When getting started with wholesale one of the first questions you might have is: how much inventory do I need?
There are a lot of factors at play here such as:
- when your business started
- how much space you have to store items
- what you CAN afford to buy
- the shelf life of the product
- and what industry you are in
A chocolate bar company and a greeting card maker are going to have vastly different answers for these questions.
How Much Inventory Should You Have:
1: How new is your business?
If you are just starting out, I would suggest ordering smaller quantities. After a while you’ll start to figure out your best sellers, and get a better grasp at how quickly they are selling out. You’ll also learn which products sell occasionally, but aren’t as in demand.
2: How much space do you have?
Even if it’s a better deal to get 500 notepads instead of 200… do you actually have space for 500 notepads!? Sometimes it’s really hard to not get the better deal… and I can honestly say I’ve regretted going with the extra product at times.
Some people on social media have beautiful office spaces and it feels like that’s the goal, but it’s not reality for a lot of people. So just order what you can really find space for and don’t make your life miserable just to have a ton of products on hand!
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3: How much inventory can you afford to buy?
This seems like a no brainer, but I would definitely recommend crunching the numbers before jumping into wholesale. If there are price breaks you need to make in order to be able to sell wholesale, think about how much money you would need to spend on those items and how quick you anticipate those selling?
Remember, you don’t have to wholesale every product offering. If there are some products you can’t get the margins right for, then don’t offer it for wholesale! 🙂
Recommendations for Stationery Inventory:
This is going to vary a lot depending on what you sell and what your sales are like, but I can give you my personal experience in the stationery industry. Below are my suggestions for greeting cards, vinyl stickers, and art prints.
Greeting Cards:
The standard case size for greeting cards is 6. This means a retailer would be able to order 6, 12, 18, and so on.
Related: How to Sell Wholesale to Retailers
I would recommend starting with no less than 20 per card. This would allow for 3 sets of wholesale orders (given each customer only ordered the minimum of 6). Most of my retailers purchase 6-24 cards per SKU.
Stickers:
I would start off with 50 of each design. In my experience retailers will order anywhere from 6-100 of each SKU. This varies a lot more for me, and I think it’s because stickers are a relatively newer product than greeting cards. A lot of brick and mortar stores will know what to purchase for cards because they have been doing that for a long time, but stickers have only really started taking off in 2018.
Once you start to see what you best sellers are for wholesale, I would recommend having 100-200 of those in stock at all times, until you’re consistently getting high volume orders for them. This ensures your best sellers never go out of stock. You may also start to notice seasonal trends with some retailers. I have a couple that place really large orders a 2-3 times a year, whereas others place 20-30 smaller orders throughout the year. It really depends on each retailer, but you’ll start to pick up on these things the more you do wholesale, I promise!
Notepads:
This one is a hard one for me, honestly! I sell my notepads in cases of 2, to make it easy for retailers to try out different designs. I had one design sell out the first weekend I released it, while others have taken a couple months. Notepads are my newest product category, so I’m still learning! 🙂
Have any other questions about inventory, or wholesale in general? Leave them in the comments!
Ready to dive into wholesale? Make sure to check out my review on popular wholesale platforms, as well as my in-depth review on Faire Wholesale.