How To Set Up Your Own Wholesale Marketplace

A wholesale marketplace is a centralized venue where wholesale buyers and sellers can meet. There are many benefits to setting up and running a wholesale marketplace, such as rental income from vendors, profit sharing opportunities, advertising revenue, and admission ticket revenue.

Your first step in the process of launching a wholesale marketplace is to research and address any legal requirements, such as obtaining the proper licenses and abiding by the necessary regulations. 

Once you have worked on this crucial step, you will want to ensure that you have a location that is both accessible, and comfortable, for both wholesale buyers and sellers. Ease of transportation, even in the days of Uber and Lyft, are important. You will also want to locate your market in close proximity to lodging, preferably near a brand name hotel such as a Marriott or Holiday Inn hotel.

Next, you will want to run the numbers carefully. You need to make sure that you can recoup the cost of buying or leasing the location for your market. You can estimate the expected the revenues by analyzing how much space you have available to rent out, how much you can rent that space for, how much advertising you can sell at your location (ex: by renting billboards), and how many admission tickets you can sell, and at what price you can sell those admission tickets for. You also need to include in your numbers all other types of expenses that you can incur, such as labor, electricity, and insurance. 

The fastest way to generate attention for your marketplace is through paid advertising, such as using Google Adwords, Facebook pay per click ads, and trade publication advertising. You can also use free, or low cost, advertising methods such as YouTube videos and article writing.

You might consider setting up your own booth at the location, this way you can sell your own wholesale products to visitors.

If the costs, and challenges, of launching a marketplace seem too daunting, you can instead create an online platform that will serve as a meeting place for buyers and sellers.

You can go the brick and mortar route, by setting up a marketplace similar to the Fulton Fish Market in New York, or you can go the online route by setting up a website using similar business models such as the ones used by WholesaleCentral.com by Sumner Communications, or TopTenWholesale.com by JP Communications.