Buy wholesale!

If you are buying anything that will be in a quantity greater than that of the common buyer, ask about wholesale pricing!  Even if you won't be buying in bulk now, you might later and it'll be good to find a company that will give you good bulk pricing (pricing before the retail or market markup on the item).  The MSRP is the market rate for resale (the post-wholesale pricing).

To give you an idea of what a difference wholesale can make I'll give you an example:

We searched for a large item online that is necessary for the success of our business.  The market rate for this product is $319 plus shipping.  This is what the manufacturer charges the average Joe for this item.  We need a couple of these to get started, and hopefully we'll need more as we grow.  For the six I need, it would be a total of $1,914 plus shipping. 

The lowest price I could find after scouring the Internet after checking the main brand site was $271.  This was posted by the parent company on Amazon.  So I would be saving $48/item plus getting free shipping.  My total came to $1,626 (including shipping) for the six items meaning I would be saving $288 just by taking the time to seek out a lower price (and that doesn't take into account any additional shipping cost from the original item)!

I noticed on the original website that they work with wholesalers (basically intermediaries between the mother company and the buyer).  Think any major retail store like Macy's or Target: usually they are not the brand owner; they buy from the manufacturer of the brand at wholesale price and sell it to the consumer at a higher price.

Eventually we will need to replace the items we are looking at when they break or become unusable so I decided that, even though we aren't planning on opening a Target store anytime soon, it might be worth it to get wholesale pricing information at least to understand 1) if any discounts are available for low quantity wholesale items and 2) what might my discount be for future bulk purchases if/when my business takes off.

I contacted the wholesale department for the brand and was pleasantly surprised; those $319 retail price items are only $165 wholesale, even though I only need a small quantity right now.  Larger quantities can result in even lower wholesale prices!  Good news for me!  This cost is FOB, though (FOB means "free on board" which is a schmancy way of saying "shipping is not included").  The additional price for shipping these items is $130 total.  So my wholesale buy ends up being $1,080 including shipping: a whopping $834 less than the retail price (and again, that price still didn't include the shipping)!

So, you see, even if you're only in the market for a few startup items, it's worth it to look into wholesale.  Know your options!  Knowing is half the battle (and, in this case, half the price)!!