Q: How do you make your money? Do I have to pay HomeRoots a commission on sales?
A: No, we do not take commission off your sales. We do not sell direct on our site to the customer. We have a gated community of business and trade customers that we take a small mark on the price you give us that we offer wholesale pricing too.
Q: What about MAP Pricing?
A: We are a wholesale provider, so MAP does not apply as we are not marketing directly to the consumer. However, if you have a MAP that you would like us adhered to, please advise and will work to see that it is followed. We carry over a hundred thousand items from hundreds of factories, and this has not been an issue.
Q: What about Freight?
A: We pay for the freight on ALL orders. We will give you pre-paid FedEx or UPS labels and packing slips for you to apply to the parcel able items. If larger orders require truck delivery, we arrange that as well and send in our carrier to pick up.
Q: Do you have a portal? How do I receive orders?
A: Yes, we take pride in having a supplier friendly / DIY portal that is easy to navigate. On this portal you can see or do just about everything from uploading new items, pulling in your daily orders (they also come to you via email), update your inventory, and submit price changes for both everyday drop ship pricing, bulk unit pricing, and submit promotional (limited time frame pricing).
Q: How often do you require inventory updates? Can I automate inventory synching?
A: We recommend inventory updates daily. Some suppliers update multiple times a day, and some find it necessary to update only 1x or 2x a week. We can handle all types of automation for inventory updates including API, FTP, and ultimately EDI if the business needs and volume validate the expense and effort for both our teams.
Q: Who do you sell to? Who is your largest customer?
A: We don’t disclose our customers per se, but I can tell you that our largest and fastest growing segment is our small business channel that includes everyone from designers, to spas, real estate, dental offices, and small mom & pop retailers and e-commerce.
Q: What about Returns? How do you handle returns?
A: HomeRoots has a no physical returns policy. Unfortunately returns are a fact of life and a cost of doing business, particularly in e-commerce. As a service to our suppliers, we will set you up with a returns accrual allowance to be taken off invoice and not send you goods back. This allowance will cover all types of returns including buyers’ remorse. The allowance % will be reviewed quarterly and adjusted up or down based on actual results. Our intention is not to make money on this accrual, but for HomeRoots not to lose money by managing your returns either. Exceptions to the accrual are orders that are shipped incorrectly by supplier or with missing parts. You are expected to ship A grade goods accurately with all the necessary parts and pieces. It is expected that you ship replacements for wrong items shipped or missing parts within 48 hours of notification.
Q: How do I get paid?
A: HomeRoots terms are Net 30. We pay consistently and on time through bill.com.
Q: Do you bring inventory into your warehouse?
A: HomeRoots does purchase and warehouse some items, however this only happens if sales dictate. We do not stock any new items and our volume threshold for warehouse consideration is $500k/item on an annual basis.
Q: Do you ever have bulk orders, or will all the orders be onesies, twosies through drop ship?
A: HomeRoots will indeed have bulk orders from time to time. We also facilitate container orders. However, the majority of our orders, with most suppliers are drop ship with 1-6 units on them, going to a customer’s home or business address. We encourage you to take advantage of our two versions of cost pricing with a cost for drop ship, and a cost for bulk orders with the minimum quantity needed to achieve the bulk price break. Offering a small bulk price break will incentivize the small businesses to increase their order size when possible. If we need larger bulk or container quantities for a customer, we will reach out to get quote.
Q: How will my brand be represented on your platform?
A: Our main platform does not call out any brand name other than ours. All items are marketed as HomeRoots brand. As part of this offering, your items will undergo extensive re-marketing that provides them with a new sku, new upc, new title, description, bullets and some imagery, including lifestyle imaging.
Q: What is required of me for your white labeling? Do I have to create new packaging?
A: Our “white-label” process is purely marketing. There is nothing that you need to do other than use our provided pre-paid shipping label and packing slip.
Q: Will customers get upset or confused if they order from HomeRoots but receive my branded package?
A: No, we have proven from experience that this to be a non-issue. HomeRoots has been operating this way for almost 5 years and has received only a handful of questions. It is becoming more and more common and widely accepted in the marketplace for retailers to use white label branding.
Q: What if I want my brand represented on your site?
A: In addition to our HomeRoots offerings, we offer as a service to our suppliers the option for you to have an invite only branded store front on our site. This allows you to invite your current or inquiring customers via referral to shop your products on our site. They will be taken to your branded page with all your skus and content just as you submitted it, where they can add to cart and check out. We will process the orders with the rest of HomeRoots daily order submittals to you, so you still get the order without the hassle of having to set up a new customer, provide customer service or reconcile payments with that customer. As a bonus, we provide a referral commission to you for any orders your referred customers place via HomeRoots (your own products or even other items) for two whole years. If you are interested in more information on the referral program and your branded storefront, we are happy to set up a meeting to review your options.
Q: How do I get started?
A: You simply register as a supplier on our site. Your brand will go through a quick validation and once approved, you will be able to set up your portal and begin uploading items to be marketed for sale.
Q: Do I have to list single units or can I list case packs?
A: You can list items however you would like them presented and can list in multiple configurations. If you want to offer an item as a single, you set it up that way and price it that way. If you want to offer an item as case pack or set you can do that too as a separate sku. For example, we have a 5pc Bedroom Set, sold together as all 5 pieces and priced for the 5 pieces in the set. Those same pieces can also be sold individually so if someone only wants the bed, they can buy that ala carte. This is up to you. If you want to offer a single pillow but offer the same style in a set of 4 you can do that as well, each has its own sku and corresponding price.
Q: Are you able to offer personalization?
A: We are not currently offering this service but have it as a possibility for the future.
Q: Do you carry fashion items? This means clothing, handbags, shoes, jewelry.
A: We do not currently carry these types of items as we have kept our scope limited to Home Décor and Furnishings. We may, however, open up to additional categories in the future.
Q: Will we have an account manager or actual person that we can deal with at HomeRoots?
A: Yes. You have a team of real people 7 days a week that will be available as support to help with any onboarding or order questions you may have.
Q: Can you accept our items if we do not have lifestyle photos?
A: Yes, as long as you can provide us a high-quality white background silhouette image, we can create a lifestyle image for you.
Q: Do you want to look through my catalog to pick what you would like to feature?
A: We defer to you on what you recommend getting started with. We have an extremely diversified customer base and sell products in all categories, genres, and price ranges. Customers come to us often for our breadth of assortment, so we typically encourage the more styles added the better, but we suggest starting with your core competencies.
Q: My product line is at the higher end. Does that concern you?
A: We offer a wide range of items and have success in all price tiers ranging from good, better, and best items. We sell items that are $25.00, and we sell items that are $2500 so better goods and higher price points do not scare us off. All we ask is that our cost price is competitive as a wholesaler. In some cases, we even tend to do better with higher price point items as they are often well suited to e-commerce that is able to tell the story of the high-quality materials and craftsmanship.
Q: We have products in multiple warehouses. Which would you like to get started with?
A: We love that you have products in multiple locations and actually prefer the multi-warehouse model. We encourage you to add each of your warehouses into your profile and upload your inventory indicating the units available by sku by location. Our system will direct orders to the closest warehouse you show inventory based on the order destination.
Q: Our items change frequently. How do we handle this?
A: This is easily handled with your inventory feed. You can upload discontinued items and add new items 24/7.
Q: What about closeouts – do you buy into closeout inventory?
A: No, we do not typically buy inventory. However, we are happy to run promotions as deep as you want, for as long as you want, on a drop-ship basis. If you end up selling out for whatever reason, all you must do is zero out the inventory upload as discontinued.