Introduction to Wholesale

This module covers buying from wholesalers, distributors, brands and manufacturers instead of from retailers. It is the step most sellers take after arbitrage, and it changes the shape of the business rather than just the source of the stock.

Do not stop doing arbitrage

The first piece of advice in this module is about sequencing, and it matters more than it sounds: keep doing online and retail arbitrage while you build the wholesale side.

The reason is timing. Wholesale is slow to start. You will send applications and wait, be turned down, be asked for documents, and negotiate, and none of that produces stock to sell in the meantime. Arbitrage keeps money moving while that is happening.

Only once wholesale is producing real volume does it make sense to reduce the arbitrage work, and plenty of sellers never do. The approach described here is to run online arbitrage and wholesale together, with retail arbitrage done opportunistically when out shopping anyway.

Why the order is this way round

Arbitrage teaches you everything wholesale assumes you already know:

• How to tell a product that sells from one that does not.
• What your fees actually come to.
• How long stock takes to turn, and what that does to your cash.
• What Amazon restricts, and how the Buy Box behaves.

Without those, a supplier's price list is unreadable. It is thousands of lines and you have no basis for deciding which twenty are worth buying.

You also need a trading history. Suppliers ask what you sell and where, and answering that credibly requires having done it.

What is in this module

1. Get Prepared For Wholesale. What has to exist before you contact anybody: a website, and the documents suppliers ask for.
2. Ways For Finding Wholesalers. The five routes, including the one that starts with your own best-selling stock.
3. Online Search, Trade Shows and Forums. Working those routes in practice.
4. Amazon Product Ideas Research. Finding brands worth approaching by reading Amazon backwards.
5. Contacting Wholesalers. The first email, and the questions you will be asked.
6. Contacting Brands and Manufacturers. A harder conversation, and a different one.

What to expect

The main difference from every previous module is that wholesale involves other people who can say no. In arbitrage, if the numbers work you buy the product. Here you have to be accepted first, and you will be refused often.

That makes it a numbers exercise rather than a single well-crafted approach, which is a theme the later lessons return to. Prepare properly, contact many suppliers, and expect most of them not to reply.