The retailer checklist: 5 ways to win with wholesale

Print this blog post, scribble in your notes, and prepare to take your wholesale business to new heights.

1. Build brand relationships that work for you

✅ Create strong relationships with wholesale suppliers to achieve long-term success:

• Treat your brands like collaborators, not just vendors.
• Develop strong supplier relationships to help retailers navigate challenges (such as tariffs) by offering alternatives, substitutes, or volume discounts.
• Offer early access to trends, more flexible terms, and better support as you launch new lines.

Take time to educate brands on your customer persona, shopper profiles, and localized needs (including lifestyle, price sensitivity, size curves, product preferences, climate, and seasonal events). The best retailers can summarize this well and the best brands will then partner with you and tailor recommendations for your personas. Conversely, use the brand’s resources to educate your broader teams so they can better sell their products; this may be done virtually via materials provided in their B2B portal, or in person, such as during market appointments.

2. Buy smarter with data, not just your gut

✅ Analyze real-world performance data to make confident and informed merchandising decisions:

• Use retail performance data to back proven winners, cut what’s not working, and avoid wholesale guesswork.
• Analyze real-time and seasonal trends to forecast demand and avoid stockouts.
• Use a blend of insights and intuition to make your  buying decisions: use industry-level insights (e.g., Order Trends) and store-level insights (e.g., via Insights) to reduce risk.

When you place buys (not just after), analyze your orders across different dimensions, such as product category/color/type, total quantity by size not pack, delivery dates, and real-time and future inventory. This data can help you optimize your assortment and stock levels while minimizing the risk for error. 

3. Stay stocked and streamlined

✅ Optimize inventory planning and streamline the purchase order (PO) process to save valuable time:

• Streamline your buying process to reduce chaos and minimize errors, while freeing your team to focus on what matters most — serving your customers.
• Ensure your team knows what’s in stock and what’s arriving in the future to prevent unnecessary reorders or customer disappointment. Tools like Scanner can help your team find products on your shop floor.
  • After you’ve shown them how to understand this data, align and motivate your store reps and marketing team to promote in-stock and soon-to-be-available items.
  • Partner with brands to determine delivery timeframes and ideal acceptance of goods. Let the demand lead, and remember that you’re part of a partnership.
  • Pay attention to your calendar as customers (especially loyal shoppers) crave newness. For instance, it’s okay to buy similar products if they’re arriving at different times if demand for that product type remains consistent. Or mix brands that ship frequently or those that launch products often with brands that do not.
  • Get to know your brand’s B2B portals and your self-service options so you can empower your buyers to make decisions on the fly, track, plan, identify gaps, and backfill with available-to-sell inventory (ATS).
• Strive for consistent product availability — it can help you maintain customer trust — especially when it comes to in-demand items.

Look for platforms that centralize product data and simplify reordering. For example, with Lightspeed’s inventory management and PO sync, retailers no longer need to rely on preordering, which gives them a competitive edge. If a customer loves a specific product, you can now quickly place an order without second guessing.

4. Know your costs, protect your margins 

✅ Understand the true cost associated with merchandising to protect your margins and ensure profitability:

• Make decisions with full visibility — understand the total landed cost of products, including shipping, duties, and markdowns. This will help you price confidently and protect your margins in tight wholesale deals (this is especially important when it comes to high-volume wholesale buys).
• Plug in the Landed Costs feature in NuORDER.
• Reduce risk and protect your cash flow with financing options that allow you to pay after you’ve made sales; it can be the perfect way to place large, seasonal orders.

5.  Stand out with a curated product mix 

✅ Be intentional, selective, and strategic about your assortments:

• Stand out; use curation to differentiate your store with distinct assortments. Avoid carrying the same thing everyone else does to reinforce your brand identity and drive repeat traffic and sales.
  • Always consider cross-sells and product bundles/combinations to increase average order value (AOV) and to emphasize how products will complement each other in stores and online.
  • Balance visual merchandising that catches eyes and draws people in versus more practical/core collections with lasting appeal.
  • Consider the various customer personas for each of your doors; how might they impact ordering?
• If your brand partner offers it, take advantage of collaborative “whiteboarding” sessions to improve your online and in-store merchandising and to help your teams understand how products can be sold together.
• Align your buys with customer behavior, not just brand hype. Discover new products with Lightspeed NuORDER. Wholesale marketplaces like NuORDER allow you to source products 24/7 to quickly obtain inventory.