Buried in your store's inbox, between "where is my order?" and "does this come in blue?", there is occasionally a message like this: "Hi, I run a gift shop in Leeds. Do you offer trade pricing?" It sits there for three days, because it looks like any other question. By the time you reply, the shop owner has found another supplier.
Wholesale enquiries to an ecommerce store are easy to miss and costly to lose. One trade account that reorders every month can be worth more than hundreds of individual orders. Yet most small stores have no way to spot them quickly.
Why trade enquiries get buried
Most stores have one contact route: a form or email address that handles everything. Retail questions dominate by volume. Wholesale enquiries arrive occasionally, mixed in with returns requests and delivery questions.
They also often look informal. "Do you do bulk orders?" could be a retail customer buying ten gifts or a retailer wanting to stock your range. Without a quick follow-up question, it is hard to tell.
What wholesale buyers want to know first
Trade buyers usually ask a similar set of questions:
- Do you sell wholesale at all?
- What are the minimum order quantities?
- Is there a price list, and how do I get access?
- What are delivery times and costs for larger orders?
- Can products be supplied unbranded or with our branding?
- What are the payment terms?
Many of these can be answered on a simple wholesale page. That page alone removes a lot of back-and-forth.
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Answering and qualifying in the first exchange
The best first reply answers the general question and collects the details you need to decide whether and how to proceed:
Visitor: Do you offer trade pricing for shops? Assistant: Yes, we supply independent retailers. Minimum first order is 24 units across the range, and the price list is shared once an account is approved. Could you tell me your shop's name, where you're based and which products you're interested in? The team will be in touch.
SpideyChat for ecommerce stores handles this on your site at any hour. It answers from your wholesale page, asks your qualifying questions and captures the enquiry as a lead with the conversation attached, so it does not sit unnoticed among retail questions.
Separating trade from retail
Once wholesale enquiries are identified in the first exchange, they can be routed to whoever handles trade accounts. That person sees a qualified lead rather than a vague question in a shared inbox.
If your store currently relies on a single contact form, our comparison of live chat or contact form for a growing online shop covers how the options handle different kinds of enquiry. Some stores keep a dedicated wholesale application form for approved accounts and use chat for first contact.
Stock questions from trade buyers
Trade buyers care about reliability. They want to know whether you can supply consistently, and what happens when a product sells out. Clear information about restocks helps, as covered in how to answer stock and restock questions without an inbox.
What trade accounts are worth
A hypothetical, for scale. Say a gift shop orders $400 of stock every month. Over a year that is $4,800 from one relationship, with no marketing cost per order. If your store receives a few wholesale enquiries a month and loses half to slow replies, the annual cost quickly reaches tens of thousands.
That is why these enquiries deserve special handling. The same principle, that some enquiries are worth far more than others, applies in property too, as described in is it still available and other questions to automate.
Setting up for trade enquiries
- Create a short wholesale page covering minimums, how to apply and delivery.
- Decide the qualifying questions you need answered.
- Make sure enquiries are answered and captured instantly, even out of hours.
- Route qualified trade leads to one person.
For more on which support questions to automate in a store, see the ecommerce support questions AI should handle for you. You can try an assistant on your own store and ask it a trade question to see how it responds, or read about lead capture and other features.