How To Create A Wholesale Business on WordPress: 5 Steps To Success

Creating a wholesale business in 2021 is a great idea. The good news for wholesalers is that the online Business to Business (B2B) sector is experiencing significant growth as well.

Generally, a wholesale company supplies retailers the products to sell to the end-users of the product. If you’re interested in getting started in the wholesale business, understanding the steps you need to take can help you start your wholesale business on the path to success.

You can also efficiently serve both B2B and B2C customers with one site.

In this article, I will show you 5 steps for starting a wholesale business in 2021 and also show you how you can create a wholesale website on WordPress.

Yes, you heard right. We are going to use WordPress for creating a wholesale website and WooCommerce for converting it to an eCommerce website.

So let’s begin with my 5 steps for starting a wholesale business and here are those steps:

Step – 1. Do market research

First, you need to brainstorm what you’re going to sell. Is the product something people need, something willing to pay money for? Then you have to think if there is going to be a lot of competition for that product that you wish to sell, are there many wholesalers of that product?

The more competitor you have, the more competition you have to face. So choose your product wisely.

Always monitor your competitors and check what products they sell, their prices, and the quality of service that they provide.

In my opinion, the best way you can choose your product is by searching through Amazon bestsellers.

But if you have your own products, then it is the best thing for wholesaling the product online.

Step – 2. Identify your dealer

For a wholesale distribution business, distributor or dealer functions as the limbs, without which the business cannot move an inch.

Identify your dealer carefully, check his legal papers, work permit, and required licenses to ensure security in your business.

For example, if you import your products from Alibaba, just search the products on the search bar and you will see lots of wholesale suppliers from anywhere in the world, though a majority of them are from China.

Then just contact and negotiate them for a good price, so that you can have a profit margin when reselling it.

But you are the manufacturer of the product, then you don’t need to worry about searching and contacting a dealer.

Step – 3. Find a space to store your products

Look for a space like a warehouse where you can store your products and make sure it is somewhere near the retailer outlet (If you import products from retailers), so the transportation will be easy.

If you don’t afford money to renting a godown or warehouse, start with your house, it can save you lots of money. 

Step – 4. Money

Money? Yes, money. It is the main thing that ultimately binds the entire business together and is the factor that has accelerated the start of a wholesale distribution business in the first place.

Keep track of your money, which you are paying to the manufacturer for the products, house owners for renting, etc.

Step – 5. Create your wholesale website

Without a wholesale website, you can’t sell your products. That’s why creating a wholesale website is important.

Nowadays, creating a website is an easy process. With CMS like WordPress and plugins like WooCommerce, you can create your eCommerce website in just 10 -15 minutes.

If you don’t know how to create a wholesale website, don’t worry about that. Later in this article, I will also show you how you can create a wholesale website.

So, these are my 5 steps for starting a wholesale business in 2021 and succeeding in it.

Now let’s see how you can create your wholesale website on WordPress.

How to create a wholesale website on WordPress

To start creating a website on WordPress, first, you need to buy your domain name and hosting. Hosting like Cloudways, Hostinger, DreamHost are the best choices for eCommerce websites.

So, buy your hosting and domain and install WordPress on it. Once you have done it install the WooCommerce plugin, which is a free plugin.

By default, WooCommerce does not allow you to add wholesale functionality to your website, that’s why we are going to use WooCommerce Wholesale Suite, which is the most popular and advanced wholesale plugin for WordPress and it allows you to add all the wholesale features in your WooCommerce store.

Wholesale Suite comes with two versions: free and paid. But my recommendation is to go with their paid version, which is great.

Without paying anything, you can add a default wholesale user role and also sign up B2B buyers. However, if you want to get the best of the plugin, you’ll need to purchase the premium version.

Step – 1.Install and activate the Wholesale Suite plugin

First, log in to your WordPress dashboard, Plugins > Add New, and search for ‘WooCommerce Wholesale Prices’.

Once you locate the plugin, click Install Now and Activate consecutively. Now, the plugin should display the ‘Active’ status.

If you purchased their paid plan, one more additional step you need to follow, which is to activate your premium version.

Next, go to Settings > WWS License and paste your copied license key.

After you have done it, you have successfully installed and activated your WooCommerce Wholesale Suite plugin.

So, let’s move forward to the next step, where we will create wholesale user roles.

Step – 2. Create wholesale user roles

All the customers are not the same, all business owners have some special customers. And for their special customers, they give more discounts.

Creating new wholesale user roles also help you manage access to different pricing, shipping, payment gateway, and tax-exempt status options.

To see your wholesale user roles, go to WooCommerce > Wholesale Roles.

If you are using the free version, you can only edit the role name and description. And for creating new user roles, you need to buy Wholesale Suite’s paid version.

To create new user roles, click on the Add New Role button and enter the required details.

Step – 3. Set custom wholesale prices

The main idea behind wholesale pricing is to offer an incentive for buyers to purchase products in larger quantities. In other words, the higher the product quantity, the lower the unit price.

To set a custom wholesale price, simply add a new product or edit your existing product.

Under the product section, there are lots of options, but you can change the wholesale prices for that product in the default General tab.

You can also set your wholesale discount based on user roles. And to do that, WooCommerce > Settings > Discounts.

You can also show different prices based on different quantities. Simply scroll down and check the box called ‘General Quantity Based Discounts’.

The second box lets you choose whether to apply the discount based on the individual product quantity or entire cart quantity.

And at last, you need to select the user role and enter a starting and ending quantity.

Once you have done, don’t forget to hit the Add Mapping button.

With other options, you can set category-based pricing and minimum order conditions as well.

Step – 4. Set wholesale products visibility

Wholesale product visibility helps to hide wholesale products and their prices from retail customers.

If you want to make a product visible to only wholesale users, go to WooCommerce > Products. Then, click Edit to modify the product.

On the edit page, scroll down to the Wholesale Exclusive Variation setting. This setting makes the product visible to only users with the role selected from the dropdown menu. Similarly, you can hide new and existing product categories from retail users while editing the category.

If you want you can hide retail products from wholesale users as well. To do that, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Wholesale Prices.

And here check the box called Only Show Wholesale Products to Wholesale Users.

By default, WooCommerce Wholesale Prices hides all wholesale prices from retail customers.

Also, read this to learn how to set minimum order amount and quantity in WooCommerce.

That’s it in this article. If you like it don’t forget to share it with your friends and family. For any queries feel free to comment in the comment section below.