You can sell wholesale on GrownBy!
Depending on your farm’s needs, there are a couple of different ways to set it up and this article will walk you through the options. We’ve broken it down with some questions that will help you decide how you want to use GrownBy for wholesale.
Do you want a Private or Public wholesale shop?
You can either offer your wholesale products publicly, in your main shop, or you can offer them in a private group that only your wholesale customers have the link to. If you want a private shop for wholesale, you will use a Private CSA Group. Each
Private CSA Group has a unique link and you will provide that link directly to your wholesale customers.
If you list your wholesale products/prices publicly (and you choose to manage inventory separately for wholesale and retail products), you may want to add them to a specific category so they are grouped together in your shop. When editing the product, click Add New and then type Wholesale. Select this category for each of your wholesale products:
Will your wholesale customers pick-up or will you deliver? Or both?
If you deliver, you may want to create a specific delivery zone for your wholesale route. This is necessary only if you want to charge a different delivery fee than your retail delivery (see below). Otherwise, wholesale and retail orders can use the same delivery zone. See
this article on delivery for information about setting that up.
If your wholesale customers pick-up, you can use
Locations as for any other order on GrownBy.
Will you charge different delivery fees for Wholesale and Retail customers?
If you want to charge a different price for these groups, but the delivery zones actually cover the same area, you will need to set up a separate zone for wholesale and retail, which has a different delivery fee attached to it. Alternatively, you can use the
Taxes & Fees feature to add a fee that is associated directly with a given product. If you offer a product for both retail and wholesale sales, you will need separate products for the two different sales channels.
Do you want to maintain one inventory or more than one?
If you choose to have a private wholesale page via a private CSA group, you will need to have separate products for retail and wholesale. You should put your wholesale products into the private CSA group by selecting the CSA group and then turning on the “Only show on CSA pages” toggle:
However, if your wholesale products will be public, you can choose to have all of your retail and wholesale products inventoried together by using buying options. Buying Options & Prices are set while editing your products. First, under Units click “Manage Stock Globally”. Then, enter each of the options that you would like to offer for your product. For example, for swiss chard, you may have your retail option set at 1 bunch but then also offer a ½ case and a full case, at 12 and 24 bunches, respectively. All of the inventory will be managed from the number you put into In Stock, above.
Informing your Wholesale Customers about GrownBy
Whether you will be providing public or private wholesale purchasing, we encourage you to communicate with your customers directly to give them some instructions about how to use GrownBy and, if using a private shop, provide them with a link.