Wholesale Handler
The year is two peaks and a long flat middle
Four seasons carried 63% of US confectionery sales in 2025, against a $55 billion total, in the National Confectioners Association's 2026 State of Treating. The winter holidays and Halloween sit near 18% each, Valentine's Day and Easter at 13% each. A creamery or a roaster sells roughly the same catalogue every week of the year; a chocolatier sells a different one three or four times.
Putting a seasonal range up and taking it down
Seasonal products stay in the catalogue all year rather than being deleted and re-entered. Outside their window they are closed to ordering, tagged with a reason, and carry a merchant-written note that shows to customers where the order button would be. The window can be left open-ended, which is the honest state for a range that will return but has no date yet, and a stockist can ask to be emailed the moment one product becomes orderable. Stock quantity tracking is optional per product, so a limited run of four hundred boxes stops taking orders when it is gone.
Easter needs that dated window rather than a repeating one. It falls on any Sunday from 22 March to 25 April - 28 March in 2027, 16 April in 2028 - so the window shifts by three weeks between consecutive years. Recurring seasonal availability repeats the same calendar dates every year, which suits a fixed-date season instead: a Valentine's range opening in December and closing in early February stays correct without being touched.
Per-stockist pricing across gift shops, delis and department stores
Price lists are named and assigned per customer, set either as explicit prices or as a percentage off the base with rounding controls, so a whole tier moves in one update. A separate storefront price list controls which products and prices appear publicly, which keeps trade rates off a page a consumer can read.
Cocoa has moved violently - over $12,000 a tonne at the late-2024 peak, around $3,100 in March 2026, back over $5,000 by late July - and makers hedge months ahead, so the same box carries a different price next season. When a price has changed in the last thirty days, the order form shows the old one struck through beside the new one, so a stockist sees the change while ordering rather than on the invoice. How to charge different prices to different wholesale customers covers how the tiers are structured.
Setting a minimum that makes a small stockist worth packing
Published chocolatier minimums cluster low: $100 excluding shipping is common in the US, €150 a typical European figure. The minimum is what makes a two-case order worth the box, the packing time and the cold pack.
Minimum spend lives on an order profile alongside the delivery charge, and a profile is assigned to customers rather than set one at a time, so a change to the small-account tier reaches everyone on it at once. An order below the line is refused as it is placed. Set and enforce a minimum order value in wholesale covers where the line usually sits.
Lead times are a production slot, not a pick from stock
Published wholesale terms give the range: about five business days for bars and tablets, ten for hand-finished work outside holiday periods, Christmas orders closed by 1 October with the holiday book opening in August.
An order profile carries the cutoff - how much warning is needed before each delivery day - along with a maximum lead time, the delivery days the account can pick from, and global blackout dates. The cutoff can be set once for the profile or vary by day, so a Monday dispatch closes on Friday lunchtime while a Thursday one stays open until Tuesday night. How to set wholesale order cutoffs for a peak season covers tightening those dates for a run. Orders then consolidate into a production schedule, so the make list is the sum of what was ordered rather than a forecast.
Summer is a shipping constraint, not a quiet month
Chocolate softens well below its melt point: one packaging guide puts best condition at 50-70°F with softening from about 72°F, and cocoa butter is fully liquid between 93 and 101°F. Published policies handle it three ways - a temperature trigger holding shipment above 85°F at origin or destination, a seasonal pause taking heat-sensitive lines off the list for July and August, and a dispatch-day rule holding anything ordered after midweek until the following Monday so no parcel sits in a depot over a weekend.
All three are order-profile settings. Delivery days control which days a stockist can pick, the per-day cutoff enforces the midweek hold, blackout dates cover a shutdown, and an availability window with a note removes the lines that cannot travel.
A marketplace and a private portal are not the same purchase
A marketplace brings new stockists, and a private portal does not. Wholesale Handler finds nobody. What it removes is the take on relationships already held, which is the reasoning behind Faire's own 0% Faire Direct rate for retailers a brand brings itself. On a seasonal business a percentage bites hardest when volume peaks, while a flat fee is the same in August as in December. Flat-fee wholesale ordering software sets out the economics.
At the other end sit bakery and confectionery ERP systems, priced as a monthly base plus a charge for every extra sign-in, and Shopify's B2B, where unlimited price-list catalogues need the enterprise tier and the plans below cap at three.
What Wholesale Handler does not do
- No deposits and no prepayment. An order becomes an invoice; the customer declares a payment and the wholesaler confirms or disputes it. There is no card capture, so a pre-order cannot be secured with money up front.
- No recipe costing, allergen or nutrition labelling, no lot traceability. The catalogue holds finished goods.
- No carrier integration, shipping labels or temperature logic. The portal records the delivery date and the terms.
- No discovery. The customer list is the one already held, imported from a spreadsheet.
