Faire.com is a wholesale marketplace platform that is gaining popularity at a rapid pace with product based business owners who are looking for sales growth.

A question I am asked alot by clients at the moment is "Should I sell on Faire.com?" and "Is it right for my particular ecommerce business and growth strategy?".

Good question! 

What is Faire.com?

As an up-and-coming B2B marketplace, Faire.com is popular because it uses data to connect up independent retailers who have both physical and online stores, with brand product owners and artisans looking to wholesale a product. It's a great way to get your product stocked at independent and specialty stores that you might otherwise overlook or never discover.

For a UK business you can sell to retailers at trade prices across Europe and the US. More than 70,000 brands and 450,000 retailers have used Faire so far to sell 35,000,000 products and make over 2 million connections. 

Those are some pretty good numbers, without a doubt. But what is it that makes Faire.com such a great choice and is it right for your product based business? Let’s take a look.

How Does Faire Work?

The process begins with a simple online application for both artisans and brand business owners. Once you have been approved, there is an onboarding process to work through.

A bit like selling on Amazon or ebay, this onboarding process includes listing your products and updating your settings for your business, to confirm the shipping services that you want to offer, prices, stock availability and any "rules" on how you want to sell your product (e.g. Yes we take pre-orders etc.)

However, Faire does a lot of this for you and there are some great integrations with ecommerce platforms like Shopify to pull your product data into the platform for a fast set up. The platform will help with product images, pricing information for wholesale in multiple currencies and descriptions to make using the site that much easier.

Should You Sell on Faire.com?

In my view it depends on your overall business growth strategy, your brand positioning and the level to which you have already secured major retail accounts. 

For example, you would be unlikely to give up product line exclusives with a major store like a Walmart or a John Lewis for the sake of listing the same product on this new platform. However, as an extra wholesale channel to sell your range and particularly for all new brands and start ups who want more brand exposure - its a 100% Yes, absolutely! 

In my experience with our clients here at Navigate The Noise, Faire.com is a good wholesale marketplace for growing brands to use, to reach new retail outlets, create new B2B relationships and get experience in wholesaling. 

If you want to get the most from it and power up your business growth plans, you should follow my top tips below:

1. Don’t Just Sell on Faire.com

As great a B2B wholesale marketplace as Faire.com is, in my view you should never put all your eggs into one metaphorical basket. The art of a successful sales growth plan is creating multiple strategic sales channels that deliver your sales growth... not just one.

Look into some of the other marketplaces out there too, that you can use as well as Faire.com and maximise your brand exposure.  For example, Amazon is the obvious one to list your products direct to consumer but there are also subscription marketplaces like hellosubscription.com and other B2B wholesale marketplaces too like Creoate - wholesale.creoate.com. and Joor for fashion joor.com.

2. Build Relationships

When using Faire.com as a brand owner or artisan, you’ll form relationships with retailers as you sell products and do business together.

Once you've made your first connection and fulfilled an order with a retailer, if you want to see success and sales growth, you need to focus on trying to create meaningful relationships with them. This means amazing communication, continued offers, email reminders for re-ordering points throughout the year etc.  You might even want to consider collaborating on other marketing and promotional campaigns off the site to have complete creative freedom - if your retailer is looking for a new partner, this will work out well.

3. Watch Your Profit Margins Like A Hawk!

When using Faire.com marketplace platform, the one major priority I want you to focus on is to make sure that you keep a very close eye on your profit margins - we have to make sure that the marketplace is going to work for your business from a profit point of view.

Getting B2B eyeballs on your product is not enough. We want to make money too - otherwise what's the point of being in business! 

Faire.com works via a commission system, taking a % of every sale you make to a retailer, so try and remember the mantra of "Profit per platform" and keep an eye on how successful it REALLY is for you. 

You may well find that only some of your product range have enough room to be profitably sold through this marketplace, once all of your selling costs and production costs are considered. 

4. Attract New Trade Users

I recommend that you add the Faire.com widget to your own website for your product based business, perhaps even creating a dedicated Trade page on your own website, accessed via your main menu  - to encourage direct trade orders online.  Your website can then serve both B2C and B2B customers! 

This Faire.com widget once embedded on your new Trade web page will encourage new trade customers who come to your website to sign up there and then - self serving!  ... and to become a trade customer of yours without you having to do anything.  This self serve sign up and "getting started" journey, will help you manage the Trade order process efficiently as it uses the Faire.com system to process the wholesale order for you.

The other benefit for your Trade customers is they can get a Faire account and use that to purchase wholesale through the platform for a multitude of other products, not just yours and often Faire.com give them shipping discounts on first orders or offers as new sign ups - making your trade deal look even more attractive. So lots of reasons to encourage them to become a trade customer of yours!

Make It Happen In Your Business

When it comes to Faire.com reviews from my own clients, it seems it is definitely a marketplace that is worthwhile considering, especially if your brand is new, has not yet landed some major retail accounts and you are looking to get some wholesale traction. 

As a wholesale marketplace, it has a lot going for it and a huge number of independent retailers globally searching for products, just like yours.

It is easy to use, easy to get started and to be honest for most brands there's not much to loose in just giving it a go! So why not add it to your sales plan for this year?

Next Steps

• Consider if Faire.com could become a viable wholesale channel for your business.  Review the % commission fees and check which of the products in your range could be sold profitably via this market place. 
• Create a Faire.com account and set up your Faire.com widget for trade orders on your website too for extra exposure. 
• List your products and review ALL of the settings to ensure you are selling exactly how and where you are happy with.  You can exclude online only retailers from working with you for example to control the quality of the retailers you deal with and just sell to people who have physical stores. 
• Once you start trading, you’ll just want to make sure that you keep an eye on your profit margins - commission-based websites can quickly become a drain for smaller brands as other costs like sponsored ads and delivery offers add up, so work your numbers constantly during your trading. 
• If you would like help discussing if Faire.com is the right ecommerce strategy for your product based business, book a free discovery call with me.  We will talk about your business growth plans and how we can help you accelerate your sales success faster than you are doing so at the moment. 

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