This year, I was invited to speak about growing your handmade wholesale business at Makers Summit (by Makers Collective, in Greenville, South Carolina.) It was exciting, since I really admire the Makers Collective folks and the authentic, thoughtful way they do things. But I had some reservations, because it's hard to take time away from work and life to do something that may be awesome or may be meh.

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."

“How do you find stores that are a good fit for my brand?”

This is one of the questions we hear most often. We take it as a good sign when a customer asks this, because it’s an indicator that they are thinking about the right things.