# Wholesale Price Presentation



## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Hi everyone: I've been reading through threads on selling your shirts wholesale to retailers. I've read that most retailers want to see one price-not different prices per quantity of shirts offered. But, if they order 100 shirts from me and can get that cheaper than ordering 50, why wouldn't I give them a different wholesale price? As you know, the more shirts I have printed, the less my printing costs will be which means I can pass that on to the retailer when I give them a wholesale price. Lastly; does anyone have an example of a sheet they've given retailers with their wholesale prices? Thank you!!


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## IYFGraphics (Sep 28, 2009)

Sirvivhor said:


> Hi everyone: I've been reading through threads on selling your shirts wholesale to retailers. I've read that most retailers want to see one price-not different prices per quantity of shirts offered. But, if they order 100 shirts from me and can get that cheaper than ordering 50, why wouldn't I give them a different wholesale price? As you know, the more shirts I have printed, the less my printing costs will be which means I can pass that on to the retailer when I give them a wholesale price. Lastly; does anyone have an example of a sheet they've given retailers with their wholesale prices? Thank you!!


Not an example but advise.....

Set your wholesale pricing at your lowest threshold level, what I mean if 50 shirts is your lowest quantity that you will offer wholesale pricing for then make that your price to the retailer, retailers have many many garments that they deal with and prices broken down by quantity is ok but not of the utmost interest to them. Remember you are trying to get your foot in the door, gain sales and exposure to your brand, unless you have an "in" at the store they do not know you or your brand or potential sales, they will be looking for the lowest risk with the highest rewards for them, if you make money or not isn't their concern.

Once you have established sales with the retailer and a relationship that would be the time to offer a better discount for more quantity or your product.

JMHO


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## red514 (Jul 21, 2009)

i agree with IYF
show your 'prepack' prices (1/2/2/1 or whatever) or unit prices if you don't offer 'prepacks'

once your buyers are increasing there orders, they will contact you about a better price, you don't offer that from the getgo.

from experience, when you show someone a price list that shows price breaks, the client always see it and tries to negotiate a smaller order for the same price break... just avoid it and deal with price breaks when it comes.


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## kimura-mma (Jul 26, 2008)

Sirvivhor said:


> But, if they order 100 shirts from me and can get that cheaper than ordering 50, why wouldn't I give them a different wholesale price? As you know, the more shirts I have printed, the less my printing costs will be which means I can pass that on to the retailer when I give them a wholesale price.


You should be planning on "bunching" your orders. Meaning, if you get 4 stores to buy 50 shirts each, then your production costs are actually going to be based on 200 shirts, not 50. So you can offer pricing to each store based on the volume of the entire production run instead of the volume that each store orders.

Based on that logic, offering price breaks is a dead giveaway that you are not bunching orders. And that means you are either not getting enough orders or you are not running your business efficiently. Either way, it sends up major red flags to the store owner. That's why it is important to establish one wholesale price and not offer price breaks (even though it may sound logical to do so). You want to give the impression that you are running consistent mid-to-high volume production runs.


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

I really appreciate ALL of your comments. Pixel: I don't understand what you mean by "prepack" pricing - could you explain? Jon: are you saying that I should give them a price for say 50 but then if they say they want 100, it's still the same price? Maybe I'm not understanding you. Tim: I understand about the "bunching" to be able to offer them the lowest pricing however, what if I can't get enough to "bunch?" I'm just starting out in trying to get retailers. They must understand that everyone has to start out somwhere, right? I could try to give them the impression that I have enough orders but then I may be losing money if I don't get enough to satisfy the price I'm giving them. Also, do retailers pay you pre-order or after they get the order? If I could see something that others have written up for pricing to present to retailers, it might help. Does anyone have something I could see or tell me where I could go to see an example. Thanks again everyone - I really appreciate the help!!


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## kimura-mma (Jul 26, 2008)

Sirvivhor said:


> I understand about the "bunching" to be able to offer them the lowest pricing however, what if I can't get enough to "bunch?" I'm just starting out in trying to get retailers. They must understand that everyone has to start out somwhere, right? I could try to give them the impression that I have enough orders but then I may be losing money if I don't get enough to satisfy the price I'm giving them.


Let's say you offer pricing based on 100 shirts. You should build in enough markup that you can still profit in the event that you only get orders for 50 shirts. The profit may not be much, but this is only to act as a safety net in the event you can't "bunch" orders to get the full 100 you need for the production run.

If you don't get enough orders to "bunch" into a cost effective production run, then you have bigger problems than not satisfying the price you give them. Sorry to be blunt, but that's the reality.

Yes, everyone has to start somewhere, but no retailer wants to be the guinea pig. They can simply say "get some other orders and come back to me last." But if you keep getting that response, then you will never be back.

One thing you can try is this... establish some target dates.

Let's say you want to deliver your product for Spring 2011, that means your product should be in the retailers hands by March 1. And let's say it takes 6 weeks to produce and ship the product, that means you need to place production orders by January 15. So that gives you a selling period of almost 8 weeks to get orders before you need to go to production.

Like I said earlier, if you can't get enough orders in that time period, you have bigger problems than your price structure.

But if you set target dates, you can explain to retailers that production will not begin until January 15 and that if orders don't exceed a certain volume by that time, then the retailer will have the option to cancel their order. (Just a quick comment on this scenario... If you don't reach the minimum volume and the retailer seems disappointed in having to cancel the order, you should go ahead and produce the order for them anyway. Because you obviously have a retailer interested in your product and you should be willing to take a razor thin margin to get your product in the store and see how it sells. And the next selling period may have enough volume so that you start getting the margins you want from that point forward.)



Sirvivhor said:


> Also, do retailers pay you pre-order or after they get the order?


It depends on the size of the retailer. You can try to get them to pay some sort of deposit in advance. But most retailers expect terms such as Net 30. That means you have to front all of the production costs and the payment is not due til 30 days after the product is delivered. And many retailers will try to include a clause where they can return any unsold product within a certain time period.


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## IYFGraphics (Sep 28, 2009)

Sirvivhor said:


> Jon: are you saying that I should give them a price for say 50 but then if they say they want 100, it's still the same price? Maybe I'm not understanding you.


Retailers are looking for markup/profit typically 50-100% of wholesale or more, so what I'm saying is that if it costs you $6 per shirt to produce, package, market, distribute...etc you need to figure in what you need profitwise per shirt lets just say you need to sell your shirt at $12 to make your margin, cover expenses and grow as a business. $12 is then going to be your wholesale price at whatever quantity you choose...

So here's the important part your shirts needs to be of sufficient quality, style, etc to command $25 per in the retailers market place so he can get the markup/profit he's looking for (his 100% target). It's unlikely a small retailer will take on 100 pc of a given design or even 50, they may want to try 10-20 pcs to see customer reaction and sales before taking on a large quantity.

This is why Tim is talking about bunching, the more retailers you can get to try your shirts the better it helps you with your production costs, and a larger audience/market for potential sales.

One other thing is that retailers may want to give you a chance or they may not, you need to be prepared for rejection from some of the people you talk to, they may also want to stock you shirts "On Your Dime" which means you have all the risk, they will pay you in 30-90 days after they sell the shirt, and will want you to take back any unsold shirts for credit on their account.

It will be very rare to find a retailer who is willing to buy 50-100 shirts from you, pay you on delivery, and call it a done deal till they need more shirts.....doubtful it will go down that way.

Hope this helps.


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## kimura-mma (Jul 26, 2008)

IYFGraphics said:


> Retailers are looking for markup/profit typically 50-100% of wholesale


I'm gonna get a little annoyingly nitpicky here (but I think you expect that from me at this point Jon, lol).

Markup and profit margins are calculated differently. Markup is the percentage of the increase from the wholesale to the retail price. Profit margin is the percentage of the difference between the total sale price and the profit from each sale.

So for instance, if a store buys a shirt for $10 and sells it for $20, that would be a 100% markup. But the profit margin, $10 on a $20 sale, would be 50%.

So typically, stores look for a 100-150% markup and a 50-75% profit margin.


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## Sirvivhor (Dec 19, 2009)

Jon and Tim: thanks so much for ALL of that. I think I understand, even though I may not like some of it  Do you take "line sheets" to these retailers or are those just for trade shows? I've looked on the forum regarding line sheets and only saw one example - it didn't have any wholesale pricing. In any event, is this what you would present to a retailer as well when you try to get them to buy your stuff?


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