Channel One
Direct-to-consumer online
Your own website and marketplaces. You keep the full retail price — and you pay for traffic, photography, returns, fulfillment, and every technology subscription. The brand builds an audience you own.
The three ways to sell
A boutique buying at wholesale and your own webshop are not just different customers — they are different business models on the same product.
Channel Two
Wholesale to boutiques & retailers
Stores buy your line at a fraction of retail — typically around half or less — then mark it up. Lower revenue per unit, but a buyer's order can move your whole first production run and puts you in front of their walk-in customers.
Channel Three
In-person direct selling
Pop-ups, markets, and trunk shows. Full retail price with instant customer feedback — in exchange for your time, table fees, and inventory you physically carry. The best low-cost test of what actually sells.
Trade shows sit across these channels rather than being a fourth one: they are a route to wholesale buyers, with entry costs — booth fees, travel, and sample inventory — that make more sense after your first store accounts prove the line sells. However you sell, the pricing math has to survive all three: review the costing fundamentals in Fashion Business Basics before your first appointment.
What wholesale buyers ask for
A line sheet
One clean document showing styles, colors, wholesale and suggested retail prices, sizes, delivery windows, and order minimums. Buyers skim dozens of brands — the line sheet is your first interview. Our guide on how to create a line sheet walks through it piece by piece.
Delivery windows
Boutiques buy on a seasonal calendar. A collection that arrives after the season has started is marked down before it is unpacked — plan production backwards from delivery dates, not forwards from when the sample is finished.
Payment arrangements
Expect to negotiate: terms for established stores, deposits or card payment for new accounts. Decide your policy before the first buyer asks — a new brand with no policy is a brand that gets paid late.
Returns & consignment rules
Whether you accept returns, how unsold goods are handled, and whether you ever leave inventory on consignment. Consignment moves product into stores without a sale — the inventory risk stays entirely yours.
The economics of each channel
- Margin, not markup, is the number that pays you. A store doubling the wholesale price is a 100% markup but a 50% margin — the same words are used loosely, and the confusion is expensive. Keep your own cost sheet as the source of truth, and work the full pricing math — target margins, keystone, and the channel stack — in our pricing guide.
- Channel costs are real costs. DTC pays you full retail, then subtracts advertising, shipping, and returns. Wholesale pays half, then subtracts its own quieter costs — commissions, trade shows, chargebacks. Contribution per unit — price minus product and channel costs — is the only honest comparison.
- Sell-through decides reorders. Buyers reorder what sells, not what they liked at the show. Learn to track sell-through and time reorders with our guide on measuring sell-through and deciding when to reorder, and plan a store's seasonal buying with the open-to-buy planner.
- First orders should be conservative. A store that sells through and reorders is worth more than one that overbuys and marks you down.
"A store that sells through and reorders is worth more than one that overbuys and marks you down."
Where to begin
- Start where your customer already shops. Research the boutiques and marketplaces that fit your price point before you build anything.
- Use in-person selling as market research. A weekend pop-up teaches you more about fit complaints and price objections than a month of analytics.
- Pitch boutiques with a line sheet, not a lookbook alone. The lookbook sells the mood; the line sheet closes the order. Our guide to selling your collection to boutiques covers finding the right stores and the full pitch.
- Build for the channel you choose. A brand built for wholesale (seasonal deliveries, line sheets, order minimums) is a different operation than one built for DTC (content, traffic, conversion). Start with one and expand deliberately.