Most guides on how to start a wholesale business are written for someone who wants to buy goods in bulk and resell them. This one is for the other person: you already have a product — on Amazon, in a Shopify store, or coming off your own production line — and you want businesses to buy it from you by the case. That version of a wholesale business is simpler than it looks. You do not need a warehouse full of other people's goods. You need a price that works, terms a buyer understands, a one-page document, a list of the right buyers, and the discipline to reach them. Here is the sequence, in the order it actually needs to happen.
Step 1: Confirm the margin works before anything else
Wholesale means selling at roughly half your retail price to a retailer, and lower than that to a distributor who then sells to retailers. If that price does not leave you a healthy profit above your landed cost, nothing else in this guide matters yet.
Take a product that retails for 40 dollars and costs 8 dollars landed. Wholesale to a retailer at 20 dollars leaves 12 dollars per unit. Wholesale to a distributor at 15 dollars leaves 7 dollars. Both work. Now take a product that retails for 15 dollars and costs 6 dollars. Wholesale at 7.50 dollars leaves 1.50 dollars per unit, and a distributor price would lose money. That product needs a higher retail price, a lower cost, or a bundle before it is ready for wholesale.
Run your own SKU through the wholesale vs Amazon FBA margin calculator and look at profit per unit at both the retailer and distributor price. If both are positive with room to spare, keep going.
Step 2: Set your terms so a buyer can say yes
A wholesale buyer needs five numbers to place an order. Decide them now so you never improvise on a call:
- Wholesale price per unit, ideally also a suggested retail price so the buyer can see their margin at a glance.
- Case pack — how many units in a case. Use the case you already ship in.
- Minimum order — in units or dollars. How to set your MOQ has the math; a first-order minimum of one or two cases is common for independent stores.
- Payment terms. New accounts commonly pay up front or on receipt. Net 30 is the standard ask from established retailers, and net 30 terms for wholesale explains when to offer it.
- Shipping and lead time. Who pays freight, and how many days from order to shipment.
Write these on one page. This is your wholesale terms sheet, and it does more to make you look established than anything else you will produce.
Step 3: Build a line sheet
A line sheet is the document a buyer forwards to their colleague or prints for a meeting. It has your product photos, names, wholesale price, suggested retail, case pack, minimum order, and how to order. One to two pages, clean, no marketing copy. How to write a line sheet for wholesale walks through a sample structure you can copy in an afternoon.
If you have more than a dozen SKUs, add a simple order form — a spreadsheet with SKU, price, and a quantity column is enough to start.
Step 4: Pick one buyer type to start with
The mistake most brands make at this stage is trying to sell to everyone. Buyer types have different expectations, and you get better at one before you add a second:
- Independent retailers buy a case or two, decide fast, and reorder on a seasonal calendar. Best first buyer for most brands.
- Regional chains buy in bigger quantities and expect consistent supply and some compliance work.
- Distributors buy at a lower price, in pallets, and put your product in front of many retailers at once. Best when you have volume and a proven sell-through story.
- National retailers are a later stage. They involve vendor portals, compliance requirements, and long timelines.
Wholesale channels 101 describes each in more detail. For a first wholesale business, independent retailers or a single regional distributor are almost always the right opening move.
Step 5: Find the buyers and reach them
This is the step where most attempts stall, because it is repetitive: find a store or distributor that fits your product, identify the buyer or owner, find a working email, write a short note that mentions their business specifically, follow up twice, and repeat. Fifty well-targeted contacts typically beat a thousand generic ones.
Your first email should be four or five sentences: who you are, what the product is, why it fits their store, one proof point such as your review count or a current stockist, and one easy ask — usually a line sheet or a sample. Do not attach a catalog to a cold email. Do not pitch three products. Do not write five paragraphs.
Step 6: Fulfill the first orders like you have done it before
The first order is a test of whether you are easy to work with. Confirm the order in writing with quantities, price, terms, and ship date. Pack the cases so they arrive undamaged. Include a packing slip and an invoice. Ship on the date you said. Then send a short note a week after delivery asking how it is selling.
You do not need a wholesale fulfillment system for the first ten accounts. You need to be reliable ten times in a row.
Step 7: Build the reorder habit
A wholesale business is a reorder business. The first order pays for the outreach; the reorders are the profit. Set a reminder for each account based on their likely sell-through — six to eight weeks is a common check-in for independent stores — and reach out with a specific, low-pressure nudge. Note which accounts reorder without prompting and which need a reminder, and treat the first group as the model for who to target next.
How to start a wholesale business in 90 days
- Weeks 1 to 2. Margin check, terms sheet, line sheet, order form. Pick independent retailers as the first buyer type.
- Weeks 3 to 6. Build a list of 100 stores that fit. Reach 25 a week with a personalized note and two follow-ups.
- Weeks 7 to 10. Expect somewhere in the range of five to ten conversations and a handful of first orders if the product fits. Ship them well. Ask for a photo of the shelf.
- Weeks 11 to 13. Send reorder nudges to the first accounts. Use their names as proof points in the next round of outreach. Decide whether to add a distributor.
If five stores each place a first order of 48 units at 20 dollars, that is 4,800 dollars in wholesale revenue from about three months of part-time effort, with reorders on top. How to build a wholesale program from scratch picks up from here with the systems for scaling past twenty accounts.
Mistakes that kill a wholesale business early
- Discounting below your terms sheet to get a first order. The buyer remembers the price forever.
- Saying yes to net 60 from a store you have never worked with. Start with payment on receipt and earn terms from there.
- Letting Amazon or your own site undercut your retailers. Keep the shelf price and your online price in line.
- Stopping outreach the week the first order lands. The pipeline needs constant feeding until reorders carry it.
The short version
How to start a wholesale business as a brand owner comes down to one sentence: make the price work, write the terms down, pick a buyer type, reach the right buyers consistently, and be reliable on every order until they reorder on their own. The product you already have is the hard part, and it is done.
The most time-consuming step — finding the right buyers and getting a reply — is the one WholesalePilot takes off your desk. Paste your product link and it finds the distributors, wholesalers, and retailers that fit, verifies their emails, sends outreach in your name, and books the calls.
A wholesale business is not a warehouse. It is a price, a page, and a list of buyers you actually contact.
Paste your product link and see your first wholesale buyers for free.