Anyone sell through Whole Foods?

[paillo]

And if so, what's been your experience? I'm about to apply to be a local vendor, specializing in salt soaps and felted soaps plus an array of essential oil / naturally colored soaps with clays and plant powders. Guessing you need a niche to be successful. What kinds of wholesale percentages do you get? Thanks for any info!

 

[Mildreds.naturals]

Paillo,

I have little experience in distribution of products (being in the service industry most of my life), but my guess is unless you have a very substantial, replicable and consistent product that can be mass produced and delivered to a large number of Whole foods stores, this might hard to do. Does Whole foods allow local vendors for just a handfull of stores? I would think that retailers wouldn't do business with a smaller operation unless they could fill all of their stores with the same product either nationally or regionally. Otherwise a customer in Seattle might not be able to buy the soap they love from a store in Tacoma (35 miles away). What I've heard is Retailers (and other businesses) like consistency of availability of the product and the QUALITY of the product. If you have a large store and are producing a lot of product maybe this could work out well. If you're small, and you are able to get your products in Whole foods, please share! I'd love to put a non-toxic hard water remover i'm working on in their store! Good luck either way

 

[SpiralTouch]

Mildreds.naturals,

This is absolutely not the case with my local Whole Foods (I'm in Ohio)

Funny you posted this, my friend was in the personal care section a few days ago and noticed soap that looked homemade/local. She asked the woman who was ther and in charge of the personal care section and she said yes they were local and they love buying local. My friend got her contact info for me as she was very open to viewing soap to sell there.

I think maybe it varies by whole foods stores, but the ones in my city do sell locally made goods. I don't have any percentage info for you as I have not contacted the woman since I'm not ready to wholesale yet. But I would suggest going into the store and talking to the person in charge of their personal care section

 

[paillo]

My local Whole Foods also has a "Locally Made" section in personal care and encourages local vendors for just that one store. And yes, you're right that they're going to want products that are consistently replicated, high quality and nicely packaged, I'm gonna apply with just a half dozen of mine. Liability insurance is a requirement, of course. Gonna pursue it this week and will let you know how it goes.

 

[SpiralTouch]

My local Whole Foods also has a "Locally Made" section in personal care and encourages local vendors for just that one store. And yes, you're right that they're going to want products that are consistently replicated, high quality and nicely packaged, I'm gonna apply with just a half dozen of mine. Liability insurance is a requirement, of course. Gonna pursue it this week and will let you know how it goes.

Please keep us updated, I'd like to know in case I ever decide to apply there

 

[melstan775]

Good luck paillo! I know whole foods loves to buy local and their resigns tend to be just a handful of stores, so I think it will be totally managable! Let us know how it goes.

 

[ShayShay]

SpriralTouch is correct. One of Whole Foods Market principles is selling locally sourced products when possible. I have lived in three cities across the country in the past three years - NYC, Chicago, Seattle and now back in NYC (don't ask...:smile. I can tell you that they don't all sell the same products other than their own 365 brands. Being a handmade soap addict (and only recently started making my own), I have checked out the handmade soap in all three cities (and in probably 8 different stores). They all sell handmade soap made locally to each location. But usually the same soap in the stores within the given market area. WFM has regional offices that source products for a given market. I shop fairly regularly at three different WFMs in Manhattan and they all sell the same soap made by a couple from NJ. The same with the two I shopped at in Chicago (but of course locally made to Chicago). Unfortunately that also holds true for some of the prepared foods too. The Chicago store sells a quiche (locally made) that is to die for that I still think about. Neither the Seattle or NYC stores sells the same one. It's one of the things that makes Whole Foods so successful - they cater to the local market instead of being cookie cutter all across the country like other retailers. That being said - good luck Paillo! Keep us posted.

 

[Lindy]

When selling wholesale to large stores such as this you need to be giving them a 50% off retail discount and they are going to be looking for $5 million insurance as well as UPC codes bought from GS1. I've just gone through this with a large chain up here in Canada.

It is a little costly to initially get started, but so worth it. Contact your local Whole Foods and then find out which store does the buying for their region. From there you will need to contact the buyer to pitch to.

Good luck!

 

[carvan]

we looked into selling at Wegman and Whole Foods. The above posters are correct...Whole Foods is all about letting local merchants sell products at their locations. Wegmans on other hand is more corporate and all paperwork is filed to NYC for consideration. Whole Foods interaction is set up locally level. We too will be submitting within next 12 months.

 

[lra]

I was looking for selling my products at Whole Foods a couple days ago. They do have quality standards, list of 400 unacceptable ingredients (Emu oil, mineral oil, castor oil, tallow are some of the unacceptable ingredients). They also have a strict rule for organic labeling. Unless your products are certified by USDA National Organic Standards or NSF/ANSI 305, no "organic" word is allowed on the packaging. Here is the link:
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/about-our-products/quality-standards

 

[paillo]

I still haven't gotten to actually applying with them. Bleh - $5 million liability insurance - I only have $1 million but could easily up that. Bleh - no castor oil? Wonder why...

 

[Lindy]

They really are incredibly fussy!

 

[Nevada]

No castor, $5m insurance, almost as silly as there no plastic bag policy

 

[Lindy]

Actually it's not Castor Oil that is unacceptable it is castor oil/IPDI copolymer which is different again.http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ingredient/701160/CASTOR_OIL;;_IPDI_COPOLYMER/ It is more the derivatives of the oil that is being found unacceptable...

 

[christinak]

I wish I had a Whole Foods around here....that would be such a cool thing to pursue.

 

[SudsyKat]

Paillo - I would love to know how this went for you. My neighbor works at Whole Foods and suggested that I try to get in the door as a local seller. Thanks!

 

[melstan775]

the castor plant makes both castor oil and ricin. I'm going to go with this is a "just in case" one because there's no antidote to ricin, so a contaminated batch of castor oil is certain death.

 

[Lindy]

Melstan they are not banning castor oil.... Eucalyptus can kill you within minutes if mishandled but it is not banned either....