Introduction

In our country today, everyone is trying to save money. No matter what you want to buy, you're always trying to find the best deal. Very few people have enough money to buy something the first time they see it. Most will shop around at many stores before buying an item, especially something, which costs over $20. It's a fact of life that prices will vary by huge amounts from store to store. There can even be two stores right next to each other offering an item at very different prices. Most people are not getting the best price for what they are buying. In a recent survey of 300 shoppers published in the Wall Street Journal, 82% of those interviewed thought they could have made their most recent purchase at a better price if they had looked around more carefully.

None of this is new to you. You've probably already found the best bargain stores in your area to buy all the things you need on a regular basis.

However, there is something that you may not know about: did you know that you actually can buy many products at even lower prices than the best discount store in your area? How is this possible? By buying at wholesale prices. By buying products at the same place that your local store buys. This is what we would like to explain to you now: how to buy almost anything you need at wholesale, so that you can cut your spending by 50%.

In short, the purpose of this book is to show you how to save money on all your purchases by buying products at wholesale prices. In addition to showing you some sources for many different types of products, this book will give you some tips on how to negotiate the best prices and will show you how you can use this knowledge of buying at wholesale to make some extra income for yourself.

Finally, for those who really want to get into this as a business, which will allow you to save the most money on your purchases and have a good income outside of your present job, this book will explain the basic steps necessary to set up your own business including how you can obtain a line of credit of $5,000 to help you get started, and where to get all your business stationery and equipment at the lowest possible wholesale prices.

For all this information, just turn the page and enjoy this journey into the world of wholesaling!

Buying Wholesale Versus Buying Discount

How much money can you really save if you buy at wholesale prices? To answer this, let's look at the profit structure of the retail market.

Most retail stores will mark up the price of their products 100%, or double their own cost. In this example, you can obviously save 50% of your money if you make your purchase directly from the wholesaler, instead of buying from the store. Essentially, by buying directly from the wholesaler, you are not paying any service premium to the retail store. The retail store can charge more than the wholesaler because it is more convenient for the buyer to find most products in a retail store than to hunt around for a wholesaler that does not have a prime storefront location in the middle of town.

Also, many wholesalers will not sell items to an individual consumer; they will only do business with an established business that will buy in volume from the wholesaler. Often the wholesaler will have minimum purchase requirements, which can be as low as $500.00 or as high as $20,000.00. Basically, most people accept retail prices as a fact of life because it takes some extra effort and time to figure out how to reach the wholesaler directly, and in many cases, it just is not possible to deal with the wholesaler, unless you are an actual business (which is a good way to get wholesale prices and which will be the topic of a later chapter).

Now let's look at the structure of discount pricing, which is what most people look for in saving their money. When a store offers discount prices, they will not mark up the item 100%; they will offer a discount from the full retail price of 20-40%. They still need to make a profit, so they won't reduce the price 50%, but they are making less of a profit in the hopes of getting people to do business with them. As an example, take an item that normally sells for $100. The store paid $50 for that item. Instead of charging $100, the store may discount that item to $80 or even $60. At the lowest discount you can save $40. However, that doesn't give you as much of a saving as buying the item yourself for $50 directly from the wholesaler. In other words, even the best discount value will not be as good as buying the item at wholesale.

The only exceptions to this rule are liquidation or closeout sales, where the store sells the item at below its own cost, because it must regain some of its original investment in the merchandise. In this case, you may get a better deal from the store than if you went directly to the wholesaler, but these cases are not easy to find and don't occur very often.

Another point about buying from a discount store is that you have to be careful about how many of their products are really being offered at discounts. A common strategy is to lure buyers into the store with large discounts off normal retail prices on a few popular items. Then when you are in the store, many of the other items will be selling at full retail price. In many cases, you just won't be able to tell if an item in that store is full retail or discounted, since it's impossible to do price comparisons on every item when you're in the store itself.

So far, we've been using the example of a typical 100% markup. There are many types of products that are not marked up that much, but the overall principles discussed still apply. For example, products in the electronics business are not marked up as much as gift items. In other words, an answering machine, considered an electronics product, will be marked up only 50% by the retail store. Consequently, the discount offered by a discounter of electronic goods will not be as high as 40%; it will be closer to the range of 15-30%.

Let's take a specific product, a Panasonic answering machine. Currently, one model retails at about $50. The major discount stores are offering it for $44 (a discount of 12%). National Wholesale Company (a genuine wholesale company to be discussed in a later chapter) offers it at $30 (a discount of 40%). Even though the wholesale price is not a 50% discount from retail, it still gives a large saving when compared with the discount store.

The only issue we haven't addressed is the importance of volume. We have been slightly simplistic in this discussion, since we haven't considered how volume changes the wholesale price. If you buy 10 of an item from a wholesaler, the price per item will be less than if you buy 1. If you buy 1000, the price will be much less than if you buy 10. What this means is that it is possible to find that a discounter who buys in huge volume may offer a product at the same price at which you could buy it directly from the wholesaler. Since the discounter is buying from the wholesaler at a lower price than you are, he can mark the price up a little bit and still match the price you are paying to the wholesaler. This will only apply to those products where the volume is very large, and again, you must be careful about other products that same discounter is offering--they may be much higher than the wholesale price you can get yourself.

This discussion has just been a brief analysis of the structure of the retail market. It is clear at this point that it is much better to buy your products from the wholesaler than from retail stores or from discount stores. Now the question is, who are the wholesalers that you can actually buy from, and how do you find them? That is the subject of the next chapter, which lists some major wholesalers that are happy to sell in limited quantities to consumers and do not have restrictions about selling only to stores.

WHOLESALE COMPANIES

This chapter will give the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and some background information on several excellent sources for buying at wholesale prices.

Most of these sources do not require any minimum purchases. Many of them offer the service of drop shipping, which means that they will ship products to any address you give them. This is useful if you are actually running a business of reselling to customers. With drop shipping, you can have products sent directly to your customers, and you do not have to hold on to any inventory.

One of the companies, National Wholesale Company, even offers a guaranteed credit line to anyone who applies. The other companies will take accounts on credit once you have established your credit rating with them, but National Wholesale Company will extend a credit line of $5000 to you right from your first order.

Following are the companies we've selected as excellent sources for

Products at wholesale prices.

GENERAL MERCHANDISE, OFFICE PRODUCTS, ELECTRONICS

GIFTS, NOVELTIES, PERSONAL ACCESSORIES

NATIONAL WHOLESALE COMPANY, Inc.

321A Merrimack St.

Methuen, MA 01844

978-738-8883 X102 FAX 978-738-0555 Email: support@profitbig.com

National Wholesale Company is probably the best wholesale company to begin with, because they offer a huge selection of products at excellent prices and they provide excellent support services for starting your own business.

Products: National Wholesale Company, in business since 1982, carries over 61,357 products in its office products division, and over 4,300 products in its novelty merchandise division. Office products include equipment such as computers, copiers, fax machines, paper shredders, telephones, answering machines, cash registers, typewriters, calculators, and office furniture. In addition to equipment, National Wholesale Company carries a full line of accessories such as paper, pens, forms, file folders, ribbons, computer disks, and virtually any product you would need in an office. Finally, as part of the office products division, there is a wide selection of electronic products, such as TV's, CD players, Walkman's, VCR's, and many other consumer electronic items. All of these electronic products are featured in their 830+ page office products catalog.

All of the products carried in the office products division are well-known brand name items, backed up by full manufacturer guarantees. The brand names include Sharp, Ricoh, Magnavox, Toshiba, Casio, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, GTE, Parker, Cross, Sony, JVC, Brother, Pioneer, Olympus, Hitachi, and many more.

The novelty merchandise division carries a wide range of gift and novelty products, including jewelry, decorative glassware, porcelain figurines, hand-carved decorative items, cutlery, miniature, brassware, toys, luggage, lamps, auto accessories, household accessories, and many other high impulse purchase items popular in the mass market. All of these novelty products are featured in a 300+ page full color catalog.

Services

National Wholesale Company has no minimum ordering requirements; it offers drop-shipping, toll-free credit card ordering, un-imprinted catalogs, full marketing support, and professional consultation to its dealers.

In addition, National Wholesale Company offers a guaranteed line of credit, which works in the following way. Once your application for a credit line is received, you may order any product from the novelty merchandise division with only a partial down payment and the balance on credit, which can be paid off net 30. You can automatically qualify for a starting $5,000 credit line by simply sending in the application found at the back of this book.

Finally, National Wholesale Company offers a special introductory business package for those who want to set up a business reselling their products.

For $149.99, they will send you an executive business package, which contains the following features:

--A dealership number which allows you to purchase any of their products at true wholesale

--Unlimited free consultation in setting up your business

--The $5,000 line of credit (call 978-738-8883 X102 for full details)

--1 830+ page full color catalog from the office products division

--1 300 page full color catalog from the novelty merchandise division

--Several special full color sales flyers that help increase sales

--Free advertising and layout service

--Leasing program available on many computer products

--Complete marketing and advertising support

--Many ways to profit including; mail order, the internet and sub wholesaling

To order this special Partner in Business dealership, designed to set you up immediately in your own business, use the order form included at the end of this book.

Order in the Largest Quantity Possible

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