Is Doing Business With Wholesale Clothing Suppliers Profitable?

The retail business is looking pretty good even when the economy is at today’s condition. If you are on your way to starting a new retail outlet, you can save a lot of money by getting items on wholesale. You can find any item being sold in bulk, from bakery to gadgets and electronics. Wholesale clothing suppliers are probably the most used sources of goods to sell because clothing is indeed a very good business and wholesale suppliers can help retailers reduce the overall COGS of merchandises. The question remains: is doing business with wholesale clothing suppliers profitable?

Take t-shirts for example. You can easily find t-shirts being sold by wholesale suppliers at $2 to $7. I’m not talking about low-quality shirts here; I’m talking about top of the line, cotton combed 40s, high quality t-shirts being sold at that price range. They also come in prints and packages that are suitable for retail sales. If you don’t know already, you can actually sell these shirts for at least $15; assuming the average price of t-shirt you are selling at wholesale supplier is $2, that’s a $13 of profit per every t-shirt you sold right there.

We need to take other costs into considerations as well. Shipping and handling costs from wholesale clothing suppliers to your store are usually added to the t-shirt original cost. Depending on the quantity of your order, the cost can be as low as $1 per shirt — or even 0 since they are included in the offered price — which makes our profit reduced to $12.

Promotions and other costs must also be included as cost factor. Depending on your marketing strategy and used channels, divided by the number of shirts you plan on selling, you can still be looking at $10 net profit per piece. This is actually a very large profit considering you don’t really manufacture the goods yourself. Most of these shirts are manufactured in Asia, allowing the manufacturing costs to be reduced greatly. With $10 per shirt, you are looking at a cool $1000 profit as soon as you sold 100 t-shirts; believe me when I say that selling 100 t-shirts is a walk in the park.

write by Terry Apfel