Jewelry by Tara

Wholesale and The Small Indie Business, Is It Worth It??

Recently, I've gotten a slew of requests, to do wholesale locally, and overseas. I absolutely love receiving them, and occasionally it works out. Most of the time however, it is larger businesses, just fishing Etsy for a deal on our handwork. Here are some of the problems I can see, when going into a larger wholesale deal.

1. Unless you plan on making 5,000 zipper pouches yourself in the space of a week, you probably won't be able to handle large requests.

2. Buying materials in bulk, so that you actually make money on the wholesale purchase, is a lot of money up front. And you will probably end up with a ton of excess, therefore, lose money.

3. Usually, wholesale would be 50% off your regular price. Unfortunately on Etsy, we all are so competitive for business, we are mostly underselling to begin with. Therefore, who can afford to take 50% off, on a small wholesale order?

4. As I said in number 1, due to the fact that we are small, usually individual, businesses, we cannot handle the volume of a retail store. Unless someone buys a large quantity of our product to begin with, other than getting our name out, wholesale will probably leave us in the red.

Some positive thoughts on wholesale, you can definitely get some great advertising and word of mouth from doing larger orders. Most B&M stores are very professional and accommodating to artists. They found us because they value handcrafted goods, and understand our pricing struggles. Also, they generally give a lot of leeway in production times and quantities.

In conclusion, take a chance with wholesale selling, but be careful not to lose more money than you make!
T♥