◆ You can choose your colours and sizes. No risk of being given ‘what is left’.
◆ There is usually a discount for paying cash and carrying the goods away.
◆ Immediate delivery. By taking the goods away with you, they can be on sale the next day as opposed to ordering by post, which can take a number of weeks to come through.
◆ You can ask for advice. Once you have used a supplier a few times, it will become clear which members of staff know their products and can be trusted to give advice on what is selling.
Talk to other buyers at the wholesalers. Find out what sort of shop they have, what they sell, where else they buy. Equally, some of the wholesalers are also retailers. Find out what else they stock, what associated products there are and what would be appropriate for your shop.
Some of the larger cash and carry warehouses require you to register on your first visit and you may need to provide proof of your status as a shop owner. Your company cheque book or invoices from other suppliers should suffice.
Cash and carry wholesalers are normally open Monday to Friday and for a short time on Sundays. They are always closed on Saturdays. Most will be closed on Christmas Eve and will not open again until January.
It is a 100 mile drive to the Cash and Carry warehouses from where I live, which should take about two hours. I can leave home at 8 am, sit on the motorway and in the suburbs of London for hours on end or leave home at 6 am, arrive between 8 am and 8.30 am, and have a sit-down breakfast before my first port of call, which opens at 9.30 am. Whilst enjoying my first coffee of the day, I can use the time to go through the stock checks that I wrote the day before and note down exactly what I need to buy, or as quiet, creative thinking time.
Especially if you live in the provinces, going to visit the wholesalers in London can be a very long day. My A to Z is marked with places where I can park the car, get something to eat and use a toilet; examples being the big supermarkets and drive-in burger bars.
