Finding wholesale suppliers and writing to brands

This is the lesson that decides whether the business works. Everything before it was setup; everything after it depends on having something worth selling at a price that leaves a margin. And the work is unglamorous: it is correspondence, mostly ignored, repeated until it is not.

Who you are actually writing to

There are two kinds of supplier and they behave differently.

• The brand itself. Best prices, best relationship, hardest to open. Many brands have a channel policy that either excludes marketplace sellers or requires approval to sell on them. When a brand says yes, you often get listing permission along with the goods, which solves lesson 7's gating problem in the same email.
• An authorised distributor. Easier to open, thinner margins, and carries many brands at once. A good distributor relationship gets you a catalogue rather than a product. Ask explicitly which brands you are permitted to sell online, because distribution rights and online rights are not the same thing.

What both want to know is the same: are you a real business, will you follow their pricing policy, and will dealing with you create problems with their other customers.

Where they are

1. The brand's own website. Look for “wholesale”, “dealers”, “stockists”, “become a retailer”, or a link in the footer. Brands that want new accounts say so in public, and those are the ones to write to first.
2. Trade shows for the category. Exhibitor lists are published before the event and stay online afterwards. That list is a pre-qualified directory of companies actively looking for buyers.
3. Distributor catalogues. Once you are inside one distributor, you can see hundreds of brands and which of them sell in your category.
4. The listings themselves. The brands already selling well in your category, minus the ones where Amazon or the brand dominates the listing, is a working shortlist.

Two sources to treat with suspicion: directories that charge you to see “verified suppliers”, and anyone advertising wholesale accounts to beginners. Real distributors do not need to advertise to people who have never bought anything.

The first email

The email that gets answered is short, specific, and reads as though a business wrote it. The one that gets deleted asks for a price list and says nothing else.

Include, in this order: who you are with the legal name of your company; what you sell and where; why you are writing to this brand specifically; what you are asking for; and what you will send them if they say yes — resale certificate, EIN, references. Leave out: adjectives about your passion, promises about volume you cannot support, and anything that sounds like a template.

That last line matters more than it looks. Brands often have a structure they want you to respect, and offering to respect it is the difference between a refusal and a redirect.

What the law requires of that email

Cold commercial email to U.S. businesses falls under the CAN-SPAM Act, and the rules are specific. The FTC's own compliance guidance requires that your From, To, Reply-To and routing information be accurate; that the subject line accurately reflect the content; that you disclose clearly that the message is an advertisement; that you include a valid physical postal address — which may be a street address, a registered post office box, or a private mailbox registered with a commercial mail receiving agency; that you give a clear explanation of how to opt out; that you honour opt-outs within 10 business days and keep the opt-out mechanism working for at least 30 days after sending. You remain responsible even when another company sends on your behalf. Each separate offending email carries penalties of up to $53,088.¹

Minimum orders, terms and pro-forma invoices

• Minimum order quantity. The first order is usually the largest obstacle and the most negotiable thing in the conversation. Asking for a smaller first order in exchange for paying up front is a normal request, not a cheeky one.
• Price tiers. Wholesale price usually falls with volume. Ask for the tier table, not just the first price, so you can model the second order in lesson 1's spreadsheet.
• The pro-forma invoice. A quotation in invoice form: goods, quantities, prices, payment terms and shipping. It is not a demand for payment and it is not a contract of sale. Read every line, especially who pays freight and where title passes.
• Payment terms. New accounts prepay. Terms such as net 30 — pay thirty days after invoice — come after a payment history, and asking for them in the first email marks you as new.
• Pricing policy. Many brands publish a minimum advertised price. Breaking it is the fastest way to lose an account you spent two months opening.

Recognising a supplier who does not exist

The pattern is consistent, and every item on this list is a reason to stop rather than to ask another question.

• Prices far below every other quote. Nobody sells genuine goods at a loss to a stranger.
• A free email address at a company that supposedly distributes national brands.
• Payment by wire only, to an account whose holder name is not the company's name, or to a personal account.
• No landline, no fixed address, no company registration you can look up in the state's own business register.
• Refusal to provide trade references, or references who answer suspiciously quickly and enthusiastically.
• Urgency. “This allocation goes today” is a sales technique when it is honest and a trap when it is not, and you cannot tell which from an email.

Verification is not complicated: look the company up in the business register of its state, call the number on its own website rather than the one in the email, and pay the first order by a method that has some recourse. A small first order to a new supplier is tuition, not profit.

Mistakes that close doors permanently

• Asking for a price list and nothing else. It reads as a person with no business, because usually it is.
• Sending from a free email address. Use your own domain; it costs almost nothing and changes how the email is read.
• Promising volumes you cannot buy. The first purchase order is the moment that claim gets tested.
• Ignoring a brand's pricing policy. Accounts get closed for this more often than for anything else.
• Skipping the legal requirements on commercial email. Accurate headers, a physical address, a working opt-out, honoured within ten business days.
• Paying a new supplier by irreversible transfer for a large first order. Small first order, recoverable payment method.
• Giving up at fifty emails. This is the stage where most people quit, which is also why it works for the people who do not.

Next

Lesson 9 is the other sourcing route: private label and importing into the United States, where the rules changed more in 2026 than in the previous decade — the $800 de minimis exemption is gone, and every commercial shipment is now a customs entry.