New Training on How To Wholesale Your Etsy Product To BIG Retailers!

Have you been successfully selling your Etsy product? If so, maybe it’s time to consider selling into retailers as well?

Etsy is definitely a great platform to sell your handmade or vintage items online, but if you want to make more profit, consider wholesaling your Etsy products to big retailers, tool! Whether you’re selling toys, craft supplies, jewelry or clothing, I’m here to tell you that you can get your Etsy product on big retail shelves like Macy’s or in any other department stores or retailer chains. Looking into wholesaling can really help you grow your business sustainably and help build your brand! 

However, there are some new things to think about if you plan on going after stores such as how to mass produce your product, wholesale pricing, packaging and more! 

If you’re interested in learning the answers to these questions, then I suggest checking out my latest training video.  Click on the link to watch!

(For those of you who prefer to read this content, transcription is included as well below!)

Wishing you so much happiness and success.

Karen Waksman, Retail MBA

P.S. Want to Get Your Products into Chain Stores in a Fraction of the Time? Check out our Retail MBA System! We walk you through exactly how to approach, pitch and sell to chain stores. No sales experience, patents or buyer relationships required! 

Transcription for this Video Here: 

So let’s talk about how to wholesale your Etsy product to big retailers. So if you have a great product that you think should be on the shelves of retail chains and you’ve been selling your Etsy product, you’re probably curious about how to make money with it and so forth. So I decided to create this little training segment to support you in helping you figure out Etsy and how to sell them to large retail chains like Macy’s or any other department stores or whatever supports you and your product based on you know, if you have a children’s product then to sell to Buy Buy Baby and so forth. So whatever it is for you, this little training will walk you through how to sell large retail chains if you’re an Etsy company. 

First of all, in order to sell to big retailers, you need to find a way to develop your product for a massive audience. Meaning that the buyer needs to be able to buy your products in quantity. And so you have to figure out how you’re going to mass produce that. So some of you are making stuff by hand and you’re literally going to have to figure out how to make more than a hundred pieces of your product. Big retailers need you to be able to make 10,000 units of your product in a single order or more and in one sitting. So can you do it? Do you have someone who can develop it for you? These are the things that you have to kind of figure out in advance. It will help you with bigger retail chains.

If you’re really serious about those retailers, doesn’t mean that you’re going to get 10,000 units ordered on day one. It just means that they’re eventually going to have to buy your product on a larger scale if your product sells in their store. So they’ll start small by small quantities just for their top 20 or 50 stores. Test out your product and then from there, they’ll buy larger quantities. So you’ll just definitely want to make sure that when that happens, you have the ability to be able to have them buy your product on the spot in larger quantities. So the assumption is that you are working on that currently if you are exploring wholesale for larger retailers. Many of you already know that but just wanted to be clarified. They just can’t buy your handmade product, you know, 10 pieces of your product. That doesn’t make sense. If somebody has 500 stores they’re responsible for, they have to put at least 2 to 5 to 10 pieces of your product per store. I mean that in itself. And then there’s reorders—consistently. So you know, again, you just got to set that up properly. 

So things to consider in terms of wholesaling to big retailers, you got to figure out your packaging situation. With retailers, it depends on what it is. Like jewelries are a little bit different than say a toy product or whatever it is you are creating. But what you got to look at is how are the retailers packaging similar products to yours because they actually care about packaging at retail chains. They do care about how it’s presented. So when you’re selling to boutiques and stuff it’s not as important. You can have a little display and so forth. With retailers, they’re very big sticklers on how much room your product takes and so forth. 

So what you want to do is you want to walk floors and take a look at the retailers that could buy your product. And I try to have people look at as many retailers as possible before they choose their strategy, meaning which retailers you are going to focus on. So you just walk a bunch of stores and you kind of make assessments and see what’s going on, and figure out the pricing and all these different things. Then you kind of put together your plan. Then you approach retailers. This is only a few minutes of training, but you know, that’s the essence of what I teach people. You got to do some prep work before you actually pitch to these guys to make sure you sound smart before you go after them.

But really, packaging is going to show up because they care about what the package is going to look like because we’re speaking up the packaging, not the product itself in a lot of cases. Obviously, jewelry is a little bit different but still there’s some sort of packaging even if it’s a hang tag or some sort of something clipped on to the product. That’s still considered packaging and still does matter to retail. So when you’re walking stores, take a look at similar products to yours. Look at the top 3 competitors similar to your product and you want to copy their packaging exactly. And really, what that will do for you is that it’ll have you approach the buyer appropriately because the buyer’s basically telling you what kind of packaging they want. They’ve already approved the similar products in stores so you just want to copy what’s going on in the stores and just make it look better, more interesting, put some brighter colors. Do whatever you got to do.

But if there is a box on your competitor’s product, then you want to create a box for your product. If they are putting all the similar products on hang tag cards and they have certain designs, you want to do the same. So that’s the other thing to think about. And the final thing I’ll mention today…by the way, packaging—essential to your success with retailers. Walk stores first. Make sure that your packaging matches what’s already in stores. They’re already telling you what they want. So I hope you got that. 

So the final thing I want to say about wholesaling products to big retail chains if you’re an Etsy company is that they definitely are looking for products that are priced accordingly. So, because you’re a smaller company, you’re definitely going to have struggles with manufacturers, the manufacturers that tend to give price breaks to people who are selling products on a larger scale. And if you’re new and you’re not selling that many products and so forth, it does tend to get tricky because your cost per unit costs more than somebody who is already established and so forth. That’s okay. Retailers understand that. The thing that’s working for you is the fact that you have probably more new, interesting, innovative stuff. And the buyers do care about new, interesting, and innovative. So don’t ignore large retailers because you’re worried about cost so much. But you definitely want to find solutions, right?

And the one way you can control your cost is if you consider private labeling your product to retailers. Private label basically means that if you walk into a store and on the packaging, it says the name of the retailer, not your product. It’s their branding, not yours—that’s private label. The retailers actually buying your product like a manufacturer’s product or a wholesaler’s product and they’re making you put their packaging on your product. If you don’t care if your branding is all over it, that is private label and people make many millions of dollars private labeling their products just one retailer. 

So what that essentially means for you is that if you’re trying to wholesale your product to retailers, one thing you might want to consider is private labeling your product to retail chains meaning approaching the private label buyer with your product and being willing to change branding on that. And I explain private label on another video training. But really, the essence is that the reason you’d want to do that is because if they do private label your product, they will buy massive quantities of your product because it’s under their brand name. And they tend to buy a lot of quantities of products under their brand name because there’s an audience that purchases products similar to that. 

And so ultimately what that means for you is that you can get your price down to your manufacturer if you are private labeling your product because when you sell your product in bulk, the manufacturer will suddenly start giving you price breaks. So some people abhor the concept of selling to retail chains and not having their branding on it. But some people are willing to maybe explore that possibility and what that does for you is enables the manufacturer to get a lot of volume. They in turn start giving you price breaks based on that volume. You can turn that into a really successful business because from there you can get your price down and then you could start being competitive. All these big branded companies, they all on some level have to do things that maybe help increase revenue. And private label is very important to their business a lot of times. Not all products make sense for that but a lot of Etsy wholesale products like jewelry. A lot of times it would have to be under the branded name of the retailers. You don’t have the choice with the private label stuff. And then there’s other retailers where literally you can choose whether or not you want to put on their brand name. You know what I mean? And that’s a possibility. 

Not all private label products are accessible to every product type, but a lot of times. So when you’re walking stores, you’re trying to see what’s possible for you and your product, which retail will buy your product. Take a look whether or not a company is selling to that retailer under their branded name or under the retail branded name. That means there’s a private label opportunity there for you. And again, what that does is reduces the cost for you. And by the way, you can sell to one retailer under a private label situation and sell to another retailer with your brand product. So I know a lot of companies who actually sell one product on a massive scale through a private label and then go to another retailer and sell on under their branded name. And it seems to work out really well for them because that private label opportunity actually reduces cost, helps them succeed and so forth. I used to sell millions of units of jewelry and so forth, and accessories, fashion accessories to retailers. I know those very well. There’s a lot of opportunity with private label.

Anyways, I hope that provided value for you. I have other trainings on what private label is and how to explore that and so forth. So definitely take a look at that. Otherwise, be on the lookout for the next training that I create. This is Karen Waksman, Retail MBA. If you want to learn exactly how to approach, pitch, and sell to retailers whether it’s a private label situation or not, whether it’s a high ticket product or not, definitely take a look at Retail MBA and my training systems. We have coaching and training environment for we support people on actually how to get to stores in a fraction of time with minimal cost and so forth. So definitely take a look at retailmba.com. We’re here to help you. Otherwise, please subscribe to this channel and be on the lookout for additional contents that I create. Again, Karen Waksman, Retail MBA. Thanks so much!