Pitching retailers as an Amazon brand
Your wholesale terms are one page that answers seven questions: how much they have to buy, in what quantities, at what price, when they pay, who pays freight, what happens if something arrives broken, and where they are allowed to sell it. Decide all seven before your first retail conversation, because a buyer who has to wait for you to invent an answer concludes you have not done this before, and they will be right.
Terms are not a contract. A contract comes later and only for accounts that need one. Terms are the operating rules you publish, put on a card in a sample box and repeat in every reply, and their job is to let a buyer decide without another email.
Minimums, and why the second one is lower
Two numbers: the opening order minimum and the reorder minimum.
The opening order protects you from accounts that cost more to set up than they earn. Setting it up, invoicing, packing and answering questions for a store that orders 60 dollars of product is a loss, even when the margin looks fine. Somewhere between 200 and 350 dollars at wholesale is a normal opening minimum for a small brand selling into independents.
The reorder minimum should be meaningfully lower, often half. This is the number sellers get wrong most often. A shop that sold through its first order and wants six more units should be able to order six more units. Making them wait until they need 300 dollars' worth is how a good account goes quiet, and the reorder is where the profit is.
Express both in dollars rather than units if you have more than one product, because dollars let the retailer mix the range and mixing is how they discover what sells.
Case packs and inner packs
The case pack is how many units ship together as a sealed unit, and it is a commitment. Once buyers know your case is six, changing it to four mid-season creates confusion in their reorder systems and yours.
Pick the case size by asking how fast a single store sells the product. A shop selling two a week wants a case of six or eight, not twenty-four. A shop selling twenty a week can take a case of twenty-four and will prefer it. If you serve both, an inner pack inside a master carton lets a small store buy an inner while a distributor buys the master. That structure and its costs are covered in inner packs and master cartons.
State on the terms sheet whether cases can be mixed. For most small brands the answer is that the opening order minimum is in dollars and any combination of full cases is fine, which is generous and costs little.
Also state the case dimensions and weight. Buyers with a receiving dock need them, and for anyone shipping freight they determine the cost. Case packs for retail works through how to choose the number.
Price, tiers and what you promise about it
Publish one wholesale price per item and a suggested retail price. Resist bespoke pricing; the moment two retailers in a region discover different prices, you have a problem that takes years to fix.
Tiers are fine if they are volume-based and published. A common shape:
| Order value | Price | Typical buyer |
|---|---|---|
| 250 dollars and up | Standard wholesale | Independent store |
| 1,500 dollars and up | Five points better | Multi-location retailer |
| 5,000 dollars and up | Distributor price | Distributor |
The distributor tier is a different thing from a volume discount: a distributor resells to retailers and needs a margin underneath yours, so the number has to be built from the retail price downward through two layers. If your landed cost does not allow it, say so plainly rather than inventing a price you cannot honour.
Say what you promise about your own pricing, because this is the first thing a retail buyer worries about with an Amazon brand. One line: your listed price is your suggested retail and you hold it. If you cannot promise that, the channel conversation gets much harder, and the underlying decision is in price parity between Amazon and wholesale.
Payment, and the one rule that protects you
The default should be payment in full before shipping for the first two orders, then terms on request.
That is not unfriendly, it is standard for a small supplier, and almost no independent retailer will object. What matters is stating it up front so the question never becomes a negotiation at the worst moment, which is when the goods are packed.
After two paid orders, terms are a reasonable ask and refusing them starts to cost you accounts, particularly with anything multi-location. Net thirty from the invoice date is the usual starting point. Before you offer it, know that you are funding a month of their inventory on top of the money already tied up in your own, and that is a real cash position for a brand whose marketplace payouts arrive on a different cycle. Net thirty terms for an Amazon seller covers how to judge it.
Add a late payment line, even if you never enforce it. Its purpose is to make the follow-up email easy to write.
Freight, damages and returns
Freight: say who pays and at what threshold it becomes included. A common shape is that the retailer pays shipping, and orders above roughly twice the opening minimum ship without a charge. Free freight thresholds are the cheapest promotion in wholesale because they raise order size rather than cutting price.
Damages: state a window, commonly five business days from delivery, and ask for a photograph. Then replace without argument inside the window. Arguing over one broken unit costs more in goodwill than the unit.
Returns: for most small brands the answer is that wholesale orders are not returnable for reasons other than damage or error. Say it clearly and kindly. Retail buyers understand it; what they will not accept is discovering it after the fact.
Defects: if a whole production run has a problem, you replace it, and saying so up front is a genuine differentiator for a brand a buyer has never worked with.
The resale clause, which matters more for you than for others
An Amazon brand needs one line that most wholesale terms do not have: where the retailer may sell your product.
The usual formulation is that goods are sold for resale in the buyer's physical stores and their own website, and not on third-party marketplaces without written permission. That single sentence is what lets you close an account that starts undercutting your own listing, and without it you have no standing at all.
Pair it with something practical. Put lot codes on cases so you can identify which order a diverted unit came from, and watch for order sizes that do not match a store's floor space. The wider approach is in stopping wholesale customers from selling on Amazon.
Also mention minimum advertised pricing here if you operate one, but understand what it is: a policy about advertised price, applied consistently, not a price-fixing agreement. Getting the distinction wrong is worse than not having one.
Putting it on one page and using it
Write all seven answers on a single sheet. Put it on the wholesale page of your site, in every sample box, and as a short block at the bottom of every quote.
Review it twice a year against what actually happened. If nobody has ever hit the second price tier, the tier is wrong. If three accounts asked for terms and you said no and lost them, the policy is costing more than it saves. If damages claims cluster on one item, the packaging needs work before the terms do.
Terms are the commercial layer. For the accounts that grow past a few orders a year, or for anyone asking about territory, a written agreement comes next, and the Amazon seller wholesale agreement covers what belongs in it.
If you are setting these numbers for the first time and have no idea what kind of retailer you are writing them for, that is the thing to settle first. Pasting your Amazon listing into WholesalePilot shows the kinds of stores and distributors that plausibly stock a product like yours, and a case pack chosen for a real store type is a much better guess than one chosen in the abstract.