Wholesale
Selling your product in wholesale channels limits your responsibilities. You let the retailers sell directly to the consumer. While you concentrate on producing apparel products in large quantities, retailers concentrate on interesting consumers in buying the products.
Entering wholesale markets as a new business is often tricky if you are unknown and have limited product offerings. Department stores and mass merchants require a minimum volume. Often they require production records that indicate the ability of your business to meet specific order volumes.
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If you look at it strictly from a wholesale standpoint, wholesalers generally want to see your line in July, place your orders in August for a November delivery. . . . From our standpoint with retail stores, we have to offer newness more often . . . we have to have a cycle of a little bit of newness to encourage our customers to come back and back and back."
Malia Mills originally sold only wholesale to large and small retailers. When the company opened a New York retail store and found great success, it decided to open other stores in warm locations, logical for a swimwear company. Mills describes some difficulties with retail that wholesale sales do not encounter.
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Trade shows and trade organizations can help you identify wholesale markets.
You can also hire people to help match
buyers and sellers, facilitating the product's availability to its eventual customers.
Some of the types of intermediaries that can help you sell you product are listed below.
| Channel Intermediaries (Kotler, 1997, p.530) |
Broker
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brings together buyers and sellers but does not carry inventory, provide financing, or assume risk. |
Manufacturer's Representative
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a company that represents and sells the goods of several manufacturers; can replace or be in addition to an internal sales force. |
Merchant
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buys, takes title to, and resells merchandise. |
Retailer
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sells goods or services directly to the final consumer. |
(Sales) Agent
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searches for customers and negotiates on a producer's behalf but does not take title to goods. |
Sales Force
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group of people hired directly by a company to sell its products. |
Wholesaler (Distributor)
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sells goods or services to those who buy for resale or business use |
Intermediaries can develop a channel of distribution for your products. They can help you identify buyers as well as facilitate transactions. It is best not to work with more than two levels of intermediaries. Each level increases the complexity of the distribution process and can cause conflicts.
Business between you and an intermediary can be specifically limited. For example, you could agree to give a merchant or sales agent the exclusive right to a geographic region. Or, you could give a wholesaler selective distribution rights to sell to only a few, specified retailers.
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 "Sales will be done from a sales rep who normally has a certain number of other lines that may also be dress lines. So I have to find one where my dress line is different enough from other ones he sells and still be sold to the same stores where he sells..."
Christ Stoia describes his search for a sales representative to help him sell his first evening dress line to retail stores and the considerations he is using to select the right sales rep for his line.
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Virtual showrooms are a type of Internet-based exchange. Apparel producers place images, specifications, and prices of their product lines on a web site. Retail buyers place orders directly on the virtual showroom web site using a secure platform, eliminating travel and other expenses. (This usually works best with established customers who are familiar with the feel and quality of a designer's clothing.) Exchanges and virtual showrooms also offer helpful features such as the ability to create assortment plans, and to track orders online. One example, www.7thonline.com, allows designers to exhibit clothing on the web in a way similar to an actual showroom.
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