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From day one, we decided that we were going to do EVERYTHING in our power to be completely above board. It certainly was not lost on us there were opportunities that were against Amazon’s rules (which would be highly profitable) but we chose to go the other direction. We realized that our longevity was important if we wanted to create a business. It’s much easier to sleep at night when you try to do the right thing.!

In this article, I want to discuss five quick ways you can protect your Amazon account. If you are anything like us, Amazon is your livelihood! Even if you aren’t a full-time Amazon seller(yet) you probably still have a great interest in protecting the investment you have, as well as the business you are building.

In effect, Amazon wants many of the same things we want:

• Happy Customers
• Ethical Business Practices
• Professional Service
• Adherence to Standards

If you keep those simple principles in mind you can quickly understand what to do, as well as what not to do on the Amazon platform.

Here are some of the quick and easy ways to protect your Amazon Account:

1) Read the rules

One would think this could go without saying, but if you are going to be selling on the Amazon platform you should take a few minutes to read the rules, terms of service, their prep policies, and inbound policies.

I realize this is not the most exciting set of materials. However, these are the actual RULES that protect your business.

Terms of Service: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161302

Policies and Agreements: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=1161272

Those two documents encompass many of the rules for selling on Amazon. You will not be able to memorize them entirely, or maybe you will, but for most of you – it is important to read them to understand the spirit of the agreement, as well as give you a place to re-review if you are looking at a questionable situation.

2) Review Notifications

We make it a dedicated practice to constantly review notifications that we receive from Amazon. These notifications come in a variety of forms, and all should have a HIGH priority for your attention and review.

The scariest of these notifications is the “red flag” notification in your Amazon account. These can range from changes to your account, Performance Notifications, or all the way to Policy Warnings. These are essential to address with Seller Performance immediately, or at least follow along with what the notification says.

In most instances, we do suggest a follow-up email with Seller Performance at:

seller-performance@amazon.com

seller-performance-policy@amazon.com

We do this if a listing is closed due to high return rates, or if there are more serious concerns. Our goal is to be honest and open with the Seller Performance team to help them resolve any issues quickly.

Beyond that, you should similarly review and address notifications like “Change Notification” emails or “ASIN Merge” emails. Our VA team reviews all of these emails by doing the following:

Look at the changes made in the email.
Go to the listing on Amazon, review the current listing.
Verify that the changes made DO NOT change the overall product qualities.
Does your product still match the detail page? Look at all aspects, including weight and measurements… All details need to match.
If not, deactivate your listing immediately – file with Amazon via Case Creation to have the details changed back – per the manufacturer website. If the manufacturer’s website/description does not match your product, create a removal order.

Our goal is ALWAYS to sell products that match the Amazon Detail Page perfectly, so we are meticulous and react quickly to these types of emails. To make sure you are selling the correct products, and the listing has not been altered to make your product incorrect, we suggest instituting a similar review process into your own business.

3) Professionally Deal with Customers

This goes without saying, but I will say it anyway. Amazon is VERY MUCH a customer-centric company. Your goal should be to exceed well beyond the minimum expectations they set, and provide the BEST possible customer service to those people who buy your products.

You should focus on:

1. Answering customer inquiries quickly. Our goal is less than three hours despite Amazon allowing up to 24 hours.
2. Answering customer emails courteously and efficiently. We focus on giving very detailed answers to customers. In fact, we have saved templates that cover the most common questions we receive.
3. Your emails should prevent issues with Amazon. If the problem is your fault, take responsibility: give a refund and don’t require return shipping. Then address the problem in your inventory if it is systemic and not isolated.

4) If it is borderline “against the rules”, err on the side of caution

This is the “common sense” rule. If you think that something could be against the rules, it is MUCH safer to assume that it is. Don’t operate in the space of “not knowing.” Be conservative, then research to see if something is or is not against the rules.

You have to understand that Amazon holds a high standard, and ignorance of the rules DOES NOT excuse you from breaking them.

Just remember this quote, as it will really help you with Amazon:

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

5) Good Invoices

I would estimate the number one reason for suspension is counterfeit products/products not as described. The general reason for this is people have poor invoices. You should source from places where the invoice will stand scrutiny. Trust me, I realize that there are HUNDREDS of questionable invoice opportunities.

For example, locally we have a pallet distribution store; they break down return pallets and retail out those products for VERY low prices. In many instances, you could walk in, spend $500, and profit $1000 or more as they always have great name brand products available at awesome prices.

However, we DO NOT source from this place. We understand that if we receive a “counterfeit claim” or “item not as described” claim that our invoices will not withstand that scrutiny.

Here are the types of invoices you can get, and their relevance to Amazon in descending order:

• Manufacturer Direct Invoice (Brand Owner)
• Authorized Distributor Invoice
• Online Purchase Order + Picture of Item on Website + Packing Slip
• Retail Receipt from Big Box store with UPC
• Liquidation with Lineage Trace
• Retail Receipt without UPC

The issue you can have with retail, online receipts, and liquidation invoices is Amazon understands the liberal returns policy offered by retailers. Such policies can result in non-new or even counterfeit products being available in retail locations.

If you look at only the profit of a transaction and don’t calculate the risk that it brings, you aren’t building a business – only taking advantage of a profitable opportunity. Businesses are built with longevity in mind, and part of longevity is account protection and assurance you are minimizing your chances and opportunities of being suspended or having other issues.

Focus on doing things right, operating above board, and most of all exceeding the minimum standards. Part of being successful is being great. If you strive for perfection in your business and process, your growth potential is unlimited.

The truth is: selling on Amazon has NEVER been easier. Amazon makes it easy because they want to introduce more sellers to serve the needs of their gigantic customer base, and create a more competitive marketplace.

This may seem daunting, but it really is not, and I wanted to help dispel some of the myths that might prevent you from taking action and getting started.

Here are some common questions we receive about selling on Amazon using the wholesale business model.

1) What information do American-based suppliers, brand owners, and wholesale companies need to do business with me?

If you are a resident of the US or have a US corporation, they will need a resale certificate. The purpose of the resale certificate is to demonstrate that you are a business making a business to business purchase. This allows for the purchase to be made free of sales tax (because the final customer is the one who is to pay the sales tax).

If you are NOT a resident of the US or do NOT have a corporation, this may NOT apply. Instead, you can often use your country’s documentation that you are a real business. Of course, this means you must be incorporated as a business in some capacity in your home country.

2) What do I need to create an Amazon account in the US if I am not a US citizen?

To sign up for an Amazon account, you will need the following:

A) A credit card that can be charged internationally (typically Visa or Mastercard are perfect).

B) A local bank in your country that supports ACH (Automated Clearing House). This means your bank accepts electronic transfers.

If you choose to go this route, check out the Amazon Currency Converter for Sellers (ACCS):

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/seller/registration/participationAgreement.html?itemID=200497780&language=en_US

Similarly, you can set up a US-based bank account and potentially save money on currency transfers. Two companies that make it very easy for foreigners to create US bank accounts are

Payoneer.com
Worldfirst.com

C) Your local address.

D) A phone number (with your international prefix). As an alternative, we suggest setting up a US-based phone number through a service like Skype or Google Voice.

E) A US Employer Identification Number(EIN).

An employer identification number (EIN) is a unique number assigned to businesses in the U.S. in order to identify them. You don’t have to be a US corporation or of any legal status in relation to the US to get this number.

To obtain an EIN as a non-US resident, follow these steps

Step 1 – Call the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) at 267-941-1099 (not a toll-free number), 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. (Eastern US time), Monday through Friday, to obtain an EIN.

Step 2 – On the call, be prepared to provide the information to the best of your ability that is found on this form
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fss4.pdf

3) What do I need to do to be in compliance with US taxes/laws?

Disclaimer: We are not a tax professional, and this is not professional tax advice

An American tax professional instructed us that you should not worry about getting compliant with US tax laws as an international seller until you doing at least $300,000 in sales per year. But you should do your own research on the subject.

When that time comes OR you would like more info on officially forming your business and establishing it officially in the US as to become compliant with US tax laws, then you must work with a US-based tax professional.

Here are a couple online based tax professional agencies
https://www.apriocloud.com/

https://www.salestaxandmore.com/

4) How will I store and ship my inventory?

Now that you are set up, the next challenge is actually storing and shipping your inventory.

We handle all of our shipping to customers through Amazon FBA, and HIGHLY suggest the same to everyone regardless of whether they are US-based or based internationally. At that point, your only challenge is getting your product from the supplier to the Amazon Fulfillment center.

Many suppliers will ship direct to Amazon, and this can be considered as an option. If the item has “prep required”, we generally suggest having this shipped to a US-based prep center to handle that, as Amazon’s prep fees are quite high.

Prep centers are also an option if your suppliers will not ship to Amazon directly. Prep centers receive your product, inspect it for damage, perform necessary prep to ensure its safety for Amazon, and then the journey to the customer.

Some recommendations are PrimeZeroPrep.com and PrepitPackitShipit.com

These companies have very detailed onboarding processes, and can get you set up with ease in minutes!

5) What happens if I get returns?

Now…

We are selling, and are hopefully doing really well. That being said, there is one last complication we have to tackle: returns.

Returns are certainly a part of business. In fact, they are generally between 1-2% of your sales. Many of those products can be resold, and Amazon can make that determination if you choose to let them do that (this is an account setting in your Amazon account).

Whether or not you choose to let Amazon sell your applicable return items, you will have some amount of returns that cannot be resold. There are a few options for what you can do with these.

You can:

A) Contact US-based charities to see if they may be interested in receiving your returns (we donate a good portion of our returns because it is easier and we can write off some amount of that on taxes). That may be more difficult for you, as you will be operating internationally, but some charitable organizations will receive shipments. I would talk to a CPA in your country to see how that can be handled with your personal taxes.

B) You can have Amazon destroy these. I believe Amazon charges $.10/per item to destroy these. However, this prevents you from paying storage fees, and would simply come as a loss against money you had made.

C) You can have the items shipped to a returns center and processed/sold. Here is one of those services (we have not personally used this service, but have heard good things from other people – please check it out and see if it is right for you):

– gogambit.com

6) Have you had international students be successful?

Absolutely! All kinds and from every corner of the world! Check out this podcast by one of them. His name is Chris Thomas and his podcast is called “The Australian Seller.”

Selling on Amazon from outside the United States has literally never been easier. There can be HUGE advantages to selling outside the country as well! The processes may appear daunting but most of the things in this article can be done in minutes. The rest, are just part of owning your own business and being an entrepreneur.

Please bear in mind that we are neither attorneys nor CPAs, and this should not be construed in any way as professional advice. We ALWAYS suggest that you verify and discuss any information with your own legal or tax professional.

Hopefully this helped put in perspective what you need to do to get started!

Who says time can’t be bought?

Wrapping up 2016 is an exciting time for us. We are going to land around $7,000,000 in sales, currently have 10 full-time employees, operating a 10,000 sq. ft. warehouse, and are sending and receiving inventory on the FTL (full truckload) level. Things couldn’t be going any better!!

“It’s unfortunate that, despite being an experienced Amazon seller, you won’t be able to reach our level of success because getting there requires infrastructure and, more importantly, a warehouse.”

Perhaps that’s what you expected me to say next but I won’t because I believe that statement couldn’t be more wrong.

Make no mistake — our success is largely attributed to our ability to process thousands of items each week and our warehouse is what allows that to happen. After all, retail is a high volume business model that requires a high volume of products being sold to be successful.

BUT the emergence of prep centers over the last few years has completely changed the landscape. By outsourcing the prep of your products to one of these facilities you are able to fully scale your Amazon business without the prerequisite of a processing team or warehouse facility.  Today you are able to buy and sell tens of thousands of products without ever having to handle, prep, or pack a single product so, in that regard, prep centers have done to the Amazon wholesale business model what Fulfillment by Amazon did for 3rd-party marketplace sellers.

There are plenty of times I’d wished I had known about prep centers when we began because there is no doubt I would have utilized their services instead of having to manage employees and a warehouse. In fact, I’m rather envious of the opportunity available to sellers now. Being able to scale to (and even beyond) our level without ever having to lug boxes, adhere to labels, manage employees, carry workman’s comp and business insurance, upkeep maintenance….I mean, I could go on at nauseum about this! Not realizing the immense burden that comes along with operating a warehouse is often overlooked by sellers aspiring to get to our level.

Here’s a list of just some of the expenses, to help you understand some of the monetary cost of processing in-house:

• Rent
• Utilities (which are substantial, especially with “business” internet)
• Building and equipment insurance
• Workman’s comp and unemployment insurance
• Forklift/pallet jacks
• Electronic equipment (computers, printers, scanners)
• Prep materials (bags, labels, boxes)
• Employee payroll
• Tables, chairs, standing mats

Consider, still, that all these don’t even take into consideration the time investment of handling employee issues and overseeing operations.

What’s more, what if you hit a downturn or have a period of time without products coming in?  Unfortunately for you rent, utilities, and salaries all still have to be paid while you aren’t processing.  With a prep center, you are only paying for products that are being processed and if it goes ten days or two weeks without products being processed, you won’t be paying anything.

With so many different expenses of operating a warehouse, it’s difficult to quantify the cost of processing per unit. With a prep center, this is a known constant and takes a great deal of guesswork out of sourcing because you know exactly what it will cost you to have each unit processed and sent to Amazon.

As you can tell, I am very pro-prep center and encourage anyone thinking of scaling their Amazon business to, at the very least, research the possibility before diving straight into opening a warehouse. Beyond prep centers, it is not uncommon to have your vendor ship your products directly to FBA centers for you. Many vendors are versed in doing this already, but even ones who aren’t are generally receptive to the idea and learning how to do it for you, creating huge savings on shipping to your facility or prep center and any prep cost.

Since we don’t actively use a prep center, I reached out to someone that does to share their experience. Check out this take from The Wholesale Formula Alumni, Suzanne McDuffee:

“When I was learning the mechanics of FBA I did my own prep to learn. But as soon as I had experience packing and prepping in a variety of product categories, bundling and multi packing, etc., I outsourced 95% of my prep work to prep services. I’ve never looked back. I have used five different services to date, and I would say that pretty much all of them have been great to work with – some more than others. I would encourage anyone considering investing in running their own warehouse to try prep services before making that commitment. Not only do I value the freedom and flexibility it gives me, but they actually do a better job, and it is more cost-effective for my business.

Thanks to my prep service partners, my VA, Google Apps, and some other tools, I am 100 percent location independent. I can run my business from anywhere in the world as long as I have an internet connection. At first, I would travel domestically in the United States to make sure everything went smoothly. But I just put my business to the test internationally by traveling to Spain for 3 months. It went great with no major issues, and I plan on making more trips abroad regularly, which has always been a dream of mine. I’m pretty sure I would not have been able to pull this off if I had a warehouse to run. Next up I plan on visiting Cuba, Argentina, Singapore, and who knows where else. It has been by far the most fun, challenging and satisfying year for me in a very long time. It’s a really exciting time to be in business – even just 5 years ago prep services were not so widely available to small businesses like mine. I still can hardly believe I can live this way – I love it!”

– Suzanne McDuffee

Suzanne McDuffee enjoying a trip through Europe while her Amazon business operates back in the states thanks to a prep center.

Outsourcing is designed to provide a solution that you are unable to do or, in the case of prep centers, are too valuable to do. Prep centers grant you freedom and time to focus on the highest level tasks of your business, eliminating constraints normally reserved for operations and infrastructure of in-house processing, thus serving as a catalyst for growth.

Ultimately, deciding which manner of processing and prep is best for your business should be evaluated and determined by you. Be sure to consider alternate solutions and methods you otherwise may not have for scaling your business to our level without making the substantial investment of capital and time we have. While time may not truly be able to be bought, by outsourcing prep, time spent on your business can be and if you are driven toward success, the price paid will be minuscule compared to the return gained.

Congratulations!!

You’ve set out and started your very own online business.

No more boss or timeclock or annoying co-workers.  You are the master of your own destiny.  You’re the Big Cheese, Head Honcho, Chief Executive Officer.

Which begs the question, why are you not acting like it?

If you’re like the vast majority of online entrepreneurs, you have already or inevitably will fall into a pattern of repetitively performing low-level tasks that should be outsourced.  This can stem from any number of reasons such as comfortability with the status quo, the crippling fear of giving up control, or assurance that no one can do the tasks as well as you (spoiler alert: you’re probably wrong).

We are guilty of it too. In fact, we should have outsourced our labor at least 6 months earlier!

The glaring problem with these fallacies is they significantly reduce the ability of your operation to scale from a well-paying job to a true business.  Dan and I were relegated to this reality for nearly 3 years, making good money but in direct ratio to the amount of work we put in.  Soon, we ran out of time available in the day, reaching a scalability threshold, and came to realize that if we want to ever to build a perpetuating business, which we could remove ourselves from, we would have to outsource some of the low-level tasks we were performing.

Now, for us the answer was employees to handle prepping, packing, and shipping our products to Amazon, allowing us to spend the majority of our time researching and buying more profitable products.  As you might imagine, our business experienced explosive growth. During our three years of just Dan and I, we had revenue of $890K, $920K, and 1.3 million.  Now that’s not shabby, by any metric, but compare that to $3.9 million in 2015 (our first full year with employees) and $6.6 million in 2016.

I realize the primary reaction to this is “That’s great but you have a warehouse and employees.  I have no interest in either of those, so guess it’s not for me”.  Think again.  While it’s true we utilized a warehouse and employees to outsource and scale, that’s primarily because we had never heard of or knew of any other options, so if you believe a warehouse is imperative to growth, I’d invite you to read one of our previous blogs on exactly this topic:

https://wholesaleform.wpengine.com/work/do-i-need-a-warehouse-to-do-wholesale/

With the monumental growth of Amazon in the last few years, third-party solutions have been created and developed to make outsourcing more convenient than ever. From prep services that will handle your FBA shipments to Amazon to software that will automate pricing and restocking and even virtual assistants that you can assign to product research.

Obviously, you don’t have to outsource anything in your business and continue wearing every hat in your day-to-day operations but I would advise you to figure out what your value to your company would be if you were able to do only the highest value-adding task, eliminating everything else.

Is it $20 per hour? $50? $100? More?

Once you grasp this value, the opportunity cost of every task you perform is the difference between what you could outsource it for and that amount.  For instance, if your value is $50 per hour then every time you spend an hour labeling, prepping, or packing a box you are leaving between $35 and $40 on the table since these tasks can be handed off for easily $10-15 an hour.

The converse way of looking at this is, you are effectively paying $50 per hour for that task to be performed. This means that you make a profit of $35 to $40 per hour by paying someone else the suitable wage to do that specific task.

I know this is largely theory-based and you can’t be expected to spend every minute of your day doing only the highest value tasks but it’s a thought-invoking concept, challenging you to take a holistic look at and begin to realize the big picture potential of your business’s capability.

If you have never sold on Amazon or are just getting started and feel a bit intimidated or confused, don’t worry because this post is intended for an intermediate to advanced Amazon seller, as I would never suggest outsourcing anything in your business until you fully understand it and can properly train and entrust it to someone else.  But even for beginners, it’s a concept to be mindful of for taking your business to the next level.

Now that you have an idea of what your true value to your business is and how outsourcing lower-level tasks is the only way to achieve exponential growth, the first and most important step in transitioning your business is changing your CEO title from Conducting Everything Officer to Chief Executive Officer.

Imagine, if you will, a wildly successful gold miner who has spent months(perhaps even years) refining his technique and has become well-trained and experienced in all the intricacies of gold mining, from necessary equipment to the best prospects for finding the precious ore.

One day while having a conversation with a fellow miner our gold miner is asked, “Why don’t you also collect the platinum and silver while mining for gold?  I mean, you’ve already put up the site, primed the location, and set up the mine for retrieving gold, so extracting the silver and platinum while already that far into the earth would only require a very small amount of effort!”

If you are a Private Label seller on Amazon you are the gold miner in this story, and not utilizing wholesale sourcing in your business is the equivalent of leaving the other precious metals behind.

As I hope you realize by now, we are successful Amazon sellers who leverage a unique wholesale business model. We are here to tell you the majority of work and skills you have as a private label seller are well-served in application to the way we buy and sell millions of dollars’ worth of goods on Amazon each year.

Your ability to see inherent problems with listings and how to address them is an invaluable skill. It took us months to develop and is likely leaps and bounds ahead of any level of thinking or recognition an arbitrage-model seller could even begin to understand.

You may not realize it but this skill alone makes you attractive to nearly every brand in the world because you know firsthand the power of having your brand be relevant on the world’s largest and fastest-growing marketplace and, more importantly, how to accomplish it. Brands are becoming increasingly more selective in who they partner with and your skillset will give you quite the leg up on your competition.

Take a moment to think about it: what’s the primary goal as a private label seller? Become relevant and convert as many sales as possible, right? Every brand in the world wants the exact same thing and you have already honed skills to achieve those marked improvements, putting you as a prime candidate for any brand currently selling on Amazon.

Private label enjoys some advantages over wholesale to be sure, but there are distinct advantages to wholesale as well:

1. No need to create a product listing.
2. No need to spend thousands of dollars in giveaways or advertising to make your product relevant. There is already built-in demand.
3. No need to place HUGE orders from China and have to wait weeks or months for the products to arrive.

For us, finding products that already have demand and proven sales history eliminates any of the guesswork involved with private label. Not to mention the large capital investment of inventory and advertising further compounds the risk! We tap into existing demand and by utilizing methods similar to those you would incorporate in your private label business

• Improving search terms
• Optimizing pictures
• Revising listing details
• Amazon sponsored ads

We make ourselves more valuable to the brand owner and set ourselves out from the competition.

Before I get too far along into convincing you how easy mining silver and platinum can be, I want to address some of the concerns or objections you may have in your head right now.

“Competition stinks!! I don’t want to have to compete for the Buy Box.”

This objection is far and away the most common from any private label seller we have ever talked with when we broach the subject of adding wholesale to their business and completely understand the underlying misconception.

Properly understanding how the Buy Box works is the key to debunking this logical fallacy.

The wholesale products we target have very consistent sales and with that data, along with knowledge of how the buy box works, you will be able to easily figure out what your share of sales on that product and be able to consistently and repeatedly order that number of units each month, creating a near-constant stream of revenue.

Think of it like this, there are thousands of products on Amazon selling thousands of times each month and you can be one of a handful of sellers on that product getting hundreds of sales each month. It’s basically a mathematical certainty since competition and sales volume are predictably constant with products we target and are able to reliably order and re-order these products to get our hundreds of sales, month over month.

Remember: part of a watermelon is more filling than a whole grape.

“I don’t want a warehouse.”

Unfortunately for us, there weren’t other options when we began. If there is one thing we can wholeheartedly say (having operated a 10,000sq.ft. facility for nearly two years now), having to do it all over again we wouldn’t have a warehouse either. Fortunately for you, these days there are a couple of options you can use to handle the processing and outbound shipping of your wholesale inventory. First, you can have your supplier ship directly to Amazon fulfillment centers on your behalf. This practice is much more common now and many vendors already understand the process and will do it at little or no cost to you. Secondly, you can use a prep center like Prime Zero Prep to receive, process, and ship your items to fulfillment centers, all without having to ever touch your own inventory. Outsourcing the prepping aspect of wholesale in one of these ways means you can run the entire operation from a laptop!

“Why wouldn’t brand owners just sell the products themselves?”

The primary disconnect here for private label sellers is they are unable to understand the scope of operations of most manufacturers. As a private label seller, you have developed a product to sell into a specific market, whereas the companies we work with have developed their products to be marketed and sold in EVERY major marketplace.

For our manufacturers, their efforts are focused on marketing their brand to be relevant to consumers, regardless of which marketplace or retailer it’s purchased from. To put it in perspective, did you buy your Tide detergent from Procter & Gamble? Of course not! You picked it up at a retailer, like Walmart or Target, and in that sense, we are asking manufacturers the opportunity to serve as a conduit to increase traffic and sales on the Amazon marketplace, where we are experts.

To help bring this all together and explain how you are leaving the silver and platinum behind while mining for your gold, I want to present some of the primary aspects where the private label and our wholesale model overlap. Unlike traditional wholesale models, we don’t attend trade shows or spend hours poring over huge catalogs, trying to find the needle in a haystack or diamond in the rough, to continue the mining analogies. Rather, we target products that meet our model’s criteria, then contact the brand owner of the product.

We spend a great deal of our time sourcing and sifting through product pages on Amazon trying to locate products that meet our criteria or specifications. This sound familiar? As a private label seller, you are likely poring over page after page of products and categories looking for products with high demand that you can then manufacture and private label in direct competition to these items.

There is a high likelihood that these products you are trying to emulate, we would be contacting to sell on Amazon. So, this is where you mine the silver and platinum; you have already put in the work to identify a product type with high demand, and instead of emulating the product and hauling your gold off, you could source the product itself and make off with all the precious profits!

Imagine getting tons of sales from your sweet new private label product as well as from the brand owner’s product that was your original inspiration!

There is one other benefit I feel I should mention that adding wholesale to your private label business will provide and that’s insulation. As a private label seller, your entire revenue stream is invested into a handful of SKUs and if you are ever unfortunate to have one or all of your listings shut down, it will likely be catastrophic to your business. Adding wholesale as an additional income, which as I’ve highlighted well here is not a far stretch from what you are already doing, will create diversification and provide operating revenue for your business in the unfortunate scenario you face listing restrictions.

I think you can easily see how adding some wholesale products to your private label business is like adding platinum and silver to your gold haul allowing you to bring up tons of extra profits while implementing minimal change to your current workflow. Now, get your equipment fired up and start mining!

BONUS: If you want to learn more about how wholesale aligns perfectly with private label, check out this webinar that Dan held with JungleScout creator Greg Mercer