do you currently sell your handmade products wholesale to brick-and-mortar stores but you're wondering how can I make the most out of those by your relationships that's a great question because with just a few simple tweaks you can make so much more money with the existing buyers that you already have hi my name is Mei Pok and I help makers artists and designers create a consistent income from selling their handmade products online my very first tip for you is to have a wholesale buyers on the newsletter this is a great way to stay in touch with
your wholesale buyers without having to email each one individually which if you're anything like me having to do that means never doing that so having a system like this which is an email list makes it easy for you to talk and communicate your wholesale buyers whenever you have new information to share with them so what would that look like so for example a great strategy you can take is by planning specific offers or promos and put them on dates that are close to or around the beginning of big trade shows like New York now trade
show so right as New York now is getting started we don't have to actually go to that trade show to benefit a little bit from the fact that a lot of wholesale buyers are in that mode of you need to buy new products to stock up my shells so your offer could be something simple like if you order over three hundred dollars worth of product I'm going to throw in free shipping for you or if the wholesale customer can place an order of about five hundred dollars then maybe you will throw in a free display
stand to help present your products they'll make it more attractive so that the shops customers will be more likely to buy from me it doesn't even have to be sending out coupon codes or promos or offers with free shipping but anytime you have a new design or a new product collection you definitely want to send an email out to all your wholesale buyers to let them know and those wholesale buyers who have a positive track record of selling your products they're gonna want to know because when you have new stuff to share with them that
means they have new stuff to share with their existing customer base and that means they get to make more money so I don't want you to ever feel like oh I'm bothering those wholesale buyers and I don't want them to think that I'm just begging and I'm desperate for sales or whatever it's a two-way relationship don't forget that these wholesale buyers are also benefiting from your relationship with them they're making profits they're making sales from selling your product and if you were not a part of that picture they're not gonna make those sales right the
second tip I have for you is to just have a plan that every few months you do want to offer some sort of incentive to get them to buy from you for example maybe during the month of February and if you're a bath and body or a soap maker and if the wholesale buyer places an order of 12 bars of soap you're gonna throw in a 13 bar for free see that everything has to be positioned as a discount or a promo it's just an incentive to get them to buy now rather than procrastinate or
to just I don't know about you but I've had a lot of buyers that if I never reach out to them they're not gonna reach out to me even if they've run out of stock of my product and they could benefit from a reorder the buyers are just busy people so you want to make it easy you want to keep front of mine and you want to incentivize them and encourage them to buy from you multiple times a year the third tip I have for you which is not something that I have seen most people
do is to offer a money-back guarantee of some sort now this is perfect especially if you are establishing new wholesale customer relationships so if it's a new store that you want to work with I have a policy that says that if the store doesn't sell 35% of their inventory that they bought for me in 90 days then they have a right to ask for a refund and I would happily oblige now I want to unpack and talk a little bit about why this is very helpful and why you might want to do this if you
can number one it's a huge risk to ask a wholesale buyer to spend hundreds of dollars investing in your product when they have no idea if they're ever going to make a return on their investment they don't know if your product is going to sell or not and because of that risk you can bet that there are a lot of wholesale buyers who don't buy from you simply because they're just a little bit hesitant so by offering some sort of guarantee like this it takes away some of that risk and it shows them that you
have confidence in your product it really kind of makes that relationship feel more like a two-way relationship because you're essentially saying hey I want to share in the risk with you the product doesn't sell I don't want to make it completely your loss that's a super nice and teamwork spirit thing to do right buyers are gonna be much more likely to buy from you you've got if you've got something like that in place and I know not every business is going to feel comfortable doing this but I really encourage you to find a way to
make something like this work I have a question for you before we get into tip number four do you currently offer any incentives or promos or offers to your wholesale buyers if you do I'd love to hear about what kinds of offers you share with them let me know in the comments now tip number four is you need to offer support to your wholesale buyers now there are a lot of different ways that you can offer support and here are a few examples if say you sell a product that requires the customer to be able
to smell or feel it before they buy it like lotion or candles or t-shirts you might want to consider including samples to your wholesale buyer so say for example you sell bath and body products and a wholesale buyer is interested in your line of lotions and maybe your lotions come in I don't know what the standard size is the they're eight ounce bottles now it would benefit everyone both you and the buyer if you for however you can make it work offer the buyer like a smaller tester or sample size that they can put on
their shelves so that their customers can test your product before actually making the purchase so this could mean just putting your lotion in a different packaging a different kind of bottle that's maybe a little bit smaller in size like maybe a four ounce bottle doing something like that shows the buyer that you are committed and invested in helping them make sales they're much more likely to want to come back and buy from you again and honestly they're also going to be much more likely to make sales of your products in their shop another example is
how can you provide support through your packaging so kind of along those same lines of a sample or a tester product that their customers can actually try and use the packaging that you put your products in if you have any packaging at all can really help display your products in a way that makes it look like really premium or really attractive or just really appealing and that makes people want to use it so and a good example of this is when I was first starting out selling wholesale I used to package all of my jewelry
up in in like clear plastic flat sleeves but my jewelry is pretty thick like most things are about 3/4 inch deep and that will cause the plastic sleeve to just kind of you know stick out a little bit and not in a very attractive way and it just kind of made my product look a little bit cheap or it didn't make it look like it was worth the price tag that it was on it so I upgraded my packaging to be put in clear plastic boxes instead and it kind of lived and then much more
beautiful home and it just looked a lot more luxurious so I tell that story just to illustrate that what you choose to package your pot in can make a huge difference for sales with the store owner and then what can you do in the form of returns and exchanges so if something breaks and if it's not the fault of the customer or if it is even what are your policies for them so with my business I'm happy to replace or exchange an item regardless if it was the customer's fault or if it was a product
defect as ultimately I want my customer to be happy and that means making their customers happy my fifth tip for you is to just make a habit of regularly checking in with your wholesale buyers not enough people do this and you might be surprised to see that the buyer is actually really appreciated is keep in mind that buyers are super busy and you're not the only maker that they're buying products from right so when you followup with them like once every few months it's a good time to just ask if they have everything they need
or if they're seeing any challenges with selling the product and how you can provide more support to help them sell their products better so when you reach out to the wholesale buyers it's a good time for you to just check in and ask how everything's going are the products selling and if they are then that's a good time for you to ask if they would like to make a reorder and if it's not selling well that's also feedback that you want why because that informs you that maybe there's something more that you can be doing
or to help the buyer sell a product maybe it's just that the buyer doesn't understand your product well enough to be able to communicate the benefits of your product to their customer so it's a conversation you definitely want to open up because again it's kind of that two-way relationship you want to help them sell your product so they'll keep buying from you I know it can be kind of challenging and scary to ask for feedback like that but if you approach it from that standpoint like by asking this I'm helping everyone buyers are going to
appreciate you so much because you're not coming from a place of fear or like oh my product sucks but it's more of how can we help make this a really really good working relationship if you want to learn more about how to grow your wholesale handmade business stay tuned for the next video thanks so much for watching and I will see you there
