and they are brilliant
but if you offer credits or even if you
don't um you can find yourself spending
time chasing up people for payments um
and this actually happens to us even
without us offering credits
when we produce an invoice it's not
unusual for certain companies especially
companies that are controlled by the
councils to take their time in paying um
we're talking like you know three or
four weeks two or three reminders and
they're still not paying so you will
find yourself
waiting for money to come in so don't
expect it to be innocent a lot of your
stockists perhaps the smaller ones where
you are working directly with the owner
they'll have paid in like a day or two
after getting their invoice but you will
find i think the larger the venue or the
shop um or again if it is not owned and
run by the same person you will find you
are waiting longer for payment which is
why we don't offer credit to anyone
because
i it's annoying enough having to chase
people up over invoices that haven't
been paid for like three or four weeks
and the last thing i want to be doing is
chasing people up for stocks that they
have had but haven't paid for so that is
why we generally don't offer credits and
the very last thing i'm gonna touch on
on this is what is turning out to be
quite a long video but i am trying to
cover everything i can think of so i'm
sorry if it's long but i'm trying to
help you guys the last thing is check
that your insurance covers you for
selling wholesale you may find that it
doesn't you may find that you actually
need to change your insurance so just
make sure that you are
checking that so you are still covered
by your insurance if in the worst case
scenario anything goes wrong
right
i think i have covered most of what i
want to
next week we are going to be covering
stockists and how to find them um and
that is at the request of somebody who
emailed us and asked how we find our
stockist so we thought we're going to do
a video about it because it's probably
something that will be useful to a fair
number of you out there so next week
we're going to follow up this video with
part two which is going to be how we
find our stockists
i was going to say and but there's no
need to send and because it is basically
a how to find our stockists video next
week
if you have enjoyed this video please do
give it a like and a subscribe do leave
us a comment and if you have got any
tips for wholesale that i have forgotten
please do drop them down in the comments
box so that we can all help each other
out a little bit
that'd be grand we'll see you next week
for where we find our stockist bye for
now
[Music]
you
