Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with wholesale

1. Buy used clothes 2. ???? 3. Profit!

bendy — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 11:55:25 -0800

Where (and how) do vintage clothing stores buy their merchandise? I'd like to buy a few types of items in bulk. I'd like to purchase 50-500 gently-used men's wool suit jackets, silk neckties and cotton button-down shirts. Is it even possible to be this specific? Can I inspect the merchandise first? I've googled clothing brokers and used clothing brokers and haven't found much information. Bonus points for resources in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Stocking up on beer

otio — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:33:04 -0800

I'm in Olympia, WA and looking to lay up a few (3 or 4) cases of Guinness Extra Stout for the winter. What's the least expensive way to do this? Are there beer emporiums around that offer close to wholesale prices? I can travel south to Portland if prices are significantly better in Oregon. Thanks!

Looking to order not more than $100 worth of semi-tat from overseas

kmennie — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 12:39:50 -0800

Can you suggest more sites like lovelyshoes.net? Rainbow totes, $7! I want to receive parcels of entertaining, extremely cheap goods. I don't mind reasonable minimums but I'm not a reseller. Googling around for wholesale whatever is getting me nowhere. Where do hip boutiques get their goods?

Requirements:

Amazingly cheap

Reasonable minimum orders (lovelyshoes.net's is US$100) -- I am looking to do some Xmas shopping so might conceivably want five of something, but

Goods more interesting/nicer than what I can find in dollar stores -- I suppose I am looking for a good-sized city's Chinatown shops' level of "Ooh, how cute" and "I didn't know they made these"

I have only been able to find Chinese sites selling designer knock-offs, which is not what I'm looking for (though I do like $11 Marc Jacobs knockoffs) -- I don't want fake Louboutins -- or "wholesale" sites whose discounts are crap or whose merchandise is mostly nose hair trimmers. I suppose the perfect place would be like lovelyshoes.net but with Hello Kitty and toy robots and cashmere scarves thrown in the mix.

Where to buy wholesale price gold earrings

KimikoPi — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:40:24 -0800

Where can I get wholesale price gold hoop earrings in Los Angeles? I actually work very close to the downtown LA jewelry district, but it's kind of a mindboggling maze. Are those stores actually wholesalers or do they get their inventory from wholesale stores? Bottom line: what is the cheapest place to buy real gold hoop earrings in bulk (say, 10-20 at a time). And what do you think is the wholesale price for 18k or 24k gold hoop earrings?

retail or wholesale?

abirae — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:36:11 -0800

How does American Apparel make money? A friend and I have a disagreement over this that basically breaks down to: retail or wholesale? As I understand it, they started out as t-shirt wholesalers and expanded into a retail empire. But where do they make the bulk of their revenue?

They charge much higher prices for their retail clothes than for their wholesale t-shirts, but maintaining storefronts must also be a costly undertaking. The higher overhead might cancel out the higher prices. They clearly have the money for major ad campaigns and numerous store fronts so they must be making money somehow, but I don't know how to find this information.

Of course, it's also possible that they aren't making money, or that one part of their business subsidizes other parts of the business. I know very little about garment manufacturing and retail, so I'm hoping that someone with a knowledge of the biz can clue me in.

fish work flow

Infernarl — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:39:58 -0800

Can someone explain the processes of how fish gets from fishermen and producers in California (specifically the San Francisco bay area) to restaurants. Is there a central fish/wholesale market? I live in Japan. The restaurant I work for buys all their fish from a central market every morning. We buy fish from small stores within the market, they buy their fish at auction every morning, the fishermen and producers are contracted with the market to display their goods at auction. You can walk through the market in the morning and see, at a glance, what is in season, what is fresh, what's cheap, etc. I would like to do a similar thing in the bay area. Buy fish that can be fished in California's waters, fresh or live, daily with the fewest middle men as possible. What is the fish work flow like?

Where Are the Roses in the Rose City?

slowfasthazel — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:28:45 -0800

Where can I buy a whole lot of roses in Portland, OR? Or online? I am going to need a lot of roses soon, like 300 stems. I would love to be able to buy them in bulk locally. The wholesalers I've found so far only sell to licensed florists and florists seem pretty interested in selling arranged flowers. Any recommendations for places that would like to sell me a whole lot of roses at a good price? Are there secret u-cut rose farms? Farmer's markets? Wholesalers that sell to the public? Right now I am thinking of just ordering them through a local grocery store.

And, since I may not find what I want locally, I'm also interested in recommendations for places to buy bulk roses online (and finding out how that experience went for you).

Thanks!

Wholesale laminate flooring in Southern California?

KimikoPi — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:53:17 -0800

Can you recommend a wholesaler to buy laminate flooring from in Southern California? Please share your experience ... customer service, prices, quality and selection, etc. Thanks.

Help me get bought out.

cusack — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:11:13 -0800

What should we do with our remaining inventory of art books? So a friend and I published this limited-edition book with a run of 1000 about a year ago. The book is a fairly upscale 'zine featuring work we solicited from friends and associates.

We've been selling the book for about a year now and have come to realize that we aren't going to turn a profit on it and will have a tough time making our money back. That is OK with us, but we're moving on to our next project and don't know what to do with the 500+ extra books we've got in storage. We keep saying "Yeah, we just need to find somebody to buy us out..." but then after that there's a long pause as we have no idea how to find that person.

I think what we're looking for is a liquidator or maybe a buyer for a chain of "cool" stores that could buy the lot for a wholesale price.

Does anyone have any advice on this?

Thanks!

How to verify state-issued sales certificate/tax ID?

boygirlparty — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:18:41 -0800

How do you verify a state seller's permit/resale certificate and/or tax ID for US businesses? I know you can verify some state issued certificates online (like CA, TX and MN) to make sure that declared resale certificates and/or Tax IDs are legitimate, but is there a site or place where you can do this for any/every US state?

Having a hard time navigating Michigan's gov website in particular.

Looking for MAC cosmetics distributors in LA or SF

sagewithin — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:31:34 -0800

Looking to find several MAC cosmetics distributors in Los Angeles and/or San Francisco or online for wholesale purchase.

Selling CDs at a movie theater

bjork24 — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:12:50 -0800

Can I purchase CDs at wholesale cost, even though I don't own a music store? I own a movie theater, and from time to time a movie rolls around that has an incredible soundtrack (we're showing ONCE right now), which makes everyone want to buy it. How could we go about buying 20 to 25 copies for resale? Is there some certain place music stores buy there CDs from? Is this even legal?

How can I score some green goods?

(bb|[^b]{2}) — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:33:41 -0800

Where do sites like ThinkGeek get their expansive inventory, and how can I do the same? Does ThinkGeek have buyers, or do they just scour the web for cool geeky gadgets and strike up a deal with the manufacturer? A friend and I would like to start a similar online niche shop, but target it more towards green (eco-friendly) gifts and gadgets, rather than geeky ones (although I imagine there will be a lot of overlap). Any suggestions, tips, or pointers on how we can go about getting said items?

Diamond wholesalers in Los Angeles? Non DeBeers suggestions?

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 21:02:47 -0800

I'm looking for 1) A good diamond wholesaler and 2) A good jeweler in Los Angeles. Any suggestions? Trying to get Non-DeBeers. Any suggestions on that front? (Anonymous as noone is to know of my diamond shopping until said diamond is used in proposal :))

I'm looking for a very specific sort of loose diamond (Non-DeBeers (prolly canadian?), $2k, ~0.6 carat, H-I color, SI1 clarity, Round Class II cut), so I imagine I need a place with access to a lot of diamonds. Definite bonus points for things like bonded jewellers, buy-back guarantees, return policies, breakage guarantees to avoid baked diamonds, etc.

Is it common practice to pay with cash to avoid sales tax? If they're willing to do it, does that mean they're probably a bad business?

I talked to one Diamond wholesaler whose diamonds weren't typical Canadian-Certified, but they said they got all their rough diamonds from Australia or Canada and cut them on-site. Is that a common practice? As long as the diamond's not from DeBeers and doesn't involve human rights abuses, I'm pretty happy, so that sort of source sounds good; where can I find more companies like that?

Jeweler comes after the proposal (we'll pick out setting together if all goes well), and I'll happily take suggestions on that front.

Why are retail prices of electronics cheaper than wholesale prices?

b_thinky — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:17:56 -0800

Why are retail prices of electronics cheaper than wholesale prices? How can anyone make money here? The company I work for makes a cool electronic gadget that we retail online. We decided we could increase profits by selling other products alongside it - namely large capacity memory cards.

After the manufacturers directed us to their wholesalers, we noticed that Amazon offers every single product at cheaper than our wholesale price. I called the wholesale company and they agreed to give me an additional 5% off, meaning if we want to be competitive on price, we still have basically 0 margin once you include various fees (transaction, packaging, labor, etc).

By contrast, or other products (the ones we make and the ones we resell) provide a minimum 30% to maximum 70% margin. I know that's larger than we'd get for memory cards, but we're used to making some money.

Back in the 1990s (at a different company) we bought large volumes of computer components. We'd get a high volume price - for 10,000 or more units - and then compare the wholesale price versus a high volume computer retailer stores (now on the internet, back then in catalogs). The retail price would inevitably be cheaper by 10% than our wholesale price.

In 2002, we wanted to use a color screen. I contacted Sharp and was given a price on such a screen. When I asked for a sample, I was told none was available for about 3 months. They wanted me to make a $100,000 commitment without even seeing one. Finally someone told me it was used in the Nintendo portable game system that had just come out. I went to K Mart and bought one for about $1 more than I was told the screen alone would cost. The Gameboy had the screen, a computer chip, a memory chip and a free game cartridge. It was also built into a plastic case and sold through K-Mart (who had to make something on the deal). Yet all that added only $1 to the price.

There has to be some icing mechanism at work here but I have never figured
out how to access it.

Can someone please explain how this works? Or is there really just no way to make a profit here unless you're doing like a million units per year?

Wholesale game suppliers?

squidlarkin — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:34:21 -0800

(How) can I, a private individual, buy video games wholesale? I figure I've a decent feel for the market and can identify game that will stay valuable for a while, so maybe I could use ebay and turn a profit; all that's missing is a supply. The obvious google queries are saturated with uselessness, and the only "we will give you this for this much" answer I found only offered 50-count lots of assorted titles that belong in a bargain bin anyhow, which isn't what I'm after.

So, where do I legitimate suppliers? And just how much am I going to have to spend to get a decent price?

Wooden Dinosaurs R We?

metaculpa — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 00:10:30 -0800

How are the wonderful wooden dinosaur models made?
Is it done, perchance, with lasers? More to the point, what is their wholesale cost? How would that change if I wanted 10k of a single model? If I guaranteed an order of 1k, each with a different pattern?

And how does one find these things out?
I suppose I should just call someone up and ask, eh?