We at FAIRLING know that time is one of the most valuable assets. This is why time-management skills can come in very handy for brand owners doing wholesale. This article features best practices regarding smart time-management recommendations and hands-on tips to maximise your possibilities of success and help you make the most out of your valuable time!

One of the most asked questions by our customers is perhaps: How much time will Fairling require? In other words, many of our customers want to know how much time they will be spending when using our service. Since we are well aware that brand owners are busy bees with too many tasks on their schedule, we understand how essential the topic of time is. So, to make it as simple as possible, we will divide the answer to this question within the different stages of the membership.

For the initial phase of the platform, you should expect to spend approximately 1 or 2 hours to set up your profile. This task depends on various issues including how much of the required profile material you already have. If your brand already has experience doing wholesale and you also have professional visual material for your products such as: lifestyle pictures and a wholesale catalogue, setting up your profile should be a simple and seamless process.

On the other hand, if your brand is newer to wholesale you may require some more time or assistance when setting up your profile. For our customers who are newer to wholesale this can take anything from a couple of hours to a couple of days depending on their existing brand material. (During this process in case you need more time you can pause or delay the start of your membership by writing to our Support Team in advance)

If you are new to wholesale you will benefit greatly from the calls with our Customer Success Team, who will be able to guide you along the way with helpful strategies and wholesale best practices. In this sense, whether you are completely new or have little experience doing wholesale, the time spent at the beginning of your membership on Fairling can be a valuable investment for you as a brand. In our experience, our clients have found this service immensely helpful and have been able to apply what they have learned not just on Fairling but also across the different channels of their brand.

Taking into consideration that Fairling works similarly to a digital trade fair, the brands in our platform go through various stages: These include: Awareness or Introduction, Consideration and finally Purchase. These stages follow the model of the Wholesale Funnel.
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This means that, depending on the membership package you have chosen, the awareness or introduction phase will last approximately 2 to 3 months. During this phase you will be publishing your first advertisements and will also start to see the first interactions with stores.

Even though marketing is not an exact science, on average most of our customers begin noticing their first requests after the third advertisement. This is due to the fact that similar to retail, shop owners usually require several touch points with your brand before deciding to get in touch with you. For this introduction phase, we recommend publishing an advertisement every 2 to 3 weeks and to log in on your account at least 2 to 3 times per week to have a quick look at your dashboard.

Whether you are new or more experienced with wholesale, you can optimise the time spent publishing advertisements by using several features within our platform such as using the Virtual Trade Fair for inspiration when writing advertisements, our schedule ads option, and the buttons designed to recycle your previous target groups among other features.
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You can estimate spending approximately 20-30 min when writing an advertisement and 10-15 minutes when checking your dashboard. Keep in mind that after publishing your first advertisement, this process will become more intuitive and therefore more time-efficient. For more tips on how to further optimise this process you can view the tips at the end of this article.

This stage of your membership, also referred to as consideration, is the phase where you further convince resellers with insightful and persuasive arguments of why they should consider initiating a business cooperation with you. Keep in mind that for stores very often a change of assortment means a certain risk and therefore involves a bigger strategic decision. The best way to do this is to publish appealing advertisements on the recommended time frame and to proactively contact the stores who have interacted with you with well-written sales emails .

As a general tip, remember that even during stressful/busy times it is important to remain active and to continue publishing advertisements.

Generally speaking, during this phase our clients spend less time when publishing advertisements and contacting stores since they have already gained valuable tools to optimise both of these processes.

During this last phase of the wholesale funnel, shop owners will get in touch with you or continue the conversation and hopefully organise an order to purchase your products. Depending on the questions and information required by store owners, this process can require different amounts of time. Generally speaking, you can expect to spend approximately 45 minutes up to an hour per week for these exchanges with stores.

Keep in mind that during this phase it is equally important to continue with your Fairling activities, including publishing advertisements and checking your dashboard, so that even more shops are able to arrive at the final stage and hopefully also purchase your products. In terms of time requirements, you can count on similar amounts to the ones spent during the consideration phase.

Finally, it is important to note that as an Online Personal Wholesale Network with a strong focus on building long-term partnerships, Fairling, can be more time-consuming than other platforms who focus on other aspects. This is due to the fact that in order to build these personal relationships between brands and shops it can take a while until store owners are convinced that your brand is a match for their assortment. However, remember that even though building these partnerships takes time and commitment, it is of tremendous worth for your brand once the partnerships are established. These goes in line with the idea that all good things in life take time to grow!

Lastly, in order to stay organized and make the most out of your membership here are a few tips to make sure you prepared for success: