Selling Ludhiana knitwear and Jalandhar sports goods to dealers in other states

A dealer in Guwahati finds your unit on IndiaMART, asks the rate, and goes silent the moment you send it. A rate alone gives the dealer nothing to act on, and nobody can visit Ludhiana or Jalandhar to feel the fabric or lift the bat. So send three things together, in one WhatsApp message: a catalogue that opens on a phone, a dated rate list, and a sample route, the way the dealer can hold the product before ordering. A rate on its own tends to earn a polite silence.

Why a rate alone gets no reply

A dealer in Nagpur or Guwahati is choosing between you and a wholesaler who can be walked into. The wholesaler shows the goods. You send a column of model numbers and prices.

The dealer cannot compare your price for a fleece sweatshirt with a cheaper one in the local market, and does not know your GSM, your yarn or how your sizes run. So the dealer asks for a catalogue. It arrives the next day as a heavy PDF that will not open on a phone. A request for a sample is answered with an invitation to the factory. By then a supplier who sent everything at once has the order.

Three files in one message can be forwarded in one go, to a partner or a buyer in the shop. A conversation spread over four days cannot.

The three files, and what each must carry

The catalogue. One model or design family per page, sized for a phone. For knitwear, show the yarn, the GSM, the size set, how a dozen is packed in assorted sizes, and the colours per design. Photograph the garment worn as well as folded. For sports goods, give the material, the size or weight, and the grade it is made for: practice, club or match. Add close photographs of the stitching or the grain, because that is what a dealer checks with a thumb.

The rate list. Per piece or per dozen, ex-works your town, GST shown separately, the minimum order, and a validity date at the top. How freight and landed cost should read for a faraway buyer is in our note on quoting a buyer in another state. For knitwear, add the booking date: ask your dealers when they place the winter order, because one reached after booking closes waits until next year.

The sample route. Without it, the other two files are a price for goods nobody has touched.

Pick the sample route before the dealer asks

Decide the route by who the dealer is, not by how keen they sound.

1. A shop asking about more than two or three models gets a sample set by courier. Bill it, and take the full amount off the first order above a quantity you name.
2. If you already have a stockist in another town of the same state, ask whether the new dealer may come and see the range. Never send a dealer to a stockist in the dealer's own town.
3. A dealer asking about private label, or volumes well above your usual order, gets a video call from the factory floor first. A visit comes later, once the numbers are on paper.
4. Someone who wants one piece is not a dealer. Point them to your nearest stockist or your online store, and spend no sample on them.

For knitwear, add a shade card to every sample set. A maroon on a phone screen is not the maroon in the carton, and the dealer is the one facing the customer when it arrives.

The message that carries all three

This works on the ordinary WhatsApp Business app, typed by hand or saved as a quick reply. Fill in the brackets for each dealer.

Namaste (dealer's name) ji. This is (your name) from (unit name), Jalandhar.
You asked about hockey sticks for your shop in (town). Three files are attached:
1. Catalogue: every model, with material, length and weight.
2. Rate list dated (date): per dozen, ex-works Jalandhar, GST separate.
3. Samples: we can courier one stick each of any three models.
   Sticks and courier are billed, and the full amount comes off
   your first order of (quantity) or more.
Which three models should we send?

The last line asks one question the dealer can answer in a word, and moves the conversation from browsing to choosing.

For example: hockey sticks from Jalandhar to a Rourkela dealer

Imagine a Jalandhar unit making wooden and composite hockey sticks. A sports shop in Rourkela, in hockey country, finds it on IndiaMART and asks the price of "composite sticks, 36.5 inch". The details are illustrative.

The unit's executive replies with a rate list of eleven model codes. The dealer asks which suit school teams and which suit academy players. A full catalogue is sent that will not open. Two days later the dealer asks to see a stick and is told to visit Jalandhar any time. The order goes to a Delhi wholesaler.

The unit rebuilt the pack in an afternoon: one page per model, with material, length, weight, bow and the level of player it suits, a dated rate list with a minimum order per dozen, and the sample rule above. The next enquiry from Odisha got all three files within the hour. That dealer chose three models the same evening and paid for the courier, and the first order came after school coaches had handled the sticks. Two other sample sets went out the same month and produced no order. The courier bills for those were the unit's loss.

When not to send the full pack

Screen first. An IndiaMART enquiry with no shop name, no town and no quantity may be a retail buyer or a competitor collecting rates. Ask one question about the shop before the files go out; the same screening is the subject of IndiaMART and marketplace lead management.

Hold back too if you cannot ship to that state at a sensible freight cost. And if yarn prices are moving fast, keep the rate list's validity short instead of padding the price.

Punjab's factories have long sold through dealers (see our Punjab page). What is new is that a dealer three states away decides from a phone.

Open your own pack standing up

Send your three files to a friend's phone and open them standing in a shop doorway, as a dealer would. Time how long the catalogue takes to load. If a model page leaves you guessing the GSM or the weight, or the rate list has no date, that is the first change. When you want the pack, the sample rule and the screening question in place for every new state, with the catalogue handled through brochures, catalogues and marketing materials, tell us what you need.