Vicky_CO Posted June 10, 2014 Share Posted June 10, 2014 I am going to start a series of articles about product and price. I am going to need a lot of help. What I need right now is a lot of different opinions on the plus and minus of each of these. Wholesaling only, Retailing only and doing both. I may need to refine this down a bit but I want to see what you guys give me first. I am really hoping you give me a lot. BTW I will need and editor for the finishes articles. I can not edit worth spit as you all know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Fields Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 Vicky, we sell wholesale and retail and have for years. Wholesale makes up a third of our sales. We prefer wholesale, but it is too erratic. Feast or famine. Cash flow is erratic too. In retail sales are predictable, and cash flow is steady and regular. Wholesale is a little bit predictable; most of our mid to large customers order every two months and have for years. Small accounts are all over the board in their ordering. Interestingly, the after-costs profit margins work out to be about the same. Our costs are much lower with wholesale than they are with retail, but the margins are much slimmer too. In retail costs are very high, but so are our margins. The main reason we would prefer wholesale over retail is employees...they suck! We have a pretty good staff now but only after going through a bunch of losers. At our warehouses our employees are much better. So, for us, right now until the wholesale volume grows to match retail we will stick with both. Also, we have noticed that out of town customers buy our retail products, take them home, love them and we get wholesale accounts and mail orders because of it. Every single wholesale account we have is a result of this process. We make good stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vicky_CO Posted June 12, 2014 Author Share Posted June 12, 2014 Thank you David. I have a question did you start out with a brick and mortar store or did you start with festivals and online? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Fields Posted June 12, 2014 Share Posted June 12, 2014 We started with festivals then after a couple of years opened a brick and mortar store, had that one for five years. Still did festivals for cash flow. Never tried online until a year and a half back. Wish we had started earlier. It's going very well. We didn't start selling online because of the high web site cost. Found an alternative, inexpensive way to build a website. Anyway, ten years ago we closed the store and opened another one (learned a lot of expensive lessons with the first one). We still have the second one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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