Today I want to share a few things to consider if you feel like the retail price for your handmade line ends up too high, once you make “room” for both your costs and the wholesale price/margin.

Right before the holiday season, many of you are receiving or shipping final orders before you start to hunker down for a well-deserved hibernation for a few weeks. And let me be the first to say: PRIORITIZE HIBERNATION. Sink into it with all the cookies and family and naps you couldn’t possibly make time for over recent months.

The other day, I was coaching one of our newer makers by phone. To get to know her line, I flipped through her product listings to get a sense for what the jewelry was all about. Most of the pieces were ornate, creative, asymmetrical confections that were both vintage and fresh. But part of the line was simple brass jewelry. In our conversation, I asked how she felt about the brass pieces -- is that a direction she was planning to go in?

Mostly, growing your handmade wholesale business is not a place for cheats or tips or tricks. 

Mostly, growing wholesale is a long-term game where “boring” things like consistency, follow-up, respect, thoughtfulness, and gradual improvement of your product line are what work.

Since we spend all day everyday working with makers who are doing wholesale outreach, sometimes we’ll come across a fun tip that just is so simple and works so well that we think, “Gosh, I wish everyone knew about that.” 

We asked some of the makers that we work with for their advice. They thought about the early days of growing their handmade wholesale business and sifted through their experiences for the single piece of advice they think is most crucial.

Here’s what they said…

Your story is the way you produce what you make, the specific art and design of what you do, the inspiration behind it, and what makes it special beyond what is immediately obvious at first glance. This could include your production process, your design, your sourcing, the design inspirations of each piece, perhaps why you make what you make, or a mission or ethos that the company embodies.

For makers, the emotional aspect of reaching out to stores is often the hardest. If you have taken the leap and reached to stores to introduce your work, you know it can be scary and even harder is knowing how many times to follow up.

We sat down with Olivia to talk about the pros and cons of three different wholesale outreach methods: email outreach, trade shows and walking into stores to introduce your work. 

When we first started Wholesale In a Box, there was nothing in the space or on the market that existed like it -- not a single company that provided this service, though a couple have since sprouted up. We knew the method worked, based on our depth of experience in related approaches with makers and artisans around the world. We knew makers wanted it because we created it in response to the dozens and dozens (now hundreds) of conversations we had with makers in which they said, "I want to grow my wholesale, but it's a huge hassle finding stores that are a good fit, I don't have a good system to stay consistent, and I don't know what to send to stores or what to do when they don't write back."

As the holidays approach, we get this question a lot from the makers we work with:

“Things are crazy for me right now, and I’m not sure if retailers are even ordering. Should I even bother connecting with stores during this season?”

For store owners, this time of year is about trying to survive and high hopes for a great season. (Retailers often make 30% or more of their total yearly gross between November and December.) For makers, it’s a crazy combination of making, packing, and shipping goods for Christmas, doing holiday markets, and trying to lay the groundwork for sustained growth in the coming year.

Here's the thing. You can't just send the same email to a bunch of stores and expect a positive response. Hear me when I say that efficiency does not equal spam.