10 Mistakes to AVOID on Your Wholesale Line Sheet

Growing WholesaleWholesale BasicsWholesale Line Sheet

Dec 17

A wholesale line sheet can be the most powerful document to have on hand if you’re growing wholesale.

What is a Wholesale Line Sheet?

Most simply: a wholesale line sheet is a document that presents your wholesale products, pricing, and terms to wholesale buyers. This can be a website, a PDF document, or something else.

Many makers spend a lot of time developing a wholesale line sheet to win the hearts and minds of buyers – but lose the sale because of simple mistakes that they could have avoided. So in this article, we’re putting a big old “WATCH OUT!” sign in front of all the pitfalls before you get to them.

Before we jump in, a quick note on format: there are some instances when you may not use a PDF line sheet. These days, some makers use Faire or another marketplace as the place they showcase their products. There are also online “storefront” and ordering tools like Candid. And of course some makers have a dedicated wholesale website. Those are all great options, which the Wholesale In a Box Course digs into with greater detail. This guide focuses on the PDF line sheet because it can be a flexible, affordable, straightforward place to start. And honestly, these are mistakes that apply to some extent regardless of format.

10 Mistakes to AVOID on Your Wholesale Line Sheet

Overly stern wholesale terms.
Yes, you need clear and comprehensive Wholesale Terms in your wholesale line sheet. Yes, the job of wholesale terms is to protect you by establishing clarity. But they don’t protect you better if they are written in “legalese” or sound especially stern. All that achieves is making the buyer question whether you’ll be a vendor they’ll want to work with. So write your Wholesale Terms page in the same tone as the rest of your marketing materials – just be clear as you go. (More on fixes for common wholesale terms here.)
No prices.
In some cases, you’ll be using your line sheet in a very particular context and you won’t want to have your wholesale prices on it. But in the vast majority of situations, you want to make sure you have your wholesale and suggested retail prices clearly listed for the buyer in the line sheet, without making them struggle to find them or making them request them.
Wasting your cover page.
Often, store owners will only view your cover page before deciding if the document (and your line!) is worth their time. That’s why your cover page is your first and best tool to sell store owners on what you make. It should give the buyer an immediate understanding of what product you sell and what your aesthetic/ethos is. Right this way for more on maximizing your wholesale line sheet cover page.
Sub-par photos.
I know that photos are hard. There are so many ways for them to be bad. They can be unclear, they can be too small, they can be unaligned with your brand. But even small improvements (or improvements to some of your photos) can have a big impact and be well worth the investment. And you don’t have to have expensive, dedicated photo equipment to get great photos. Your smartphone, a $15 tripod and a room with natural light can take grainy and or dark photos to the next level.
Trying to sound bigger or more impersonal than you are.
If you’re a small brand, a big reason that people buy from you is because of who you are and what the line represents. So including a clear, compelling “about” page in your line sheet is important. Include a brief description of you and your products plus a couple of process or studio pictures. More on crafting your story here.
Not showing the details of the products clearly enough.
Ultimately, the buyer should have NO questions about what they would receive in the box, were they to place a wholesale order with you. That means that between your photos and descriptions, everything about the inside, outside, back, front, packaging, materials, sizing, and quality are crystal-clear. A confused mind doesn’t buy. So don’t confuse us!
Being too boring.
Sometimes, in an effort to appear professional, brands boil out every ounce of personality, pizzazz, and quirkiness from their line sheet. Remember that your line sheet is a marketing document. So, yes, it needs to be clear and professional. But it should also get across the ethos and “personality” of the line.
Having a potpourri of products.
It’s always better for wholesale to have a focused, cohesive line. So if there are products that you think are weaker or less aligned with your brand or vision, just cut them from your line sheet. A smaller but better focused line always sells better when it comes to wholesale.
An overly wordy “about” page with minimal photos.
Especially in an online context, people tend to “skim” text rather than read it. So headers, bullets, and photos do 90% of the work in a document. Most people need to cut about 30% of the words in their About page, add 2-3x as many photos (of them in the studio ideally!), and organize the info with clear headers.
An undesigned or unprofessional document.
Sometimes, I’ll see a line sheet that has all the key parts – but the design of the document itself is bad, confusing, or off-brand. For example, overcrowded pages with too many photos, dissimilar products on the same page, or inconsistent themes from one page to the next. Once you have a rough draft of your line sheet, always go back through it and make sure your alignment, fonts, colors, and design are consistent and on-brand for you. It can help to use a template (like the one included with Wholesale In a Box) or even to pay a designer to do a final “tidy” at the end.

So whether your wholesale line sheet is a PDF that you can print or email out to potential stockists, hosted by an online marketplace or showcased via a dedicated webpage, avoiding these 10 pitfalls can help make your wholesale outreach more effective and leave time for what you do best!