How to Set Up Your Products for Wholesale Purchase

Who Should Use This Information

You should be reading this:

• If you need to enter wholesale information for products on your website.
• If you need to set up the shopping cart for volume discount selling for wholesale buyers.
• If you need to set up a tax method for wholesale items.

The first part of the process for setting your website up for wholesale product is to enable it in your Settings. NOTE: If you do not see the options listed below for Wholesale functionality, it has not been enabled for you yet. Wholesale functionality is part of our Plus service package, starting at $79 monthly for website only. If you need to adjust your service subscription or to inquire about getting wholesale functionality enabled, please call our Billing department at 877-909-6699, extension 3.

Enable Wholesale Products

You can begin working with wholesale products by finding the gear-shaped button on the right side of the blue Admin Toolbar and after clicking it, go to Settings > Website Settings > Products.

There are a ton of settings for your products on this page, but for what you are wanting, you only need one. Find the Enable Selling of Wholesale Items setting and set it to ON. Once you've done so, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and click Save.

Enter Product Wholesale Information

If you are setting up your website for wholesale members, most of your work on the site content for those members will be done directly in the Products module. This is work you can do at the same time you are setting your products up for retail sales. It is best to have this kind of data-entry work done before you set up your website for wholesale buyers to access your special pricing. In each of your products that you plan to sell wholesale, you need to look at the following two areas:

Wholesale Price

For each of your products you plan to sell wholesale, you can enter wholesale pricing at any time: it will never be publicly visible. The price should be per unit, and a unit can be whatever you want it to be (e.g. a case, a set of four, etc.). If you have special price reductions based on volume, you should enter those as Options when you set up the product the first time. Selling this way is a good incentive to get your wholesale members to buy in larger quantities. Here's an example:

• Option Title - In this example, Unit Quantity is the Option and the Values are based on the quantity. Each Unit in this case is a box of 10 of the products in question, so by buying the Four Unit Bundle, a wholesale buyer would be getting four such boxes. So the Eight Unit Bundle would have 80 actual items, and the Twelve Unit Case would have 120. This seller gives incentive to buy larger lots by discounting the total price. See below. The Options can be whatever you need for your model of wholesale selling.
• Product Identifier - If you set up Options like those pictured above, it is wise to have a unique identifier for each, so you can bring them up easily in searches and to help the system track your different profit margins based on your pricing. If you click in the blank SKU field, a button will pop up that will let you Generate SKU, and it will give you a unique number each time.
• Inventory & Costs - For the best results, you will want to put in your inventory (if that's something you need to track) and the cost you pay to create or produce each selling unit. In our example above, the Cost might be $175 for a Four Unit Bundle, and so on for the larger bundles. Entering these values is important so the system can track your Profit Margins and show you over time how you're doing in the Reports.
• Wholesale Price - Enter your selling price for your Wholesale Members for each of your Options. Again, information you enter into this field is password protected and only Members who have signed in will be able to see them.

Wholesale Description

You should enter all pertinent details about how your wholesale pricing, packaging, and shipping works in your Wholesale Description for each product you plan to sell wholesale. To access this area, at the top of the Edit Product screen, click on the Descriptions tab. You will see the Wholesale Description near the bottom, below the Short and Long Description.

A good Wholesale Description will contain the following:

1. A breakdown of available pricing, including volume discounts, if you offer them.
2. Marketing language to encourage your buyers to purchase in larger amounts (e.g. Purchase by the case (multiples of 20 units) and save big bucks while you increase your profit margin!).
3. Information about case packaging, if any.
4. Information about special shipping considerations and pricing, if any, for higher volume purchases.

Remember that images and other rich content, such as embedded videos and links to PDF files make your pages more appealing, so inserting an image, at the least, is a good idea. After you have composed your content, the last step is scrolling to the bottom of the product and clicking the Save button.

Special Considerations for Wholesale Product Setup

The system will take care of most of the work for you. For example, you can set all of this information up for each of your products and in the same product listing, you can have the retail version of the product as well as your Wholesale Options, if any. Retail buyers will only be able to see and purchase the retail version of the product, and Wholesale Members who are logged into the site will be able to see and purchase at your special wholesale rates, with no tax added for in-state purchases. They will also be able to see the retail versions, and retail pricing, so they will be able to see directly the savings they are getting at the wholesale level.