3 fears around selling your art, craft, or handmade products to stores that are holding your business back.

As someone who’s spent well over a decade teaching and coaching artists and makers on every aspect of wholesale, I’ve heard all the fears, concerns, and “reasons” why people feel like they can’t sell their art or products to stores. It’s possible you’ve had a few of these thoughts yourself.

So today, I want to share three of the biggest fears I see when it comes to selling wholesale, and address why they simply aren’t true. (Note: these three fears, plus five others, appear in my new book, The Artists & Profit Makers Guide to Selling to Stores, which is available for pre-order now! And yes, I know the fears jump from 2 to 7. You’ll just have to get yourself a copy of the book to find out what’s missing!)

But before we dive into the fears, I want to take a second to talk about why it’s so important to overcome them in the first place. If you’ve struggled to hit revenue goals in your business and haven’t tried wholesale, you’re missing out on a major opportunity.

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you. Growing your sales online is HARD. Like, bang your head against the wall, why isn’t this working hard. It’s not you. Despite the ease with which you can set up a website or Etsy shop, it’s hard to stand out online, attract an audience, and get them to buy from you. (Especially with social media not showing most of our posts to anyone anymore!)

But with wholesale, you can research and reach out to stores yourself. (Something we’ll talk about more in the third fear in this post.) That makes selling to stores a learnable, repeatable system that you can use to grow your business!

And that’s why I want to debunk some of these fears for you. Because if they are the reason you haven’t tried wholesale, you’re missing out on a major opportunity in your business!

So here they are, three of the most common fears I see around selling wholesale. And no, I’m not reading your mind! I’ve just worked with A LOT of artists and makers over the years!

Fear #1: “I don’t want to sell wholesale because I don’t want to give away half my profits.”

This is the most common fear that I see around wholesale and it comes from a combination of not understanding how the wholesale pricing model works and the fact that the vast majority of artists and makers are undercharging for their work.

So let me set the record straight. When you sell wholesale, you aren’t giving away half of anything. You set your prices so that you are profitable at the wholesale price point and then the retailer marks your prices up from there. (We’ll go into detail about setting your prices a little later on in this guide.)

Along with this fear comes the misconception that when stores double (or more) your prices, they are making out with big profits while you’re doing all the work. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Between rent, staffing, insurance, marketing, and the inventory itself, small retail stores are operating on razor-thin margins. Most small stores exist because they are passionate about selling art and handcrafted goods to their local community. They aren’t trying to rip you off.

So instead of thinking about wholesale as “giving away” half your profits, make sure you’re priced to be profitable at the wholesale level and then think of your relationship with your stores as mutually beneficial. Because when they make money (by selling your products), you make money.

Fear #2: “I’m worried I won’t be able to handle the volume of orders.”

I’m always fascinated by this one because it’s literally the fear of success. You’re worried that you’re going to sell too much. But I also get it. When you make everything yourself, there is a concern that you’ll suddenly be swamped with more orders than you can handle.

First, it’s helpful to remember that as an artist or maker, you’re likely going to be selling mostly to small stores and boutiques that won’t be placing large orders. Depending on your price point, a typical wholesale order might range between $300 and $3,000, which you should be able to produce in a few weeks. If you don’t have that kind of capacity, you might not be ready for wholesale yet. But you don’t need to be producing massive quantities of product to be wholesale ready. You just need to be able to handle orders that are five to ten times larger than your average online retail order.

Second, when it comes to lead times and ship dates, you are in control. You get to tell buyers how long an order will take. That means if you’re at capacity, you can push orders back or schedule them for further down the road. Your business, your rules.

And that goes beyond just setting long enough lead times. As I like to tell the members of my online mentorship program, Artists & Profit Makers, you can turn off the pipeline at any time. If you have more orders than you can handle, you can stop taking orders.

I know this is a tricky concept to wrap your head around because if you aren’t meeting your revenue goals, you feel like you have to take every order that comes your way. But you don’t. If you’re worried about getting overwhelmed, you can set a maximum dollar amount of wholesale orders you will take for the month or year, and when you reach that amount, tell people you’re not taking any more orders until X date.

Or add stores to a waitlist and let them know when you’re ready to take orders again. The bottom line is, instead of panicking about the number of orders you might get, remind yourself that when it comes to wholesale, you are always in control of how many orders you take on at any given time.

Fear #7: “I don’t have the money, time, or energy to do a trade show.”

I’ll admit that when I talk about my experience with wholesale, I usually end up talking about trade shows. After all, I’ve done over twenty-five of them. Inevitably when I do, this fear comes up, as the idea of trade shows can seem overwhelming – everything from the logistics to the cost to the time and energy that goes into prepping for one, especially when you’re first starting.

I get it. Trade shows can be super scary. The only reason I dove into trade shows so early in my business is that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. (But I quickly realized how much I didn’t know. This is why, now that I know things, I’ve made it my mission to help demystify the trade show world for as many other artists and makers as possible.) Because there’s no denying that doing a few trade shows can potentially accelerate your business.

But if trade shows don’t work for you, that doesn’t mean wholesale is off the table. It is possible to build a wholesale business without attending a trade show. It’s even easier now that you can research and connect with buyers online, whether that’s on your own, through social media, or through one of the online wholesale platforms that have sprung up over the past few years.

One of the women in Artists & Profit Makers, my online mentorship community, designed a new ceramics line at the beginning of last year and by the end of the year, she had sold that line to 30 stores. Without setting foot at a trade show! So not only do I know it’s possible, I know it’s working right now!

Trade shows are not a barrier to entry when it comes to wholesale. Quite the opposite. If you do your outreach outside of trade shows, wholesale can be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing in your business. Don’t let the fact that a trade show isn’t in the cards for you turn you off from giving wholesale a try.

If any of these fears have been holding you back, I encourage you to let 2023 be the year you give wholesale a try.

And with the launch of my new book, there’s never been a clearer (or more cost-effective) way to learn everything you need to know to get your business wholesale ready, start reaching out to stores, and start generating more revenue for your business!

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The Artists & Profit Makers Guide to Selling to Stores is available for pre-order now in paperback, digital, and audiobook versions. You can save $5 off the ultimate bundle, which contains all three versions, when you pre-order by January 17th!