5 Options and Ideas for Using Wholesale Products in Your Business

While wholesale products will likely never make up 100% of the merchandise you sell in your store, they can be important tools that allow you to ramp up your success. They can add another stream of cash flow, can improve overall store performance, and can even lead to increased sales of your regular products. Of course, in order to realize these benefits, you’ll need to know a few ways that you can use wholesale products in your business.

Use Wholesale Products as Loss Leaders

According to The Balance, loss leaders are “goods or services offered at significant discounts (sometimes below cost) in order to attract customers to a store and promote sales.” You’ll find that wholesale products are ideal for this type of promotion, as you’re able to buy them at significantly lower prices than other merchandise. This means you can either choose to offer a dramatically reduced price to your customer, or make a little profit while still delivering a very good deal.

Almost anything can be used as a loss leader. It doesn’t even have to be an actual product in some instances. There are plenty of examples of stores using things like free cookies as an incentive to get customers in. You don’t even have to sell these products – they can be used as free samples, as giveaway items and the like.

You’ll find a lot of benefits from loss leaders, too. Think about the samples that are given out at Sam’s Club and Costco on the weekends. Sure, the demo folks give out a ton of free product, but how many customers who sample that product go on to buy a box, a bag or a jar and take it home with them?

Loss leaders can be great tools to get customers into your store. Wholesale products make excellent options in this case, because you’re able to purchase them at low prices, sometimes just pennies on the dollar. That means you can extend your reach and attract new customers without spending a ton of money in the process.

Bundle Them Up

Want to drive traffic to your store? Give your customers more ways to save. Wholesale products can be purchased for very little, and then bundled together to deliver more value to your customers. You can pair related items together – a smartphone case with a pair of earbuds, for instance, or a loofah and a small bottle of body wash.

The point is that you’re delivering additional value to your customers but not incurring a significant cost to your business. You’ll find a wealth of wholesale products out there, from electronics to sporting goods and everything in between, which will allow you to tailor your efforts to your audience and their wants and needs.

Use Wholesale Products as Giveaways

Are you looking to get more people through the door of your shop so they can browse your products? Offer them an incentive to do so. Wholesale products can be purchased well below cost, making them excellent options as giveaways or free gift offers. You can combine this with a mailer campaign, highlighting the giveaway or gift on a postcard, for instance.

You can also announce the promotion with signage around your store, with flyers sent home with customers prior to the giveaway, on social media, and in many other ways. Of course, you need to make sure that you’re working with a liquidator that allows you to buy wholesale products in a quantity that fits your needs.

Buying in bulk is probably not the best option in this case. You’d probably be best served by purchasing a pallet or even a couple of cases of wholesale products to use as giveaways.

Bundle with Regular Inventory

Often, you’ll find that wholesale products can be bundled with your regular inventory. This works very similarly to bundling wholesale products on their own, but allows you to increase sales of your existing stock by combining it with products sourced from a liquidator. For instance, you could combine protein powder purchased from a liquidator with a blender or smoothie maker that you regularly carry.

Of course, there are a few caveats that you’ll need to be aware of regarding this sort of bundling. The first is that the bundle should actually save your customers money over purchasing both products separately. Because wholesale products cost you very little, this is simpler to do without taking a significant hit to your bottom line. It can also allow you to bundle a wider variety of products while still ensuring profitability.

However, it’s important that you still give your customers the ability to purchase one or both of those products separately, as well. Bundles can be very appealing to budget-conscious shoppers, but according to Forbes, “Those same customers might not value being given only the option of a bundle without the ability to buy a product alone.”

Bolster Sales of Your Regular Inventory

One of the best uses of wholesale products is to tie into and bolster the sales of your regular merchandise. You don’t need to bundle products, and you don’t need to offer dramatically reduced prices in this instance. All it really requires is advertising a particular wholesale product at a good price, and then merchandising it near related items in your store.

This allows you to cross-sell and add value to your customer experience, while also boosting sales of related products. To use the protein powder example again, you could merchandise protein powder containers right next to your blenders, or near healthy smoothie recipe books, and boost the sales of the other product.

There are many different ways that you can use wholesale products within your business, from acting as loss leaders to cross-selling with related products. All of them will bolster sales and help you succeed.

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Henley Johnson

Henley currently works as a sales representative for Direct Liquidation, assisting businesses with product sourcing of liquidated merchandise from the largest retailers in the world. Whether you are looking for a pallet or a truckload Henley is here to help you grow your business.

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