Part of Made to Last – a series of interviews we’re doing with established makers who have grown and evolved their businesses over the long term. We sit down with Jonnie Estes of Grey Theory Mill. Jonnie gets specific about how the pandemic and the recession are affecting her sales, the emotional roller coaster of running a business, the good, bad, and ugly of her experiments with ads – and where she is headed now (12 years into running her business.)

A look at predictors of wholesale success and how you can change, build or develop each one in your wholesale business.

Part of Made to Last – a series of interviews we’re doing with established makers who have grown and evolved their businesses over the long term. We sit down with Lori Roberts of Little Truths Studio and learn about how she found her flow with structure and going her own way.

In this article, I’m giving you a full rundown of what payment terms really are, how they affect your business, when you should and shouldn’t give your stockists Net 30, and answers to common questions about payment terms.

This article is for new moms and business owners alike, by taking a step back and giving 4 ways to be less frazzled and get more done.

As a product company, you already know how sales tax works for regular “retail” sales. But when you start selling wholesale, there may be legal, regulatory, or tax issues that you’re not handling correctly. So in this article, we dig into how taxes work with wholesaling, whether you need a wholesale license to sell to stores, what documentation (like exemption certificates) you need to maintain, and other key questions around sales tax for wholesaling.

Yes, your art is meaningful on its own. Yes, your products are tangibly better than others. But ultimately, your story is a key reason that a store owner will choose your line over another. In fact, with all the hullabaloo about Faire accepting international makers (what many US makers read as “cheap stuff coming in from other countries”) this becomes even more important for any maker trying to grow wholesale.

First of all, I hear you. HIRING IS HARD. It’s hard to manage people. It costs money. It takes a huge amount of time to find, vet and train people. You don’t have a big enough studio. You’re an introvert. You have just a small amount of work available. You live in a tiny town. You’re an artist, not a manager. You tried that last year and it didn’t work out.

Today, we’re rounding up some of the most common questions and concerns makers have about wholesale around the holidays. We’re digging into how to approach holiday wholesale as a newbie, how to cultivate orders with current stockists if you’re an old pro, and some simple tips to get orders in the door without a bunch of extra work. As always, though, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So be sure to “sense check” these answers against what you know to be right for you and your business. 

Your cheat sheet for holiday sales and holiday sanity. It’s for any maker who is trying to get their handmade line into more stores, but without driving themselves insane. We share our biggest learnings, based on watching hundreds of makers grow wholesale over the holiday

Most makers have things in their ordering process that make it a struggle for store owners to understand the line and place an order. Learn a few quick fixes to improve your ordering process today!

Large retailers can provide a level of exposure and sales volume that you simply can’t get any other way. And for some independent brands, one or more sales like this are an important piece of their overall strategy. So we invited three experts with really practical, deep experience to offer their insights about how to take large retailers on successfully.