Distribution:
Retail and wholesale
Choosing sales channels and managing fulfillment
As you’ve already identified in your planning, it’s important to carefully consider your sales channels and ensure your fulfillment process—receiving, processing and delivering orders to customers—is well thought out.
Sales channels
Decide where you want to sell products. Options include:
- Art centre shop
- Art centre website
- Other websites
- Other retail outlets
Depending on the supply chain and business model you planned for, there are inventory and distribution tasks to consider.
Connecting sales and fulfillment
A website can often be the easiest way to bring your sales channels and pick-and-pack options together in one seamless system. There are a number of websites that can do this for you, making it easier for your art centre to manage its supply chains efficiently.
Ensure your pick-and-pack supplier is connected to your chosen sales channels to streamline the order fulfillment process. Decide who will manage the website to ensure it runs smoothly and supports sales and logistics effectively.
Line sheet
A line sheet is generally for wholesale customers, rather than the public. For instance, a wholesaler could be the manager of a gallery store or the owner of a tourist shop who wants to stock your products. A line sheet includes clear information about how to order your product.
It is important to have clear, good quality, high-resolution photographs of your products. You must have photographs of the full product on white or neutral backgrounds for your line sheet that make it easy to identify. If there are details that you want to show, you can also include a photograph of the product detail in your line sheet. Your line sheet is different to your product catalogue, which can be much more creative.
Line sheet checklist
- Style: minimal, factual, clear and easy to read
- Cover sheet: brand logo as header with contact details including email, phone, address, website
- Minimum order quantity (MOQ) with terms and conditions if relevant
- Delivery fees
- Products clearly photographed on white or neutral background
- Sizes all clearly photographed
- Product name, product code
- Product size/dimensions
- Country of origin
- Product retail price and product wholesale price in Australian currency
- List of materials
Minimum order quantity
The minimum order quantity or MOQ is the smallest amount of product that the artist or art centre is willing to sell to a wholesale buyer. If the buyer can’t purchase the MOQ of a specific product, then you won’t sell to them. For high-cost products you might be able to have a low MOQ, but for high-quantity, low-cost products it may be better to have a higher MOQ to cover costs and ensure a worthwhile use of your time.
Orders and inquiries
For wholesale: Instruct wholesale buyers to specify product code, product name, sizes, preferred colour options and order quantity when they complete the line sheet. When communicating with wholesalers, this is normally done before orders are placed. Ideally, this means you would need sample products to sell to wholesalers first.
For retail: Your focus shifts from bulk orders to individual customer experiences. Ensure your pricing, packaging, and branding are retail ready. You’ll also need to manage stock levels more frequently and be prepared to fulfill smaller, more frequent orders directly to customers. You’ll need to build relationships and maintain customer experiences.