Selling Wholesale as Well as Direct: What Changes
By The Velocity Wear Team
Adding wholesale to a direct business changes more than the price. It changes what you must be able to promise — consistency, availability, delivery dates — and those promises are the actual product a retailer is buying.
The pricing structure has to exist first
Wholesale requires a price that leaves the retailer a workable margin and still leaves you one. If your direct price was set without that in mind, wholesale may be impossible without raising it — and raising a public price to enable wholesale is a difficult move.
Work backwards: the retail price a customer will pay, the margin a retailer needs, and what remains for you. If what remains does not cover your landed cost with a sensible margin, the product is not ready for wholesale and the answer is usually a better unit cost through volume.
What retailers actually assess
- 1**Consistency.** Can you deliver the same garment next season? A stockist who builds a display around your product cannot have it change.
- 2**Availability.** Can you fulfil a reorder inside their planning window?
- 3**Sell-through evidence.** They want to know it moves, which is where your direct sales data becomes an asset.
- 4**Presentation.** Labelling, packaging, barcodes and the practical details of putting it on a shelf.
- 5**Terms.** Payment terms, minimums, returns of unsold stock. These are negotiated and you should know your position before the conversation.
Consistency is the hard part
Direct customers tolerate variation between runs; retailers do not. A colour that shifts between dye lots or a fit that changes because the pattern was recut is a serious problem when a shop has customers returning for the same item.
That means locking the specification: the same fabric, the same pattern and grading held on file, and colour managed against an approved standard. Where colour matters absolutely, buying a season’s requirement from one dye lot is the reliable answer.
The volume changes your manufacturing
Wholesale orders arrive in bigger blocks, which moves you up the pricing tiers — ours run to 40% off at the deepest volumes — and makes decoration methods viable that were not before. Screen printing that made no sense at 20 pieces is straightforwardly better at 500, on both cost and hand feel.
It also increases your exposure. A retailer who does not reorder leaves you holding stock produced for them, so terms and forecasting matter more than in direct sales.
What to prepare before approaching anyone
A line sheet with photographs, specifications, wholesale and recommended retail prices, minimums and lead times. Samples in the sizes they will judge. Clear terms. And an honest answer to the question they will ask first, which is how quickly you can reorder — because that is the promise everything else depends on.
