Wholesale Line Sheets For Home And Gift Brands

Home and gift is the category where paperwork does the most work, because it is the category most likely to be bought at a show. A buyer walks a floor at AmericasMart, NY NOW, Dallas Market Center or Las Vegas Market, sees two hundred booths in three days, and goes home with a bag of paper. Whatever you handed them has to still make sense on a Thursday afternoon two weeks later, in an office, next to nineteen other brands' line sheets.

What A Home And Gift Buyer Is Actually Looking For

The questions come in a predictable order, and a good line sheet answers them in that order without being asked.

• What is it and what does it look like. Home and gift is a visual category. A product name without a photo is a product a buyer cannot picture on their own shelf, and a product they cannot picture is a product they do not order.
• What does it cost me and what do I sell it for. Both numbers, on the same line, every time. Most gift retailers work to keystone, meaning they double the wholesale price. If your MSRP is not exactly double, say so plainly rather than making them do arithmetic and wonder whether you made a mistake.
• How many come in a case. Case pack is not a detail in this category, it is the whole shape of the order. A buyer with four feet of shelf needs to know whether committing to your candle means six units or twenty-four.
• What is your minimum and what does reordering look like. Opening order minimum, reorder minimum, and the freight threshold. A buyer deciding between two brands at the same price point will choose the one whose terms they can find.

Why Ranges Matter More Here Than Anywhere Else

Home and gift brands tend to sell in collections: a scent family, a colourway, a seasonal story. Buyers rarely take one SKU out of a range, they take a range and cut it down. That means the document has to hold a range together visually, so a buyer can see that these six pieces belong on a table together, while still letting them scratch out two of the six.

A line sheet that sorts alphabetically by product name destroys that. Sorting by range, with a clear break between ranges, is the difference between a buyer editing your collection and a buyer rebuilding it.

The Documents This Category Uses

The trade show one-sheet. The single page that leaves the booth. Three products, your terms in one strip, your booth number, and nothing else. This is the document most home and gift brands do not have and most need first.

The line sheet. The ordering document. Every SKU, every case pack, both prices, sorted by range.

The catalog. For brands with enough range to justify it. This is the one that lives on a desk through a season and gets passed to a second buyer in the same office.

The order form. The document that turns a maybe into a purchase order. If a buyer has to build their own spreadsheet to order from you, some of them will simply not bother.

Where To Start

If you are walking a show and you have nothing, start with the Buyer Welcome Packet with the trade show one-sheet. If you have a range and no line sheet, the free one-page line sheet costs nothing and will tell you within ten minutes whether these files are built the way you want your files built.

If you have a deadline and no time, the Line Sheet Build at $190 is one document built for you from your own spreadsheet in four days. The full kits cover the rest.

Download the Studio Catalog (8-page PDF)

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