With the summer season fast approaching, navigating the wholesale channel is an important thing to keep in mind.
There are two major things to note when it comes to wholesaling your brand: 1) wholesale order timeline, and 2) when clients are willing to take delivery — since this is also the time when your products can make their way into retail stores. By knowing these two things you will save yourself the trouble of competing with the stores that send orders for your product.
The Wholesale Order Timeline
1) Companies will commonly place their orders for products 3 to 6 months prior to the date they want your products in their store. They want merchandise to be relevant to the approaching season for another 2 months afterwards.
2) As Jennifer advised in this post, it’s important to plan a season ahead. Stores will typically order for the Spring season 5 to 6 months before Spring has even sprung.
3) It’s important to have Spring orders ready to ship from January to February, and March being the latest.
[ctt tweet=”If you try selling a Spring line during the Spring season you won’t get orders, because you’re wholesaling the off-target season. @MakersRow” coverup=”d2Fw1″]
Different Markets, Different Timelines
•For the children’s market Spring ordering begins in the early Fall season, and ends in January.
•For accessories, they categorize into the gift market, but can also be considered in the apparel schedule (March at the latest).
When your orders begin shipping, and if you have your own store, you can then stock your collection in your own boutique or showroom! What retailers want is to offer customers ‘au courant’ products to their shoppers. If you’ve already been selling your line for months and months, it’s less appealing for a store to invest and purchase it from you. The secret to expanding wholesale is getting in tune with the wholesale schedule and marketing your collection to a sweeping gamut of buyers.
By familiarizing yourself with the wholesale seasons, and knowing when retail buyers will be taking deliveries, the future of getting your product into stores will look much brighter!
Special thanks to Bleick Studio designer, Roxanne Pedroza for the helpful research and tips!
Get Started on Your Next Product!
Getting a great idea for a product is an inspirational feeling, until you start considering the work that’s involved. As a solution, Maker’s Row has launched Projects, a virtual one-stop shop software where you can organize and communicate details in order to get from design to production. Projects will move your ideas from the basic sketch to your first order, seamlessly.
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