Faire, marketplaces & platforms
A curated wholesale marketplace expects four things before it will list a brand: a finished product with barcodes and sensible case packs, a wholesale price that leaves a retailer a working margin at your suggested retail, photography that holds up at thumbnail size, and a business that exists on paper with the capacity to ship an order within days.
None of those are unusual demands. They are the same things a boutique owner would want if you walked in with a sample, which is the point — the platform is standing in for a buyer's judgement, and applying before you can answer a buyer's questions just moves the rejection earlier.
Your pricing has to work at both ends
This is the requirement that fails most applications, and it is arithmetic rather than taste.
Independent retail works on the assumption that retail is roughly double wholesale. If you want the product to sit on a shelf at twenty-four dollars, your wholesale price is twelve. Not seventeen because your costs are high, and not eight because you are nervous.
Underneath that, your cost of goods needs to be at or under a third of the retail price — eight dollars or less on a twenty-four-dollar item, and comfortably less than that if you want a channel worth running. Landed cost, not just materials: the jar, the wax, the label, the box, the carton, and the labour if you pay anyone for it.
If those three numbers do not fit together, no platform fixes it. Either the retail price is too low for what the product costs to make, the cost is too high for the format, or the product needs to sell as a multi-pack that carries more value per unit. The full arithmetic is in wholesale vs retail price.
One more pricing requirement that catches brands out: your suggested retail has to match what you charge on your own DTC store. A brand selling at twenty-four dollars direct and suggesting thirty at retail is asking shops to be uncompetitive with the brand's own website, and buyers notice immediately.
The product itself
Barcodes. Every sellable unit needs one, registered to your company, printed on the packaging rather than stickered on afterwards where you can help it. Case codes too, once you are shipping multiples.
Case packs that suit a small shop. Six is a normal unit for most small goods. Three works for higher-priced items. Forty-eight is a distributor pack and will simply not be ordered by an independent testing you for the first time.
Packaging that survives. Two journeys: freight to the shop, and life on a shelf being picked up and put down. A box that scuffs, a label that peels, or a closure that leaks is a return, and a return on a two-hundred-dollar order costs you more than the order made.
A coherent range. Three unrelated items is a hobby; eight items that clearly belong together is a range a buyer can merchandise. You do not need many products, but they should look like a decision rather than an accumulation.
Compliance where the category demands it. Ingredient lists, allergen information, safety warnings, weight declarations, candle warning labels. Missing these is the easiest possible reason to be turned down and the least interesting one to explain.
Photography, as a buyer reads it
A buyer scans a grid at thumbnail size and decides in about a second whether to click. That is the whole brief.
You need a clean product shot on a plain background where the product fills the frame and reads instantly at small size. You need at least one shot of the product in a retail or in-use setting, because the buyer is trying to picture it on their shelf and a photograph does that work for them. And you need one shot that shows scale, ideally with something whose size is obvious.
What does not work: a dim photo on a kitchen counter, a heavily styled flat lay where the product is one object among eleven, a lifestyle image where the packaging is unreadable, or a white-background shot with inconsistent lighting across a range.
This is usually a day of work and occasionally a few hundred dollars with a photographer. It is the highest-return day in the whole exercise, because the same images serve the marketplace listing, your line sheet, your own B2B store and every email you ever send a buyer.
Capacity and lead time
A platform will ask, directly or indirectly, how fast you can ship. Answer honestly and then hold to it, because dispatch speed affects how often you are shown.
The practical bar is that you can pick, pack and hand over an order within a few days without stopping production. If you make in batches on weekends and a two-hundred-dollar order would take you two weeks, you are not ready — not because the platform forbids it, but because the first buyer will not reorder.
Hold stock for the channel rather than making to order. List only what you can ship this week and mark the rest unavailable. An out-of-stock listing costs you a browse; a cancelled order costs you the account.
Think about the upper bound too. If four shops ordered three cases each in the same week, could you fulfil that? The answer does not have to be yes today, but you should know what the ceiling is before you invite orders. The wider readiness pass is in the wholesale readiness checklist.
Your business on paper
Registered business entity and the tax registration your country requires. A resale or reseller certificate arrangement where applicable, because you are selling for resale and the tax treatment differs.
A bank account in the business name for payouts. Product liability insurance, which independent shops rarely ask for but larger accounts will, and which you want anyway.
Written terms: minimum order, lead time, freight policy, damages and shortages window, return position, and a stated suggested retail price. Half a page is enough. Having it written down changes how you negotiate, because the answer to an awkward request becomes "our terms say" rather than an improvised yes.
The requirement nobody lists
Evidence that somebody already buys the product.
A curated platform is making a judgement about whether retailers will reorder from you, and the strongest available signal is that people already pay for the thing. A DTC store with steady sales, a market stall with regulars, three independent shops already stocking you — any of these change how an application reads.
If you have none of that, the fastest fix is not a better application. It is a season of selling the product somewhere, anywhere, and a handful of direct stockists won by email. That also gives you the operational practice — packing cases, writing invoices, handling a shortage — that makes the first marketplace order go smoothly. The walkthrough is in how to start wholesale.
If you want to know which shops to approach for those first stockists, paste your store or product link into WholesalePilot and look at the preview of retailers and distributors stocking comparable products. Working from products like yours gives you a shortlist a category directory will not.
Questions brands ask before applying
Do I need a minimum number of products? No fixed number, but a range that looks deliberate helps. Eight related items beats three unrelated ones.
Can I apply before my barcodes are printed? You can, and you should not. Barcodes are cheap and quick, and their absence is the sort of detail that makes an otherwise good application look early.
What if I make everything to order? Then start with direct accounts who can wait, and move to a marketplace once you hold stock. The channel rewards speed above almost everything else.
How do I know whether my application is strong enough? Look at it as a buyer would: could someone decide from these images, this price and this case pack, without asking you a single question? If yes, apply. The process itself is walked through in how to get accepted on Faire.