Whether you’re selling wholesale gifts and novelties, perishable goods, or hair care products, you know how hard it is to run a wholesale business. The ever-changing economy, the increasing customer demand, and the emergence of new technologies can easily overwhelm any business owner. While many wholesalers fail to keep up with the challenge, that doesn’t have to be the case with your business. Here are some common wholesale mistakes that you should avoid at all costs if you want to stay ahead of the game.

Making Unnecessary Purchases

Maintaining enough inventory to supply customer demands is important to sustain your operations. However, buying too much stock isn’t always a good idea. If you purchase large quantities of goods without predicting customer demands and trends, you’re only hurting your wholesale business.

Having too much inventory and not being able to sell them allows for contamination, decay, and damage to your products, leading to lots of waste. This is especially true if the goods you’re selling don’t exactly have a long shelf life. To avoid this, it’s best to practice forecasting your customer’s demands. Monitoring inventory and customer demands should be one of your priorities to keep the business running smoothly.

Failure to Negotiate with Suppliers

Wholesalers often forget to negotiate with suppliers and just take whatever is given to them at face value. Granted, manufacturers and suppliers often impose large minimum order quantities, but you should at least try to negotiate terms if you can’t keep up with the minimum required.

Aside from quantity, the price of goods, terms of payment, shipping costs, and product packaging are also other aspects of business that you should be negotiating with your suppliers. They may not seem much at first, but negotiating well with manufacturers can have a significant impact on your business in the long run.

Inefficient Order Fulfillment Processing

Since you’re a wholesaler, your buyers are also required to meet their customers’ demands. They want their items delivered faster, so they can serve their customers better. Failure to process your orders on time is almost a surefire way to turn your buyers away and leave you for other distributors.

Moreover, some retailers prefer to buy directly from manufacturers. This phenomenon is called disintermediation. If you want to avoid disintermediation, you need to optimize your fulfillment process. As much as possible, reduce your lead time and make your buyers feel like they are a priority.

Focusing on Price Rather Than Service

There used to be a time when the price is all that mattered in the wholesale industry. Whoever could compete with the best prices won. Nowadays, lowering prices is no longer enough, and it could even hurt your business. Customers tend to associate lower prices with cheap quality products.

Instead of slashing prices, focus on improving your service. Put customer experience first and make it easy for your buyers to reach you and place orders when they need to. Take advantage of the online wholesale marketplace and allow your buyers to place orders and pay online. You can also give them the option to place orders via social media.

Conclusion

As a business owner, you don’t have to succumb to the pressures of maintaining your wholesale business. As long as you don’t fall for any of these mistakes, you’ll be able to turn your business into a profitable venture.

Whenever you’re in need of a trusted supplier of quality home decor and gifts at competitive wholesale prices, turn to The Globe Imports, Inc. We are a Florida-based distributor and importer of wholesale home decor for retailers since 1988. Give us a call and place your order today!