---
title: How to sell a seasonal glut through wholesale accounts
Metadescription: Clearing a seasonal glut through existing wholesale accounts - pricing it to displace, bounding the window, and why standing orders will not pick it up.
author: Dan Edwards
author_role: Founder
author_url: https://danedwardsdeveloper.com
author_linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-edwards-developer
published: 2026-08-26
---

Token estimate: ~1,000

# How to sell a seasonal glut through wholesale accounts

A glut is a short window with too much of one thing in it. Selling it through accounts you already have is faster than finding new buyers, but it needs three things done in the right order - a price low enough to displace something already on their order, an end date set before you forget, and a message, because nothing about a glut reaches a customer on its own.

By **[Dan Edwards](https://wholesalehandler.com/about)**, Founder.

## Price it to displace, not to clear

A trade customer has a fixed amount of money and a fixed amount of shelf. Your surplus courgettes are not competing with nothing, they are competing with whatever they would otherwise have bought that week.

That sets the price. Cheap enough to be worth changing an order for, which is a bigger discount than it feels like it should be, and it is the reason a small reduction moves nothing. If the number does not beat what they already had planned, the glut sits.

## You probably do not need a new price list

The instinct is to build a temporary [price list](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-price-lists-work-on-wholesale-handler) for the offer. Usually you do not. In Wholesale Handler a product carries a price on every list, so adding the glut product and pricing it low on your Default reaches everybody, which for a clearance is the point.

A separate list is worth it only when the cheap price should go to some customers and not others - one buyer taking the whole crop at a rate you do not want the rest to see. That is a real case, and it is a different job from clearing a surplus.

## Set the end date before you forget it

Bound the product while you still know the dates. Wholesale Handler sets availability as the periods a product is **not** for sale, so give the glut line a window starting the day the crop finishes, with a note your customers see.

Doing it at setup rather than afterwards is what stops a July line still being orderable in October. It is a five-second job now and a support message later.

## Standing orders will not pick it up

A [standing order](https://wholesalehandler.com/articles/how-standing-orders-work-on-wholesale-handler) repeats the lines it was set up with. A new product is not added to anybody's repeat order, so a customer on a weekly standing order will not see the glut unless you tell them.

That is the step people miss. Listing the product is not the offer, telling people is. Wholesale Handler emails each customer a preview of their standing order three days before it places, which is a useful moment to catch them, because they are already looking at next week's lines.

## Q&A

**Q: If I drop the price again mid-week, do placed orders change?**
A: No. Wholesale Handler fixes the price onto each line the moment an order is placed, so a further reduction applies only to orders made after it. Existing orders keep what they were placed at, and so do the invoices behind them.

**Q: What happens to the glut line when the crop runs out early?**
A: Mark it unavailable from that date. Wholesale Handler drops the line from any standing order due afterwards and reports the drop, rather than ordering something you cannot supply.

**Q: Is it worth putting the surplus on my storefront instead?**
A: Only for reaching people who are not customers yet, and it is slower. A Wholesale Handler storefront shows your products but takes no orders, and a new trade account rarely opens fast enough to catch a two-week window. Existing accounts are where a glut clears.