So, you’ve learned how to get started with wholesaling your products to retailers and now you may be wondering… what wholesale marketplace should I get on?
In today’s post I’m going to go over my personal experiences with you.
The Wholesale Marketplaces I’ll Cover:
Let’s dive right in!
Faire Wholesale
Faire is the very first wholesale platform I got started on after Etsy Wholesale shut down. I joined Faire in January 2019, and as of July 2021 I am still selling on the platform and still very happy with my experiences!
Faire may be the first site you think of when trying to get onto a wholesale platform. It’s probably the most well known by both buyers and sellers, which means there are actual stores buying everyday.
APPLY TO FAIRE
*disclosure: this is a referral link which means I will be compensated if you are approved. I’m sharing this link with you because I know how competitive Faire is to get on these days and would love it if my referral link could help you get approved in any way!!
Faire now has integrations for Shopify so that my quantities match up on both sites. They’ve also done a few online markets due to the pandemic, which has been great exposure. I’ve participated in all three events and they have all been really successful events for me!
I’d say one of the biggest complaints I hear about Faire is their high fees. At first this was a hard adjustment for me, but now I’m okay with it. Of course I’d love for it to be lower, but I do understand that I wouldn’t have a ton of the retailers I do have if it weren’t for Faire.
Pricing Structure Examples:
1a. A retailer you’ve never reached out to orders $100 in product from you. Faire takes a 25% commission off your first order. The store owner pays for shipping. You selected to get paid the next day (instead of 30 days from now) which means Faire takes an additional 3%. You would make $72.75.
b. That same retailer purchases the same amount but this time you selected to get paid 30 days from now. In this scenario you would make $75.
2. That same retailer returns and purchases $70 from you. They’re able to spend less because your return order is lower. In this scenario you would make $59.50 if you’ve selected to get paid 30 days from now. Faire takes 15% commission on return orders from retailers they bring you.
3. A retailer clicked on your direct link. They ordered $100 from you and you’ve selected to get paid 30 days from now. You will make $100. Faire takes 0% from the customers you’ve brought to them.
If you are actively bringing retailers to the site they will forever have a 0% commission. I would also recommend doing Net 30 terms for payouts, because that 3% to get paid right away does add up — and in my opinion it’s not worth it.
Hello Abound
I’ve been on Abound about a year less than Faire, and I can already tell that they are a great platform to be on. Their pricing structure (explained below) is much better than Faire. They are a relatively new site, compared to Faire, and because of that they do have some features that are lacking. However, within a week of going live I had 3 orders. One of my largest wholesale orders to date came from Abound!
Most important to me is their lack of shipping within their platform. On Faire you can print a label from the order page instead of having to copy the information to Paypal or another shipping site. This takes a lot longer to fulfill orders. It actually makes me dread Abound orders sometimes because I know the extra work I’ll have to do, triple check the address was typed in correctly, then go back into Abound and fill out the details. It doesn’t sound like much, but with the ease of Faire’s shipping process this is a headache.
Besides their lack of shipping labels, I feel the entire upload process and reorganizing the store is the most time consuming process. I actually end up putting products on Abound later than Faire because it just takes too long. And there’s no easy way to rearrange your store. I feel that the quality of buyers are better on Faire than Abound at this time. Abound seems to be less professional buyers.
Pricing Structure Examples:
When I started on Abound, I decided from the get-go I would do the 45 day wait for payment. I wanted the better commission structure. Abound takes a 15% commisison on first orders and 8% commision on creorders. This is significantly better than Faire!
If a retailer purchases from me without using my direct link Abound will take 15% off their first order. So that $100 first order is now $85. A $70 reorder from the same retailer now becomes $69.
Tundra
The main perk to Tundra is their “zero commision” structure. It’s what drew me into their platform in the first place. They also don’t allow returns (like Faire does). One major con I see to their site is big name brands on their platform like Mattel and Burts Bees. It seems like that would make your exposure harder when competing with worldwide brands like those.
However, I never got my store fully set up there so I can’t really speak too much on their platform at this time.
Stockabl
Stockabl is a wholesale platform created by a maker. I jumped on board from the beginning of the creation – however in the year that I had an account with them I only received 1 order. They are pretty new, and they’re self-funded so they don’t have a ton of advertising money. I would love to re-join the platform someday when more buyers are on the site, because I really like that they only accept true small businesses and not giant corporations. I would keep my eye on this one, as I really enjoy that this platform is female and maker founded.
Boutsy
Out of all of the platforms I’ve tried this is the one I would NOT recommend. To start with, the entire setup and backend information is a pain to figure out. For an entire year I didn’t realize my site went live – because apprently they emailed me and asked if everything was correct and by me not replying to their email they assumed everything was right.
When they set up my site they pulled up EVERYTHING from my Shopify website. Titles, descriptions – for every product (even digital products). I don’t know about you, but my titles and descriptions are different from retail to wholesale. My first step was to delete the products that weren’t available for wholesale. However, I never got around to fixing all 200+ descriptions. Flash forward 8 months, I get my very first order on Boutsy. It was for $14. That, my friends, is not a wholesale order.
I ended up cancelling that order only for the shop to turnaround and place a larger order, so I fulfilled this order.
I didn’t put any billing information on their site… because they pay you in check? This was the last straw for me. I don’t want to wait around for a check in the mail, and who knows when it even sends because I can’t find any of that information on there. If I remember correctly, I did end up getting paid via check in the mail… but I don’t remember how long it took. All I know is that this should have been an option but not the only option.
So, if this is one you’re looking into I would make sure to read over everything first. Maybe I had things set up wrong from the start, but who knows.
Handshake by Shopify
Handshake is brand new as of August 2020. I can’t say I have any experience with this, yet. However, I wanted to throw this option out there if you already have a Shopify website. Once approved you would add your product to the Handshake feed. This is similar to how you add products to Facebook.
July 2021 update: I’ve still not published my Handshake account. I honestly don’t have the time to set everything up right now. I receive their emails from time to time still, and I see that they are doing an online market event similar to what Faire has done.
Creating Your Own Wholesale Website
At the end of 2019, I realized that I could pay for a separate Shopify site ($300 approx.) just on Faire commissions alone. Shopify’s commision is very minimal (3-4% transaction fee) compared to Faire. In September 2019 I made my own wholesale website that is password protected. It was my goal in 2020 to do more outreach and get retailers purchasing from my personal site – but it didn’t take long for Covid 19 to shut down shops all across the country.
Setting up my own wholesale website took quite a bit of time because I wanted it to be perfect. I like that I can easily rearrange things however and whenever I want, schedule listings to go live at a certain date and time, and I have more control over the overall look of my website. The biggest con (and probably the most obvious) is that you’re lacking the thousands of retailers who may stumble across your products.
I will say though, that in under a year I was able to make well over what I needed to breakeven with the cost of the site. This was my only goal for the first year, so I’m pretty proud of that! Going forward, I hope to have more time to send emails and catalogs to stores and have them purchase directly from me instead of a wholesale platform.
July 2021 update: Faire and Abound have been successful for me, so I no longer use my website. I’m not sure if I want to completely get rid of it or if I’ll just hold off. I do think that if I’m going to take the time and effort to reach out to retailers, I might as well send then to Faire and get 0% commission.
Final Thoughts:
If you were to ask me my top two choices, I would definitely say Faire and Abound are the two you should definitely try.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the various wholesale marketplaces you could sell on. Which marketplace are you going to sign up for? Do you have any experience with the other marketplaces mentioned?