Distributor vs. Manufacturer direct for adult toy store?
 

I'm opening an adult novelty store ( toys, clothing, DVDs ). I have been approached by a number of distributors that seem to make it very easy for you to sell out of a huge inventory of items.

However, I was wondering if it's worth it in comparission if I was to contact the manufacturers directly.

Some of the distributor stuff that I liked was (1) drop shipping, (2) digital plug-n-play catalog, (3) one stop shop!

Any advice? Thank you so much!

Everybody is contacting me via IM/ICQ so I just wanted to bump my thread :-)

One more bump...

consignment
 

I have an exclusive content site and we just recently started pressing all of our videos and have them retail ready...are you willing to do some consignment? if so email me at [email protected]

huge profit margins for you in consignment

Your distributing, its all pretty simple buy low and sell high. that said you need to evaluate each step of the process to determine what yields the highest ROI for you. Buying from the large warehouse certainly has a lot of advantages but you can expect to pay for those advantages, so part of the questions become is can you do it cheaper (increasing your ROI) and what impact and costs would be involved with maintaining your own inventory. Having owned a business with and inventory in excess of 20,000 items I can tell you hat inventory can very quickly become a dirty word.

Personally unless there were significant profit in touching the inventory directly i would be happy to have someone else responsible for the inventory, shipping, and the staff involved with all of that. :2 cents:

I see. How much of a share do distributors usually eat up?