Back from the show
A small-batch preserves company comes home from a gift show in Atlanta with forty business cards and eleven buyers who want to see more. Each of them wants the same three things: the line sheet with wholesale prices and case packs, the order minimum, and when the fig jam will be back.
Building the line sheet means copying photos and prices into a design file, again, because three prices changed since spring. The independent stores get one sheet, the regional chain gets another with its own prices, and the distributor in the UK gets a third in pounds.
Meanwhile the first reorders arrive by email, by phone and through Faire, and somebody has to make sure the stock they promise is the stock that exists.
Where wholesale gets stuck
Retail sells one jar at a time. Wholesale sells forty at once, on terms, to someone who will remember a broken promise.
- The line sheet is always a version behind. It was made by hand, so it is out of date the day a price changes.
- Prices live in people’s heads. Which buyer gets which price, at what quantity, is in an email thread from last year.
- Orders come in five ways. Email, phone, Faire, a buyer’s portal and the big chain’s EDI, each typed into the system by someone.
- Terms nobody follows up. Net 30 becomes net 60 when nobody sends the statement.
What changes in Keelvy
Line sheets from the catalog
Build a print-ready PDF and a spreadsheet of your products at a wholesale price list, with your look and terms. Send a link instead, with a password and an expiry, and a separate link for each buyer. Change a price and the next sheet is right.
A price for each buyer
Assign a price list to a customer for each currency, with quantity breaks and rounding to the endings you use. Their orders and their storefront prices come from it.
A wholesale storefront
Open a storefront for trade customers behind a sign-in, a password or a secret link, and hide wholesale prices from the public. Buyers reorder themselves, at their own prices.
Faire and EDI retailers
Faire orders arrive in the same list as every other order. A US retailer that orders over EDI becomes a channel: its purchase orders arrive as draft orders, and the acknowledgment, ship notice and invoice go back.
Dates you can keep
Each line of a confirmed order gets a date from real stock and planned supply, so the answer to “when can you ship?” comes from the plan, not from hope.
Terms, statements and reps
Record payment days and a credit limit for each customer and send a statement of what they owe. Record the commission each sales rep keeps and see it accrue on every order. Goods placed with a retail partner on consignment are followed through the partner’s own sales reports.
Example: an opening order from a regional chain
A chain of nine gift stores wants an opening order of the fig, plum and apricot jams, 12 jars to a case, on net 30.
- The sales manager sets up the chain as a customer with its own price list, 8% below the standard wholesale list, and net 30 terms.
- A line sheet link at that price list goes to the buyer the same afternoon, with a password and a two-week expiry.
- The buyer orders 36 cases. Keelvy dates the fig jam lines from next week’s production and the other two from stock on hand.
- The invoice is issued under the brand’s own number when the order ships, and goes to QuickBooks. At day 25 the buyer gets a statement.
The result. The first order of a new account, sent with a date that holds, at the price that was agreed, without a design file or a spreadsheet.
What Keelvy does not do
- It is not a CRM. It keeps customers, their terms and their orders, and can send them to the CRM your sales team already uses.
- It does not find buyers for you. It makes the follow-up after the trade show take an afternoon instead of a week.
- It does not set terms in your contracts. It records the terms you agreed and reminds the buyer of them.
