Wholesale Clothing: Clothing Wholesalers Directory, Page 2

What Wholesaling Means

Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services. In other words, it is the sale of goods to anyone other than a standard consumer. That single distinction explains everything about how this section of the directory works: prices, minimum quantities and account requirements are all built around trade buyers who will resell the goods or use them in a business.

What Is Wholesale Clothing?

A fashion accessory wholesaler or apparel wholesaler is also often referred to as a distributor. The wholesaler or distributor typically purchases product from manufacturers - the factories - and then sells the product to others. Normally, a fashion wholesaler will sell clothing to retailers, meaning stores, and the store will in turn sell the garments to consumers. However, some wholesalers will sell direct to consumers. Apparel wholesalers typically do not produce the actual clothing themselves: they are the middle step between the producer and the retailer or final consumer, which is why choosing the right wholesaler matters as much as choosing the right garment.

If you work for a clothing company and you produce or distribute clothing, you may need to purchase items such as fabrics, zippers, buttons, lace or thread to manufacture or repair garments. You may also require trimming to make items floor-ready for retailers, such as price tickets, hangers, hangtags and bellybands. The trims and notions wholesaler section linked above exists for exactly those component purchases, which sit alongside finished-garment wholesaling in the same supply chain.

One boundary is worth stating plainly. If you are looking for reliable sources of clothes or accessories for personal use, this is possibly not the proper site for you: this is an apparel industry directory, and the wholesalers in this section only sell to retailers. This section is not about finding consumers rock-bottom prices on designer product; it is a working tool for stores, boutiques and other trade buyers who stock clothing for resale, and for the manufacturers and distributors who supply them.

Read the two directory pages together: the first page is the category map of the wholesale section, and this page is its explanation - what the words wholesaling, jobbing and distributing mean, who may buy, and where component suppliers fit. Buyers who arrive here looking for a specific garment category should go back to the category directories and work from the garment outward; buyers setting up a first trade account should read the definitions first, because minimum quantities, reseller documentation and trade pricing all follow from the definition of wholesale itself.

Wholesalers live inside the industry's payment clock: factories are paid weeks before retailers settle their invoices. Two finance tools bridge that gap — apparel factoring, which buys the invoice once the goods ship, and purchase order financing, which funds the production run against the retailer's order before anything ships. Both are explained in our trade finance guides.