The wholesale price is what a retailer pays a brand per unit, before any retail markup, and it is the number every other wholesale calculation is built on.
Oct 5, 2026
The wholesale price has to clear the brand’s cost and leave a margin, and it has to divide into the intended retail price at a multiplier the buyer will accept. Those two constraints meet somewhere, and where they do not meet, the product is not viable at that cost.
The usual mistake is pricing from cost alone. Something costed at 20 and wholesaled at 40 looks healthy until a buyer who needs 2.6x refuses it, because the resulting RRP sits above what the floor will carry.
Most brands end up running several. Distributors buy below the standard trade price because they carry the stock and the risk, key accounts negotiate volume terms, and export markets are priced to absorb duty and freight without breaking the local retail price.
That is only manageable if price lists attach to accounts rather than to documents. The common failure is a linesheet sent with the wrong prices on it, found after the buyer has signed off a buy at numbers the brand never intended to offer.
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