SELL WHOLESALE
TO BOUTIQUES.

Reference

What a boutique buyer needs to see, how to price for their margin, and how to earn the reorder.

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Guide

HOW TO SELL WHOLESALE
TO BOUTIQUES.

Independent boutiques are the easiest wholesale accounts to open and the hardest to keep, because the owner buys with their own money, in small quantities, on instinct. Everything that makes a boutique say yes is on one page they can order from; everything that makes them reorder is what happened after the first box arrived.

What to know

What a boutique buyer needs to see

A boutique buyer decides in about ninety seconds. They need the wholesale price, the suggested retail, the case pack, the minimum and the ship date on one page, with a photo of the product as it will look on their shelf. A price without a case pack is a question; a linesheet with everything is an order.

Wholesale price and suggested retail side by side, so the margin is obvious
Minimum order in dollars, not just units; boutiques buy small
Case pack and whether they can mix within a case
Ship date, and whether reorders ship faster than first orders

Price for the retailer's margin, not yours

Most boutiques expect keystone or better: retail at roughly double wholesale. A wholesale price set from your costs without checking what the retailer needs to charge is a price that gets rejected for a reason nobody says out loud. Work backwards from the shelf price a shopper will pay in that store.

Keystone: retail is double wholesale, a 50% margin for the store
Check the shelf price of what sits next to you in that store
If your margin does not survive keystone, the product is priced wrong, not the store

Terms that small stores can actually accept

A boutique cannot prepay a large first order and cannot wait ninety days for a reorder. Low minimums, prepaid first orders and net 30 on reorders is the shape that works. Free shipping over a threshold moves more boutique orders than any discount.

Low first-order minimum, higher reorder minimum
Prepaid first order, net terms once they have paid on time
Free shipping over a threshold, stated on the linesheet

The reorder is the business

A first order is a trial. What decides the reorder is sell-through, and the store holds that number. Ask for it in the terms, not after a bad season. Follow up two weeks after delivery with the question that matters: what moved? A seller who calls on the store monthly is how boutiques stay accounts instead of becoming a list of stores that ordered once.