258 | Scaling to 500 Wholesale Accounts with Brittany O'Brien, Brittany Paige

Deciding to sell wholesale is the first step to scaling your business, but what are the next steps to being successful in it? Brittany O’Brien of Brittany Paige joins us to share the top three contributors to her wholesale success, how she overcame her fear of rejection, and a few tips she has for brands just getting started in wholesale. Plus, she’s sharing a little insight on her experience in growing the retail side of her business while having fun with TikTok!

Today’s episode is brought to you by Paper Camp, our 4-week program that takes the guess-work out of selling wholesale. When you follow the strategies and methods in Paper Camp, you’ll not only feel more confident but you’ll reach your wholesale goals faster. Come join the waitlist to be the first to know when we open the doors for the next round of Paper Camp!

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Three Things that Contributed to Brittany’s Wholesale Success

Since Brittany joined our Paper Camp program, we’ve seen her brand grow so much on the wholesale side. Brittany attributes the following to her success:

Attending Trade Shows
Selling on Faire
Being Diligent Wholesale Outreach via Email

Each of these avenues to wholesale has helped her get into over 500 stores as a wholesaler, but there are a few important considerations that we’ll cover today.

Handling Silence and Rejection

When you first get started in wholesale, a major fear for most creators is rejection. While Brittany has found success in landing her products in stores, it did come with rejection. In the last four years, Brittany has emailed over 10,000 stores in her outreach, which makes her success rate somewhat low. Yet, she’s in 500 STORES.

Not hearing back or getting rejected is part of business, and once you accept that, it becomes much easier to manage. The worst thing that could happen is a no, thank you. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever get a hateful response to your pitch.

Top Tips for Getting Started in Wholesale

If you’re just getting started in wholesale, Brittany has a few tips you should follow based on her own experience.

Go for Quality Over Quantity

When you’re first starting out, you should be focused on quality over quantity! Getting into stores that match your audience and fit your style will help you later when you are shifting your focus to quantities, because you’ll want to begin scaling your wholesale opportunities. Stores that never would have crossed your mind will give you the opportunities because you’re an established brand. To get started in finding quality stores, consider pitching stores that you’ve visited locally or while traveling, as this give you a personal touch to highlight in your pitch.

Outsource Your Outreach Process

The next thing to consider is outsourcing the outreach process. Outreach to retailers is such a tedious process of finding stores, finding the email addresses, then sending emails, logging that information in your master Excel sheet, categorizing it to people who rejected you to people who didn't respond, etc. If you can afford to outsource this process, Brittany highly encourages it.

Email Outreach Strategy

Speaking of outreach, your email strategy is so valuable to your clients, prospective clients, and your bottom line. While you can approach outreach through a few different avenues, Brittany has found the most success with her email outreach strategy—which is different from her email marketing strategy to existing clients.

For those existing clients, she is communicating with them two times per month through beautifully designed newsletters.

When it comes to reaching out to prospective clients, Brittany is reaching out twice per year in alignment with a new product collection. With this strategy, she’s also following up to expand the probability of someone responding. In these messages, she keeps it a short and sweet text based email, introducing herself and brand, how she found them, attaches a catalog, and links to faire. In certain cases, she will personalize it with a story, like if she’s visited their shop.

Through this outreach strategy, she has found success in landing her products in retailers.

Exploring Direct to Consumer with TikTok

While wholesale has been such a valuable part of Brittany’s business, she’s also been exploring the Direct to Consumer market by building a following on TikTok. Through creating engaging content and posting viral videos, Brittany has seen a spike in her own retail sales in comparison to the past.

Brittany decided to take a chance on TikTok after hearing Kyle Sommer’s episode on Proof to Product. After spending a little time on TikTok, Brittany decided to hire Kyle to mentor her on TikTok for her brand, where she was encouraged to show up with her personality, her life, and her views.

In April of 2022, Brittany had a video go viral that resulted in $4,000 in sales in stickers and cards—compared to her sales in April of 2021 of $400. If you’re interested in adding TikTok to your marketing for direct to consumer sales, make your products relatable, show up as you are, and try jumping on trends when you can.

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MEET BRITTANY

Brittany O’Brien started Brittany Paige in March 2018 with six greeting cards on Etsy while working full-time in the corporate design world. Since then she has bootstrapped her business with slow and steady growth while working full time. In December 2020, she quit her full time job but remained freelancing part-time. Over the last two years she has slowly off boarded the freelance graphic design projects to fully invest herself into her business. As of May 2022, she’s fully in!

CONNECT WITH BRITTANY

WEBSITE: brittanypaige.com | INSTAGRAM: @brittanypaigedesigns | TIKTOK: @BRITTANYPAIGEDESIGNS

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct