Wholesale to retail: How to get your products in stores in 2025

Is Your Product Ready for Retail? Assessment Checklist

Before approaching any retailer, conducting a comprehensive evaluation of your product's retail readiness is absolutely critical to your success. This assessment serves as your foundation—it will help you identify potential weaknesses, address gaps proactively, and position your brand as a serious, prepared partner that retailers want to work with.

The retail landscape in 2025 is more competitive than ever. Buyers receive hundreds of pitches monthly, and they can quickly distinguish between brands that have done their homework and those that are unprepared. This checklist covers the four essential pillars that determine retail readiness: product-market fit, compliance requirements, operational capacity, and financial strategy. Each element should be solid before you make your first retailer contact.

Use this as both a diagnostic tool and a roadmap for preparation. The time you invest in strengthening these fundamentals will pay dividends when you're sitting across from buyers who are ready to say yes.

Product Quality and Market Fit

• Conducted market research analyzing competitor performance and pricing strategies
• Identified clear unique selling propositions that differentiate your product
•  Validated market demand through sales data or customer feedback
• Completed quality testing to ensure products meet retail standards

Packaging and Compliance

• Designed retail-ready packaging with proper UPC codes and compliance standards
• Created inner/outer case specifications for efficient shipping and display
• Verified all FDA regulations and industry-specific requirements are met

Supply Chain and Manufacturing

• Confirmed manufacturer can scale production to meet retail demand (potentially 10x current levels)
• Established reliable supply chain partnerships and backup suppliers
• Implemented quality control processes for scaled production

Financial Strategy

• Developed sustainable wholesale pricing that allows retailers 30-50% profit margins
• Calculated all costs including manufacturing, shipping, packaging, and retailer fees
• Secured adequate working capital for increased inventory investments

Score Your Readiness: ___/12 items completed

Your Next Steps Based on Your Score:

• 10-12 items: Congratulations—you're retail-ready! You can confidently approach potential retail partners knowing you have the fundamentals in place. Focus on perfecting your pitch and identifying the right retailers for your brand.
• 7-9 items: You're close, but not quite ready. Address the remaining gaps before reaching out to retailers. Each unchecked item represents a potential deal-breaker that could damage your brand's reputation or waste valuable buyer relationships.
• Below 7: Pump the brakes and focus on fundamentals. Approaching retailers prematurely can harm your brand's reputation and burn bridges with buyers you may want to work with in the future. Use this checklist as your roadmap and revisit retail outreach once you've strengthened these core areas.
  
  Remember: Retailers invest their shelf space, marketing dollars, and reputation in the brands they choose to carry. Make sure you're worthy of that investment before you ask for it.

Preparing for Retail Success: 8 Essential Steps

Breaking into retail is rarely a fairy tale. While you can hear of a small brand that landed a major account with a creative, personal touch, these Cinderella stories are the exception, not the rule. For most brands, retail success comes down to strategy, persistence, and the right tools. After speaking with a range of retail buyers, we’ve distilled their best advice into eight essential steps that will help you stand out, build strong relationships, and turn your wholesale ambitions into reality.

1. Strengthen your brand story

Reflect on your brand's past, present, and future to give retailers a deeper understanding of your values and mission. This unique context is key if you want to stand out in today's extremely competitive wholesale environment. Since retailers are getting a lot more pitches from brands than they used to, it's harder to compete on product quality alone. Buyers are now looking for inspiration on how best to sell your product, or an interesting story they can pass on to their customers — this is vital for building brand loyalty, especially since product trends change so quickly. 

2. Do your research

If your goal is to build lasting and profitable relationships with retail stores, then some upfront work is necessary to ensure you’re contacting stores that fit well with your brand. This is key, as a mismatched retailer can do a lot of damage to your brand's reputation. You'll want to look into things like their reputation (what are customers saying about them?), how their store is merchandised (is the layout thoughtful and attractive?), their financial standing (are there any signs or recent stories of them struggling to stay afloat?). 

Partner with retailers that understand your target audience and that align with your brand values. If both sets of your values are aligned, and they understand your target shoppers’ behavior, they’ll be more likely to continue to support your brand through inevitable market shifts. 

4. Pitch smaller stores

Find out which retailers would be a great fit for your brand. As much as everyone would love to see their product on the shelf at the best global retailers, you might see more success if you target smaller stores first as the competition would be smaller. Pitching smaller retailers also makes it more likely that you’ll be able to quickly develop a personal relationship with the owner or manager. 

5. Get personal

Make the most of those emails. Use your initial research to send highly personalized email pitches. Don't skimp on the details here. Think custom linesheets and a brief message outlining why you believe your product is relevant to each specific buyer. As one buyer said, “I find it rude when I get a message that’s just a catalog without a greeting and isn’t personalized in any way.”

However, while it's good to sweat the details, be mindful of buyers’ time. Less is more. 

• Consider using your wholesale platform to send a targeted email drip campaign. 
• Break up your presentation over a few emails, making it clear you understand why they would be interested.
• Make it convenient. Embed shopping functionality directly into your emails so buyers can see your catalogs and make purchases in one click from their inboxes.

6. Follow up

Set your wholesale platform to alert you when a buyer has opened and viewed your linesheet.

Follow up quickly after viewing to maximize your odds of connecting with the buyer. Ask what they liked in your linesheet, what they’d want to see more of, and what products and styles are trending well at their stores.

7. Have grit

Rejection is just a part of the process. It generally takes between one and five calls to capture someone’s attention. Don’t be afraid to diversify your marketing strategies to attract buyers’ interest. It’s also a great idea to refine your social media presence, create syndicated content, and update your email signatures.

8. Go to trade shows

Retailers everywhere are looking for new products and new brands (or brands that are simply new to their customers). While many might attend trade shows less frequently, buyers still understand they can be great opportunities to source the newness they seek. 

To get the most out of each show, research great-fit, attending buyers prior to each event. Trade shows can be expensive — it’s important to find the ones that will attract the best buyers for your brand. 

• Identify the best shows for your brand
• Create an attractive, on-brand presence
• Send thoughtful, personalized follow-ups after each show
  
  

Ready to Take Your Products to Retail?

Getting your products into stores isn't just about having a great product—it's about having the right strategy, doing your homework, and using tools that actually work. From crafting a compelling brand story to nurturing those crucial buyer relationships, retail success comes down to being professional and staying persistent.

Here's where NuORDER makes a real difference. With over 7,000 brands and 500,000 retailers already using the platform, it's become the go-to solution for modern wholesale. You can build customizable brand portals, create interactive virtual showrooms, and put together drag-and-drop linesheets that actually grab buyers' attention (no more boring PDFs that get lost in their inbox).

Real-time inventory management with NuORDER is a game-changer too. Your product selection stays accurate and current, so you can focus on selling instead of constantly updating spreadsheets. Plus, retailers can place orders quickly without the back-and-forth that usually slows everything down. Whether you're working trade shows or building relationships year-round through digital catalogs, the platform connects your physical and digital wholesale efforts seamlessly.