A wholesale plan for your art business is a great way to ensure you keep making money all year long. If you give your work to a distributor, they will focus on getting it to customers while you work on other parts of making something.
When you enter this business and look for wholesale clients to sign contracts with, there are a few things to keep in mind. Both sides should remember that they are still working together to make money. As a matter of fact:
High-volume sales are required.
When you sell your wholesale art supplies, you can expect to get about half of what it would sell for in a store. The person who buys the art then sells it to the general public at the suggested retail price.
If you can find a wholesale buyer for your work, you’ll have a steady stream of customers and be able to show more people what you do. This could lead to sales growth that is bigger than usual. But volume is important if you want to be successful in wholesale.
Don’t cheapen your efforts.
To make the most money in wholesale, pricing is very important. Don’t undervalue your work in bulk and sell yourself short. Most artists don’t go this route because they aren’t sure they can make money at wholesale prices. You can only make money from these connections if you charge fair prices for your services (for both you and the retailer).
If you do the same work for several stores, your prices shouldn’t change much. Shana Victor of Shana Logic says, “Your wholesalers won’t want to do business with you if they have to compete with your prices or the prices of other stores that sell the same things for less.”
Identify wholesale items
The average markup at a store is three times the price at the wholesale level. Artists must consider all their costs when setting the right price for their work (including supplies, labor, and the time it takes to develop new ideas).
If it took hundreds of hours to make and the wholesale price won’t go down, it might not be a good product for that market. If you want to save money and expand what your business has to offer, think about a simpler option.
Maintain current line sheets
Managing your inventory well will help you keep your production schedule and prices steady. You don’t want your deliveries to be late or to lose track of your stock. Wholesale customers don’t like these kinds of mistakes because they raise their overhead costs.
If you keep track of what you have in stock, your line sheets, catalogs, and invoices will always be correct. They are important parts of the wholesale business. To put it in a bad way, a merchant may be able to take advantage of an artist who isn’t well-organized and isn’t consistent. Your goal should be for stores to see you as a reliable business partner they can count on in the future.
If you keep an eye on your stock, you can respond to changes in demand and make better use of the time you spend making things.
Easy access to lead information
Inventory management is very important to your business. Services like Artwork Archive make it easy to manage your art business in the cloud, so you can spend less time on the paperwork side of organizing your inventory. The idea is to spend more time doing creative things and less time doing administrative work.
As a side note, you can also count on the wholesalers you work with to keep their files clean and complete. This means they will be easy to work with and good at making deals happen.
Establish contact with possible customers
Keep in touch with both new and existing customers regularly. In business, it’s important to follow up with leads and prospects, especially if you want to get more wholesale customers or sell more to the ones you already have.
Give current catalogs and line sheets to stores well ahead of times when people are most likely to buy. This happens early in the year, most of the time before the start of the third quarter. Guests at your events could be current and potential customers, so make sure to invite both. Sending out postcards is a good way to promote new items. Make sure you have some way of talking to your merchants.
You could also connect with stores you want to work with through social media. Use more than one strategy to market on social media.