A case pack is the fixed number of units a shop has to buy of one item: six, twelve, twenty-four. Wholesale is sold in cases rather than singles because picking single units destroys your margin and because a shop needs enough of something to make a display worth building.
Choosing the number sounds trivial and is not. It sets your minimum, your freight cost, your packing time and how easy you are to say yes to, and once it is printed on a line sheet and typed into a marketplace listing it is genuinely annoying to change.
What a case pack is, and the words around it
The case pack or inner pack is how many sellable units come in the box a shop receives: twelve bags of granola, say.
The master carton is the shipping box you actually send, which may hold several inner packs. Four inner packs of twelve in one master carton is forty-eight bags on one label.
The minimum order is different again: the smallest total order you will accept, usually expressed in dollars or in cases across all items. Case pack governs how you buy one thing; the minimum governs the whole order, and the two are set together in minimum order quantity.
Some brands also publish a display pack: a counter unit that arrives as its own stand, common for small impulse items. It is a case pack that happens to look like furniture.
Why the case size is really a pricing decision
Everything you do per order costs roughly the same regardless of how many units are inside: pull the order, print the pick list, tape the carton, weigh it, buy the label, book the collection, invoice, reconcile the payment.
Granola retails at nine dollars a bag and wholesales at four fifty. A case of six is twenty-seven dollars of invoice. Your landed cost on six bags is about thirteen dollars, the mailer and label are three, and the twelve minutes of picking and admin are not free. There is close to nothing left, and a shop that orders two cases of six has cost you an afternoon to make a lunch.
A case of twelve is fifty-four dollars of invoice, costs you about twenty-six in goods, ships in one box for slightly more than the small one, and takes the same twelve minutes. Same work, roughly double the contribution.
That is the whole argument for larger cases. The counter-argument is that a case has to be sellable: twelve bags of granola is four weeks on a small shop's shelf, twenty-four is a season, and a case nobody can sell through is a case nobody reorders.
How to choose the number
Three questions, in this order.
How long does one case last on their shelf? Aim for something a decent shop turns in four to eight weeks. Fast enough that they reorder inside a season, slow enough that they are not emailing you every fortnight. For a food item in a small grocer, that is often six or twelve. For a jewellery piece in a boutique, three or four. For greeting cards, six of a design is standard because cards are browsed in a rack.
Does it fit the physical world? Cases should fill a shipping box without a lot of void, stack squarely on a pallet, and stay under the weight where courier pricing jumps. Weigh a packed carton before you commit, do not estimate it. A case that is two units over a shipping break costs you the entire margin on those two units.
Does it divide cleanly? Twelve is popular because it works as twelve, as two sixes and as three fours if you ever need to split, and because it matches how most cartons and shelves are laid out. Odd numbers like five and seven make inner packs, pallets and marketplaces awkward for no benefit.
Then sanity check the invoice. One case of one item should be worth shipping on its own, because that is exactly what a nervous first-time buyer will try to order. If one case is worth eighteen dollars, the case is too small.
Should case packs be the same across the range?
Mostly yes, with exceptions by size and price.
Consistency makes your line sheet readable and your buyer's maths easy. If everything is sixes, a buyer can total an order in their head, and heads are where orders get built.
The sensible exceptions are the cheap item and the expensive one. A lip balm at four dollars retail might sensibly come in twenty-fours; a forty-dollar candle in a glass cloche might be threes. A good rule is to keep the case value roughly in the same band across the range, so no single item makes an order lopsided.
What you should avoid is a different number for every item, which produces a line sheet no one can calculate from and invoices that are constantly wrong.
What has to be on the outside of the carton
The case is a piece of communication as well as a container, and a shop that receives a blank brown box will not know what it is until it is opened, which in a busy shop might be a week.
Put on it: your brand name, the item name and variant, the quantity inside, the item's barcode if it has one, a case-level barcode if you sell to anyone larger than a boutique, the batch or lot number for anything edible or cosmetic, and the best-before date where it applies.
Inside, put a packing slip that lists what is in the box, what the item retails at, and a human email address. If a shop has to hunt for who sent something, they will not hunt.
For food, cosmetics and anything with a claim on it, the labelling rules for the outer carton are usually stricter than brands expect. Find out before you print a thousand cartons, not after the first grocer refuses the delivery.
Mixed cases: when to allow them
Buyers will ask. A mixed case means the twelve units can be three of four flavours rather than twelve of one.
Allow it when your products are genuinely a range someone would display together, when variety is how the category sells, and when the picking cost is small because everything lives on the same shelf in your storeroom.
Refuse it when the units are physically different sizes, when each variant has its own production batch, or when you are already spending too long per order. Mixed picking is the single biggest hidden labour cost in small-brand wholesale.
The middle path most brands land on: full cases per item at the base price, mixed cases allowed above a stated order value, and a small handling charge if you want to discourage it without saying no. If you build volume tiers, keep them measured in a way that mixed cases can still qualify for, which is the point made in bulk pricing.
What breaks when the case pack is wrong
Too small: every order loses money quietly, you never notice because the invoices are positive, and the channel feels like a treadmill.
Too large: buyers say no without telling you why. A shop with a four-foot shelf cannot take twenty-four of anything from a brand it has never sold, and it will simply not reply rather than negotiate.
Inconsistent with what your store enforces: a buyer orders seven units because your site let them, and now you either break a case or start the account with a correction email. If you sell wholesale through your own storefront, make the case multiple a hard rule at checkout rather than a line of text, which is what Shopify quantity rules are for.
Different everywhere: the number on your line sheet, the number on a marketplace listing and the number you actually pack all disagree. Write it in one place, reference it everywhere, and check it whenever a product changes size.
How the case pack shows up on the line sheet
Every item on your sheet needs four numbers next to it: wholesale price per unit, case pack, case price, and suggested retail. A buyer building an order does the whole calculation from those four, and if any one is missing they will either email you or move on.
Put the case price in as a real number rather than making them multiply. It sounds small; it is the difference between an order built in the aisle and an order that never happens. The rest of the anatomy is in wholesale line sheet.
If you are not sure what case sizes are normal in your category, look at what comparable brands ship into the same kind of store. Pasting your product link into WholesalePilot previews the retailers and distributors that stock products like yours, and the type of account tells you a lot: boutiques buy sixes, grocers buy twelves, distributors think in pallets.
Questions brands ask about case packs
Can a shop buy a single unit to try? Sell them one at retail price, as a sample, or send one at your cost. Breaking a case for a trial is fine once; making it policy is how the channel stops paying.
Should the case pack be different for an opening order? Rarely. Keep the case constant and lower the order minimum instead, which is the easier concession to make and to take back. How that first order should be shaped is in opening order.
Do I need a case-level barcode? Not for boutiques. Yes for distributors, grocery chains and anyone with a warehouse, and they will ask for it in a format they specify.
What if my product does not fit a neat number? Pick the number that ships well and sells through in a season, then design the carton around it. The box should follow the case, not the other way round.