Starting wholesale takes about two weeks of setup and then a list of shops you email one at a time. The setup is a price, a case pack, a minimum order, a line sheet and a page of terms. Everything after that is outreach and follow-up, which is unglamorous, repetitive, and the only part that produces accounts.
This is the sequence, in the order that avoids rework, for a Shopify brand that has never sold to a shop before.
Week one: fix the numbers
Nothing else can be built until the price ladder holds up.
Work backwards from your retail price. A candle at twenty-four dollars wholesales at twelve, because a shop needs to roughly double to cover rent, staff and the stock that does not sell. That means your landed unit cost needs to be around six dollars, and certainly no more than half the wholesale price, or the channel has nothing left in it for you.
If the numbers do not work, fix them here rather than pitching and hoping. Raise the retail price and test it on your own store. Buy components at a better break. Change what a unit is, so a duo in a gift box at forty-four retail carries costs that a single cannot. The worked arithmetic on three different products is in wholesale vs retail price.
Then set four numbers and write them down.
- Case pack. Six candles, twelve soaps, four totes. The case is your unit of sale and it should match the carton you actually ship.
- Opening order minimum. Two hundred to three hundred dollars for a small brand. Below that the picking, invoicing and freight eat the order.
- Reorder minimum. Lower than the opening order, because the account already exists and you want reordering to be frictionless.
- Lead time. How long from order to dispatch, quoted for your worst week, not your best.
Week one, part two: make the product shelf-ready
A buyer decides in seconds, and three things decide it.
A barcode. Buy a block of numbers from the official registry and assign one per variant. A product a shop cannot scan is a product a shop will not stock.
Packaging that explains itself. Your DTC box is designed to be opened by someone who already loves you. A shelf box has to tell a stranger what the product is, how big it is and why it is worth twenty-four dollars, from an arm away, with nobody talking.
A carton that survives. Wholesale ships in outer cases through networks that stack things. Test one by actually mailing a case to a friend and looking at what arrives.
While you are here, print a batch or lot code on the packaging. It costs nothing and it is how you trace a discounted unit back to the account that sold it on.
Week two: the line sheet and the terms
A line sheet is one or two pages and it is not a design project. Product photos on white, item names and codes, case pack, wholesale price per unit, suggested retail price, minimum order, lead time, and how to order. Put your name, email and phone at the top. Export it as a PDF under a few megabytes, because buyers forward and print it.
One thing that lifts response more than anything else on the page: show the shop's own margin. Wholesale twelve, retail twenty-four, margin twelve per unit. Spelling it out is not patronising, it is the number the buyer is trying to work out anyway.
Then a page of terms, which can be plain and short.
Payment: opening orders prepaid by card, net thirty available after two clean orders. Suggested retail price stated, with persistent discounting ending the account. Online marketplace listings by written agreement. Damages reported within a stated window and credited against the next order. No repackaging or breaking case packs. Attach it to every opening order so nobody can say they did not know, and read retail and resale for why the resale clauses matter more than they look.
Week three: build a list of twenty-five shops
Narrow beats wide. Twenty-five shops you have actually looked at will produce more accounts than four hundred scraped addresses, because the work that wins accounts is the follow-up and you cannot follow up on four hundred.
Choose shops that already sell your category at your price point. A twenty-four dollar candle belongs in a gift shop, a home store, a plant shop, a bookshop with a gift wall. It does not belong in a shop whose most expensive item is nine dollars.
Where to find them:
- Your own order data. The cities you already ship to a lot have proven local demand. Find the independent shops there.
- The shops your customers tag in photos.
- Stockist pages of brands one step ahead of you in the same category and price bracket.
- Markets and trade events in your area, where shop owners go specifically to find new brands.
To start with names rather than an empty spreadsheet, paste your store or product link into WholesalePilot and look at the preview of retailers and distributors that stock comparable products, then sort the list by how well each shop actually fits.
For each one, find a person. Owner name for an independent, category buyer for a small chain. An email to a general inbox goes where the window cleaner's invoice goes.
Week four onwards: the outreach habit
Send four sentences. Who you are and what the product is. One specific reason it suits their shop, which requires having looked at their shop. The commercial facts: wholesale price, case pack, minimum, lead time. A clear ask, either a sample or an opening order. Line sheet attached.
Then the part everyone skips. Follow up once after a week, once more after three weeks, and then stop and diary them for six months. Roughly one in five or six shops answers, and a good share of those order. The channel works on repetition, not on any single perfect email. The longer version of the targeting and pitching mechanics is in how to get my product into stores.
Samples: free to a shop that has replied and expressed interest, charged to anyone asking cold, never posted unsolicited to a list. A sample costs you unit cost plus postage, which is cheap next to what you pay to acquire a DTC customer and converts far better once a human has asked for it.
The first order
Expect it to be small. One or two cases, placed as a test, put somewhere visible for a month. Do not push for more. A small first order that sells through becomes a standing account. A large first order that does not sell through becomes a shop that stops answering.
Get four things right and you will look like a brand that has done this for years. Ship on the date you promised. Include a packing slip that matches the invoice line for line. Take payment up front by card, without apologising for it. Put a card in the carton with reorder instructions and a direct email.
Then, six weeks later, send one email asking how it is selling. Not a pitch, a question. That single habit is what turns first orders into reorders, and it tells you whether the product works on a shelf at all. If it did not sell, the answer is usually where it sat, which is the subject of retail placement.
Make reordering effortless
Almost all of the money is in the second, third and fourth order. Build for that specifically, even before you have many accounts.
Keep a simple account list: shop name, contact, what they stock, what they ordered, when, and what sold. A spreadsheet is fine. Knowing a shop sells a case every seven weeks turns your follow-up from guesswork into a calendar entry.
When the manual version gets annoying, give approved accounts a login and a reorder button on the store you already have rather than building a second site. The mechanics are in running wholesale from your online store.
What not to do in the first ninety days
Do not discount to win the first account. That price becomes the price for everyone, because shop owners in a category talk.
Do not accept a huge first order from a stranger. Cap opening orders, take payment first, and call anyone whose order looks unusual.
Do not grant territory exclusivity to a brand-new account. If you ever do, tie it to a volume commitment that expires when unmet.
Do not build a portal before you have accounts. Configuration is comfortable work and it finds nobody.
Do not run a sitewide sale on your own store while stockists are selling at full price. It is the fastest way to lose accounts you worked months to win, and it is the collision explained in wholesale vs retail.
Questions about starting wholesale
Do I need a trade show? Not to start. Ten accounts won by email first, then consider the show everyone in your category attends.
How long until this is real money? Plan on two quarters before reorders compound. The first order is a test, the third is a relationship.
What if a shop asks for terms on the first order? Say prepaid for the first, terms after two clean orders. It is standard, and a shop that will not accept it is telling you about their cash position.
How many accounts should I aim for in year one? Eight to fifteen reordering accounts is a good year for a brand run by one or two people, and it is enough to make the channel matter.