How To Find Affordable Products for Your Boutique

Wether you're an aspiring boutique or have been around for years its always good to know where the deals are. In this blog we are going to look at the best kept secrets in the wholesale world where you can score some deals.

Online

Let's start by looking at online sites and vendors that offer great deals.

1. FashionGo - Fashiongo is simply an online showroom that hosts thousands of USA vendors and suppliers. Hidden inside each vendor's page may or may not be a sales page.  In these collections you can score deals on styles that start as low as $5.00. You can also search and sort products by price, starting with the low prices. Scanning through these pages you will be sure to view many great deals a long the way.
2. BloomWholesale - The next three sites are in a class of their own and I would turn them off-price distributors. These distributors have a unique business model that allows them to purchase in bulk closeout items from your favorite manufacturers and in turn list them at prices on their site for 50% off. Bloomwholesale concentrates more in mid-western styles, lot's of plus and missy look.  They have been around for over ten years and the trick with them is they release all of their merchandise on Saturday morning, which is where you can pick up all the best stuff.
3. WholesaleFashionTrends - Like Bloom FashionTrends is also a closeout company that purchases largely from Fashiongo vendors at ultra low prices and offers them up on their site.  These products are usually last seasons items but with so much crossover between each seasons trends usually your customers aren't privy to this. Wholesale Fashion Trends offers a young contemporary look for that more chic girl whose looking for a sometimes sexier look.
4. TashaApparel - Tasha Apparel is another young contemporary off price clothing vendor that specializes in that younger look for all types of demographics. 

In-Person (Fashion Events)

Switching over to Fashion Shows, let's take a look at the events where you can score a great deal.

If you're not sure what a fashion event is or how it works I would advise to go here. Most Fashion events purpose is to showcase the new seasonal line ups thus finding a deal is usually not something you get at a show. However some shows you can attend are specific to closeouts and off price merchandise. Let's take a lok at two of those.

1. The Offprice Show - True to its name the Offprice is a collection of vendors that offer discount clothing and work with stores like Ross, DollarGeneral and other deep discounters around the country. Now you may asking why a boutique would want to be affiliated with such vendors and the answer is that most of the time you don't but often at these shows you will find special deals on fantastic products that will sell great for you. Many of these vendors will be the offprice online vendors we discussed before and some of them will just be huge manufacturers that bring in 5000 units per style which is why their product is so cheap.  This btw is how Ross and Walmart get such good prices while maintaining quality, by purchasing 4000-5000 units of one style, versus 6 that a boutique would purchase, they crush the market with deep prices and consolidate much of the consumer spending.  So perhaps check out one of these vendors at the Off Price show and see if you can get them to give you a price similar. The Off Price Show is held twice a year in Las Vegas Nevada.
2. The ASD Show - The ASD is similar to the Offprice and many times encompasses a lot of the same vendors. The difference being that the AD show is more eclectic and offers vendors selling a wide range of things to clothing, jewelry and all types of accessories. Many of these vendors also work with some of the largest big box stores in the country and is why their prices can be considerably lower versus shows like Magic or Dallas Market. The ASD Show is also held twice a year in Las Vegas Nevada

Suggestion

At both of these shows it's important you connect with the managers or owners of the business.  As someone who worked for one of these vendors for many years we looked at boutiques as an opportunity to sell our low cost items for high prices.  However if we had a relationship with them we had the ability to mark down our prices considerably and often would.  

That concludes are list of places to find some fabulous deals, of course there are many more but I trimmed it down to the most substantial vendors. Best of luck!