Mixed pallet
Mixed pallet — One shipment carrying several SKUs at small quantities of each. Priced per unit it is always the more expensive way to buy; what the premium actually purchases is information — which SKUs move in your specific point of sale, measured in your own sales rows instead of someone else's market report.
Single-SKU depth
Single-SKU depth — Buying one proven seller deep enough to reach the next price break. The unit economics improve on paper, but the working capital sits in one product's fate: it sells through at plan or it becomes the discount table, and there is no third outcome.
| First order at a new point of sale | mixed, wide, shallow — the assortment is the experiment |
|---|---|
| Second order of anything | whatever your own shelf data picked, bought deeper |
| Seasonal or trend items | mixed regardless of order number; depth is a luxury for staples |
| Staples with proven turns | single SKU at price break; this is where margin actually lives |
| When a supplier pushes depth on first order | read the push as their inventory problem, not your opportunity |
The first order is an experiment, and experiments need width
Every wholesale relationship starts with a disagreement you cannot talk your way out of: the supplier’s market view versus your shelf’s behaviour. A wide, shallow mixed pallet is the instrument that settles it locally — several SKUs, small quantities of each, all arriving together. Expect the supplier’s best seller to underperform your surprise runner, expect some SKUs to be dead weight, and price those outcomes as the tuition of a class you now teach yourself instead of anyone’s seminar.
Depth is earned, and it earns
After two or three turnover cycles your sales rows have an opinion, and the second-order move is mechanical: kill the tails, double the winners, and take a price break on the one or two SKUs that proved themselves. From here on the catalogue inverts — the supplier’s discounts stop being bait and start being arithmetic, because you are now buying their production efficiency with your own proven demand.
Why do suppliers discount single-SKU orders so hard?
Because your depth is their planning clarity: one SKU, one lot, one run — production, packing and export paperwork all get cheaper, and part of that saving is real and honestly shared. The discipline is taking the discount only on SKUs your own sell-through has already proven, so their planning certainty comes from your sales, not your optimism.
Is a mixed pallet always a worse unit price?
Per unit, yes — and the comparison people forget is the one against unsold stock. A SKU bought at the discount that does not move in six months cost more than the same SKU bought shallow at a premium, because the discounted one ties up shelf, cash and attention the whole time. Price per unit is one line of the invoice; cost of the capital sitting on your floor is the line nobody prints.