Women's Urban Fashion Wholesalers

Women's Urban Fashion Wholesalers — Company Listings

Urban Fashion Is a Brand Business

Women's urban fashion grew out of hip-hop culture, and it still sells on labels: the name on the garment, and the music and celebrity world behind it, are the product. The listings on this page show the three ways a retailer buys into the category. There are the brands themselves — Baby Phat, created by Kimora Lee Simmons as the premiere female hip-hop label, which grew from printed baby tees at a Phat Farm runway show into a full sportswear collection, and FUBU, selling accessories, activewear, denim, outerwear, sportswear and underwear from New York. And there are the off-price routes: a Los Angeles closeout house distributing urban denim, capri pants and accessories below wholesale, and a wholesale liquidator selling manifested truckloads, pallets and cases of brand-name apparel.

Each route carries a different risk. Buying a brand's current collection gives a store the season's styles, marketing heat and reorder rights, at full wholesale terms. Closeouts and liquidations give margin — cancellations, overruns, shelf pulls and surplus at below-wholesale prices — but the stock is what it is: sizes, colours and styles cannot be reordered, and brand mix varies load by load.

Balancing Labels and Closeouts

Most successful urban departments run both. Anchor the rail with one or two branded lines your customers ask for by name, bought on normal terms so fits and quality are consistent, then use closeout buys to sharpen prices and fill promotions. With liquidated stock, work from the manifest: check the brand and size breakdown of each pallet or truckload, price in the sorting and the proportion of odd sizes, and never promise a customer a style you cannot reorder.

Authenticity is the standing rule of this category. Buy branded urban fashion from the brand or its authorised distributors, keep invoices with the goods, and be wary of branded stock offered far below the closeout market's normal level — counterfeit streetwear is a real cost to stores, in seized stock and in reputation. For closeout suppliers, confirm what 'below wholesale' covers in each deal: freight, manifest accuracy and claims for shortages should be agreed before the load ships, not after it lands.

Presentation closes the sale in this category. Urban fashion is merchandised as outfits and stories — the label, the fit, the music connection — so group branded lines by brand rather than scattering them through a general sportswear rail, and keep closeout stock visibly separate so customers read it as the bargain offer it is, not as a judgement on the brands beside it. Staff who can talk about a label's background sell it better than any ticket, which is one more reason the anchor brands on a rail should be few enough to know properly.