Jul. 07, 2025
The wholesale industry is thriving against all the odds stacked against it over the last couple of years. Let’s celebrate! But first, we’ve curated a list of 7 wholesale tips geared towards helping you keep your business operating smoothly and fortify it from any unforeseen future events.
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If you are managing to operate a successful small wholesale business without an inventory management software, kudos to you! However, if you are growing, you will quickly find that relying solely on QuickBooks and manual methods is not enough. Before you know, during a peak sales season, the lack of automation, centralization, and streamlined operations within your business could quickly lead you to go belly up or, at least, fail to maximize profits. In order to optimize, strengthen, and grow your business, our first of the wholesale tips is to consider an inventory management software compatible with QuickBooks!
Data, data, data! The second of our wholesale tips is to collect it and learn from it. Your inventory software should provide you with the tools to better understand your customers, the products they like, the ones they don’t, the products they don’t even know they need yet, and your overall market as a whole. With business intelligence tools like an operational CRM, demand forecasting, sales and trend analysis, and other drilled down reporting, you will be able to understand your customers better than they understand themselves – and that is not a bad goal to strive for.
Inventory is a wholesaler’s bread and butter, as you very well know. But when it isn’t managed correctly, you find yourself facing overstocks, shortages, dying inventory, and increased overhead. Utilize your inventory software itself as well as the business intelligence tools mentioned above to make purchasing smarter. Wholesale tips no. 3 is to maintain a slim inventory as a healthy way for wholesalers to keep what is needed on hand, but never too much more or less, which in the end, reduces overhead, and keeps cash flowing smoothly.
Seamless ordering, regardless of channel, goes along with the first tip provided. When your operations are centralized, orders coming in from any channel will be treated equally, while also providing you the ability to sort, filter, and prioritize fulfillment as needed. One of the best ways to ensure customer loyalty is to make their buying experience from you simple, easy, fast, and error-free.
As a wholesaler, you already know how the game works. The point of wholesale is to offer products in bulk with a discount to your buyers, but in the end, you still want and need to make profit from the transactions. Your inventory management software can come in handy when trying to determine the right pricing strategies for you and your customers without bring your profit margins down. Wholesale tips no. 6 is to require minimum order requirements for an order to qualify as wholesale. Alternatively, just understanding the true costs of goods with landed cost and other costing methods can ensure you are offering the most competitive pricing you can while keeping the rest in your pocket.
While this is the final wholesale tip, it is not any less important than the rest. Customer service keeps your customers coming back, helps spread the good (hopefully) word about your business, prevents negative reviews, and sometimes aids in expanding into other markets. When your business is centralized, any questions about a customer, a product, a tracking number, etc. should be able to be pulled up within seconds, and the answers you need ready and waiting. The faster the service, the happier the customers.
A line sheet is a document that a product brand creates so that store owners can review their products, prices, and wholesale terms – hopefully leading to an order.
The back story on line sheets: Traditionally, small brands grew wholesale primarily by going to trade shows. In that context, your line sheet had a single purpose -- it was the rundown/reminder of your products that store owners would take with them after visiting your booth so that they could review your line in greater detail and place an order. These line sheets weren’t anything fancy, but they were mandatory to have -- a list of products, unit numbers, prices, and terms, sometimes with small photos of each item. So when many people say “line sheet”, this is what they mean: a bare bones document with the key facts about your wholesale line.
Over the past couple of decades, the world of wholesale has changed dramatically. Trade shows have gotten more expensive and less reliable, especially for smaller or less established brands. Online marketplaces have become a near necessity for brands and makers growing wholesale. And direct outreach to stores (via or snail mail) has proven to be an important part of a diversified strategy.
In this new world of wholesale, your line sheet may be your sole chance to present your brand and products to stores -- since the majority of the time, the store owner has not seen your products in person (like at a trade show booth.)
Given this, many small brands choose to create a document that is more of a hybrid between a lookbook/catalog and a traditional line sheet. It needs to show your products at their best, tell your story, give a rundown of items and prices, and explain your wholesale terms.
If you are a product brand or maker who wants to sell to stores, you likely need some kind of line sheet. In the very early days, it is possible to squeak by just showing your retail website to stores – but usually it’s worth the time to create a specialized document or online presentation of your products.
The purpose of a line sheet is to present your wholesale product line to stores. And so although “line sheet” meant something very specifically traditionally – when we talk about a “line sheet”, we are talking more generally about a document or online platform that presents your wholesale products, prices, and terms to stores. Given that, there are a few different options in terms of format:
PDF Catalog / Line Sheet. A PDF line sheet can be a very effective way of sharing your products with stores, because you can control every aspect of the structure, layout, visual language, and story. It lets you craft a narrative about your products that is just for store owners.
Wholesale Marketplace Shop. Some makers use Faire or another marketplace as the place they showcase their products. This can work well if the vast majority of your sales come through that marketplace and that is your strategy moving forward as well.
Related links:Want more information on wholesale hand tools? Feel free to contact us.
Online Wholesale Storefront Tool. Online “storefront” and ordering tools like Candid or Brandboom can be a streamlined way to present your products and take orders. That said, sometimes it’s harder to control the way your story comes across and the monthly fees can be significant.
Wholesale Website. Some makers have a dedicated wholesale website. If you go this route, Shopify is a good option. For some some great Shopify tips and tricks check out The Best Tips on Using Shopify For Wholesale — From a Shopify Pro. That said, we’ve found that making a distinct wholesale website tends to make the most sense once you are selling to 100+ stockists.
Q. How much does design matter in my line sheet?
A. A great product can overcome a badly designed line sheet… but why work against yourself? Here are some good design practices to keep in mind:
Visual hierarchy: the darker and larger you make things, the more attention they will call from the viewer. So try to keep the most important things most attention-grabbing. More here.
Don’t use too many fonts or colors so that the products are the star.
Eliminate anything that’s not on-brand.
You may want to hire a designer to make it all look cohesive, professional, and brand aligned. Alternatively, you may need to “hire yourself” as a designer, coming in after you've gotten some distance from the document and really giving it the once-over.
Q. How long should my line sheet be?
A. Most makers will end up with a 5-15 page document. If yours is longer, but it's beautiful and readable, you're good to go -- within reason! If your line sheet is 50 or 100 pages, you might want to think about how to make it more manageable or adding a very strong Table of Contents. If you’re printing your line sheet, you’ll obviously need to worry more about length.
Q. To send my line sheet to store owners, should I host it somewhere or just attach it to an ?
A. Different makers choose different approaches. If you have a Gmail account, it works quite well to host it there and link to it in your . Attaching it to your can also work – just make sure it's less than 2-5 MB in total size so as not to inadvertently get deleted by clogging inboxes. Our one caveat is to be sure to not create a confusing or time-consuming access or login structure.
Q. Should my line sheet be publicly accessible?
A. We find that it's important for store owners to have everything they need to make a decision on your line, as soon as you contact them. For that reason, I don't recommend forcing them to create a wholesale account or login before viewing the line sheet. If you have your line sheet online, you can create a simple password that you share in your initial outreach . Or, it can technically be publicly accessible as long as it's not in the obvious path of retail customers.
Q. How do I know when my line sheet is good enough?
A. Acknowledge your tendencies. If you're a perfectionist who fusses over the smallest detail and makes sure everything is 10,001% perfect before it leaves your sight, acknowledge that tendency. My perfectionist friends may want to use a light touch with their line sheet, setting a strict deadline and not fretting over the details. On the other hand, if you know that you're great at the big picture but skip the details and design flourishes, acknowledge that tendency. My "big picture" friends may want to sit with this project a bit longer than usual, locking in a strong design. The truth is that our most successful makers use an approach to line sheets that is somewhere between the perfectionist approach and the laissez-faire approach -- so try to push yourself a bit in the direction that may not come as naturally.
Q. What if I want to do things in a different way or got different advice from a trusted guide?
A. Trust your instincts. We've tried to make this guide as clear and concrete as possible, since we know makers have enough to worry about, without having to guess about what their line sheet should look like. And, we have based it on what we've seen to be most effective in working with + makers. That said, I truly believe that you know what is best for you, for your vision, and for your company. So please, do trust your instincts and disregard anything in this guide that doesn't serve you.
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