Going Wholesale Part 3:Terms,Orders and General Details

Some impor­tant things to know and make sure you have on hand when ven­tur­ing into a whole­sale show.

Order forms/ con­tracts (in duplicate):

Although sev­eral ven­dors had their own custom-made pur­chase orders with the infor­ma­tion they needed, I did not have time to pre-print my order forms. So, I decided instead to invest in Pur­chase Order Books from Sta­ples. These books had 50 order forms as 2pt car­bon­less forms.

I printed my terms on small labels and attached these to the yel­low copy of the form. (This form was given to the buyer.) I kept all my infor­ma­tion on the top white form. The infor­ma­tion I needed included: phone num­ber, ship to address, con­tact name, date ordered, date requested, pay­ment type, ship­ping pref­er­ence, items pur­chased and amount. You will also want to deter­mine ship­ping costs. (Either include it in the whole­sale price, ask the buyer to pay ship­ping, or offer some sort of ship­ping dis­count for the size of their order.)

Some­thing else to con­sider: Get reseller num­bers for pur­chases within your home state. (This is because there will be no tax charged to the buy­ers within your home state as long as they have a valid reseller license.) In the future, I’ll also get the buy­ers to sign the pur­chase order. This would have been use­ful when one of my orders exceeded my credit card limit. (I had to request an increased limit to autho­rize the customer’s credit card and they requested the customer’s sig­na­ture which had to be faxed. A signed pur­chase order would have been sufficient.)

Define your terms

Min­i­mum Order

Deter­mine if you will have a min­i­mum order. I requested min­i­mum order of $200.00.

Pay­ment terms

For whole­sale orders, Net 30 appears to be the indus­try stan­dard. Although I talked to sev­eral ven­dors that charge to credit cards upon ship­ping the order. I decided to request credit card infor­ma­tion for the ini­tial order and offer Net 30 on repeat pur­chases. In most cases, the buy­ers gave me the credit card infor­ma­tion at the time of writ­ing their order, or asked me to call for credit card infor­ma­tion prior to ship­ping. A few gal­leries requested Net 30 and pro­vided credit ref­er­ences or names of other ven­dors in my aisle with whom they have worked in the past. This was a quick way to achieve ref­er­ences for galleries/shops that wanted to place their order with Net 30 pay­ment option.

Spec­ify your ship­ping dates. Allow 15–30, or 30–60 days depend­ing on the size of the order and how much has to be cre­ated for the buyer. You def­i­nitely want to ship qual­ity items by the dates they request. But don’t over­book your­self. Hav­ing a pro­duc­tion cal­en­dar handy at the show is a great idea. Be real­is­tic and plan out how much you can do over a given period of time. A pro­duc­tion cal­en­dar keeps you orga­nized and lets you plan out your days after the event ends. I noticed that many buy­ers had cal­en­dars with them too. Some had spe­cific dates dur­ing which they wanted to receive ship­ments, oth­ers sim­ply requested ‘asap’.

Damages/Returns

In your terms, men­tion how returns or dam­ages will be han­dled. My terms requested that dam­ages or returns be requested within 7 days of receiv­ing shipment.

Ship­ping

Men­tion how ship­ping will be paid. (include in prices, buyer pays, split between you and buyer, etc.)

My  terms

Min order of $200.00. Qual­i­fied resellers only. Credit Card, COD or pre-payment for ini­tial pur­chase. Buyer pays ship­ping costs. Most orders ship within 15–30 days of order date. Returns or dam­aged items must be reported within 7 days of receipt of pack­age. Claims after 7 days will not be honored.

I printed these on labels and stuck them to the buyer’s order receipt.

Pric­ing

Show only whole­sale prices. Don’t con­fuse the buyer by hav­ing retail prices listed. Show only whole­sale prices, but be pre­pared to let them know at what prices your gal­leries or shops are sell­ing the items. Also sug­gest bun­dled prices if some of your items sell well ‘bundled’.

Know your best-sellers

You know your items bet­ter than the buyer who might be see­ing them for the first time, so high­light your best-sellers. Either put stick­ers on them let­ting the buyer know about your best-sellers, or show items that are exclu­sive to the show you are doing. The BMAC had small table cards that drew atten­tion to “Buyer’s Mar­ket Exclu­sives”. This let the buy­ers know that they were pur­chas­ing some­thing not avail­able at other whole­sale shows. I had a few buy­ers who sim­ply ordered ‘assorted best sell­ers’. They let me decide which items to mail to them….but they spec­i­fied a quan­tity. Many buy­ers were in a hurry to move to other booths….lots to see in the 4 days and time was of the essence. So, be ready to help and quick in writ­ing your orders.

Pro­mo­tional materials

Bring lots of pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als. I had can­vas bags printed with my busi­ness name. Post­cards and busi­ness cards printed by Vistaprint.com and small brochures printed by the UPS Store. I kept a few post­cards on the table and some infor­ma­tion about the artist. I left these with other pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als on the press table. (There weren’t any left at the end of the show, so hope­fully all the mem­bers of the press got one!)

It was rec­om­mended to me to not leave the pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als out for peo­ple to just grab as they were pass­ing by your table, but to instead keep them with you and share them with poten­tial buy­ers as you also exchange infor­ma­tion with them. Some ven­dors ran con­tests in exchange for get­ting busi­ness cards.

Other things to have in your booth:

Have a place for the buyer to sit down. They get tired too and hav­ing an extra seat is a nice ges­ture and makes them feel com­fort­able when writ­ing the order.

Have candy, water, snacks, etc. avail­able to the buyer. Under­stand that if you are tired from stand­ing all-day on the trade show floor, imag­ine how exhaust­ing it is to a buyer who is zoom­ing through 800+ ven­dors. A bit of choco­late (thanks Lau­ren), or a bowl of candy from which they can grab a treat, or a bot­tle of water gives them a pick-me-up. One of my booth neigh­bors even had wine, music and mar­ti­nis! How cool is that!!??

About the Author

Kris­ten Stein was one our first Fea­tured Artists while she focuses on two dimen­sional medi­ums she has also spread out to jew­elry and pho­tog­ra­phy. Although her work is exhib­ited widely she has coura­geously embraced the chal­lenges of a work­ing artist in the 21st cen­tury. This series is the result of one such embrace and leap of faith. In it she chron­i­cles her expe­ri­ence as an exhibitor in one of the coun­tries top whole­sale shows the Buyer’s Mar­ket of Amer­i­can Craft. Being accepted into this show is no small thing, and it rep­re­sents the extent of Kristen’s artis­tic and busi­ness growth over the past year.

You can find Kris­ten here:

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