Homebrew Supply Wholesale?`

[Bobby_M]

Anyone know the minimum requirements to buy equipment and ingredients at wholesale prices?

As mentioned in another thread, I'm going to be teaching homebrewing in community schools in my area. There really are no nearby homebrew shops to recommend. I could easily just give them a list of mailorder vendors, but I thought it would help my business venture to offer supplies directly since I've already made contact.

Minimum intial orders?
Minimum annual order guarentee?


Maybe at this level of volume, it would be best to engage some of the larger retail shops and just ask for bulk purchase discounts?

 

[zythos]

Hi, I noticed that nobody has answered your question yet... maybe I can be a bit of help here. I don't have much experience in brewing and I have about no experience in wholesaling. Nevertheless, I was fumbling around the L. D. Carlson company website and stumbled across this:

http://www.ldcarlson.com/new%20account%20inquiries.htm

apparently they require that you have a proper retail location, the proper licensing, and $2,000 dollar minimum first order.

I'm sure there are other companies with varying guidelines, but I figured this would give you a start in your research.

 

[Bobby_M]

Since posting the question, I did come across that page on LD and a couple others. Some have more stringent requirements but I don't think I'm going to be able to pull it off at this capacity. I'll probably have more luck working a percentage discount from B3 or Austin, etc based on a bulk order. I don't think I'd even be able to commit to a $2k initial order... Maybe 800-1000.

 

[the_bird]

I still like giving business to local shops, even if they are a bit of a drive away. It's possible that some of your students may live a good deal closer to the HBS. I'd contact them about maybe getting some bulk discounts. You could take orders during the second class, call them in, pick up before the third class, and deliver after the thrid class. The HBS would have the incentive of possibly picking up ten or twenty new obsessives; might be worth their while to let go of some starter kits and some Brewer's Best kits for not too much more than their cost.

But, that's somewhat predicated on being comfortable with the HBS in question. Some are better than others, as we have discussed ad naseum around here.

 

[Bobby_M]

I'm pitching the idea of a bulk discount with the additional incentive to give word of mouth and or catalogs/brochures to the participating vendor. Win win eh?