At some point in the growth and development of your craft business, you’ll need to determine whether you plan to target wholesale contracts. There are pros and cons inherent in selling wholesale, so it will be important to think through your options to decide whether venturing into wholesale craft sales will fit with your resources, your work preferences and your long term goals and vision for your business and yourself.

If you wholesale your crafts, you’ll be selling your work to a buyer who intends to resell your items at a higher price, usually at least double the wholesale price. Before selling crafts wholesale, consider the following:

1. You’ll need to ensure you have a large enough production capacity to manage large orders. Since you’ll be selling crafts for less per unit, you’ll make this up on volume. Therefore, it’s important to ensure you are ready to manage that volume.

2. You’ll sell your items for a lower price than you would if you sold directly to retail customers (usually half of retail), but you’ll sell your items in a higher volume to fewer buyers.

3. When you attend shows, you’ll bring only a range of samples of your line of product, not endless inventory. You’ll take orders for items that you will then produce and deliver at a specified date. Many professional craft artists say that it is nice to know that items they are producing are already purchased.

4. Feedback on work will come from professional buyers; your contact with the end retail customer may be quite limited.

5. You’ll typically attend fewer shows than you would if you were selling on a retail basis, and you’ll spend more time in production in your studio.

6. Your sales will consist of larger but less frequent purchases. That means you’ll have to be good at managing your money because income will not come in a steady flow.