My First Million

The best business ideas come from noticing what's working and doing it better, faster, or for a different audience.

D2C to Boutique Wholesale Platform

For: Shopify store owners who want to sell wholesale to local boutiques and retailers

Buildability

The Problem

D2C brands struggle to efficiently sell wholesale to small boutiques due to manual processes for discovery, outreach, ordering, and payment management

The Solution

Automated platform that handles boutique discovery, outreach, order management, payments, and analytics for wholesale relationships

Why Now?

More D2C brands hitting scale limits and needing wholesale channels, boutiques looking for unique products not available on Amazon

Build MVP in 7 Days

Day 1

Scrape contact information for 1000 local boutiques

Day 2

Create simple landing page for D2C brands to submit products

Day 3

Manually send introduction emails between 5 brands and 20 boutiques

Day 4

Track response rates and successful connections

Day 5

Build simple order form for successful matches

How to Validate

Survey D2C brands about wholesale pain points and willingness to pay

Cold call boutiques to understand their product sourcing process

Manually broker 10 wholesale relationships to understand requirements

Test different outreach scripts and success rates

Revenue Model

Transaction fees on wholesale orders, subscription fees for platform access, premium features for analytics and automation

Competitive Moat

Network effects between brands and boutiques, proprietary boutique database and contact information

Risks to Consider

Boutiques may prefer existing wholesale channelsHigh touch nature of wholesale relationships may resist automationCredit risk with small boutique businessesSeasonal fluctuations in boutique ordering