As far as removing labels without my permission that is in the contract as well. While it’s true a consumer can do whatever they want once they buy an item a retailer cannot. My contract states they cannot alter the labels in any way. If they want to act like a private consumer than they can pay that price and not the “wholesale” price.

There is a lot of give and take in my contracts. I offer them exclusive arrangements and in return they have to make certain efforts to sell my items. I don’t undercut their prices if they don’t remove my labels. I even offer buyback opportunities if they buy enough from me. (in truth few ever use the buybacks, the items sell before that)

In the long run stores that were a tad apprehensive initially decided in the end my website gave them more traffic than less.

My contracts with stores was a long, long, and well thought out legal process. I did not want to make any mistakes. And in truth, I usually am very flexible to make my stores happy anyways.

I am a very small business who self manufactures so it allows me freedoms to do this. At the same time I didn’t want to be taken advantage of and have my labels, which at times is my only form of advertising robbed from me.

Right now I don’t wholesale. I don’t feel I’m big enough yet for the headache. Soon maybe!

You’ll find a variety of opinions. Many people start out doing retail, producing piece by piece. Some still are and doing well with it. I think most people gravitate toward wholesale, it’s less aggravation having to deal with onesies twosies. There’s a third possibility. One of our people started at retail, then moved to wholesale but now wants to start a smaller inhouse unit producing smaller specialized lots, more exclusive items. While it’s not full circle back to onsies twosies, it makes small lot production and enjoying the creativity the opportunity provides, more profitable.

One of my posts sparked an exchange as follows: As a retailer, I generally won’t do business with manufacturers who will sell directly to the end user. I have no reason to -there are too many other companies out there…

It’s great in theory, but rarely does it work out like that. Let me give you an example:

I watch the contemporary women’s apparel market very closely, with a focus on California brands. Premium denim brands, high end casual wear. Brands that you might find on shopbop.com, revolveclothing.com, goclothing.com, etc.

Many of these brands are built upon the success of celebrities. They start off the brainchild of someone with connections, a celeb wears the item, and it becomes the next big thing. Usually, their websites start off as directories, pushing them to the retail stores.

But then there are companies like damnbrand and efashionconsulting that specialize in creating B2C websites for designers. They handle everything, photography, merchandising, distribution, order fulfillment, payment, basically they just take a chunk of the sales for their work. The manufacturer gets the benefit of the internet branding and distribution, can show their whole line, sure they pay out a huge chunk, but they are still getting more than wholesale (in most cases). So they never HAVE to develop a competency at B2C selling, there is an industry of consultants and third party vendors who will gladly provide the full service, or turnkey operation.

Many brands don’t start out this way, they evolve into this business model. But a retailer, well a retailer has to deal with a variety of manufacturers. While some direct people to the store, most don’t because they don’t want their competition shopping their store list.

If clothing manufacturers were really GOOD at that, then retailers would love it, the problem is that many are not. If you were to develop that business model, you would really need to push it and make sure retailers understand it. In fashion, where seasons are short, it becomes difficult to direct consumers to stores to buy styles they may no longer stock (or the retailer may be difficult to purchase from). DEs/manufacturers realize this and sell directly to the consumer, because at the end of the day, they want to sell their product.

and something I saw recently in LA.. a young designer has her moniker on her LABEL as a dotcom.How cool is that!Her company name is like xyz.com or something. Makes it simple. The buyers can’t do a thing about it..

It is very cool. But you said retailers can’t do much about it, and they can, they can simply not buy the line. They may not say why, but I have had two sales reps that I work with that have had their DEs take the dot-com off of the label because the retailers did not want to buy it.

I think sometimes as DEs you have to take a step back and put yourself in the retailer’s shoes. Retail is a tough game for stores and anything you can do to HELP them sell is great. But anything that they perceive as hurting their sales is a negative, and unless you have a hot brand with a high sell through, they don’t have to deal with it. They have a fixed amount of dollars and all things being equal, they might choose to stock a good brand that doesn’t sell to consumers over a good brand that does. Unless you have a given, must have, hot selling brand, yours is always in competition with another brand for the retailer’s dollars.

The bottom line is that there is no one way to do this. Some companies will not face a problem selling to consumers via the web, some will. It all depends on the market they are in and the types of stores/buyers they sell to. Having said that, it is something to consider and it is something that could impact your line. Many buyers won’t volunteer the information that the brand sells too much B2C, so it’s up to the DE to get the feedback from their buyers. If it works for you, it works. But that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone.

Pella – a high-end brand of windows – markets some but not all of their windows through Lowe’s hardware stores because there are many options, customers need to see and perhaps feel the mechanisms and finishes, and Lowe’s adds value by providing help in sizing and warranty repairs and returns. Sound familiar?

But Pella also has retail outlets. I can only assume that Pella offers deep discounts to Lowe’s to take advantage of Lowe’s higher traffic and outlet penetration. It’s mutually beneficial.

I doubt very many individuals are successful at simultaneously designing, manufacturing, and retailing unless they have a large, skilled staff. Zara does it well, but Zara is hardly a DE startup. From that standpoint, I can see why some retailers would want to avoid such DEs, especially if they already have plenty of other good sources from which to choose; it’s likely that the design and manufacturing will suffer as the DE devotes more time to retailing and the issues therein (website design, website content, shipping, returns). One of the websites promoted in a recent comment struck me as an example of this – unimpressive and poorly made garments, augmented with ready-for-Stuckey’s jewelry and accessories.