456 | 690 Wholesale Accounts and We Still Found Money Left on the Table, Case Study with Rachel O’Neill, Loftipop

Thirteen years in business. Nearly 700 wholesale accounts. And the biggest shift Rachel O'Neill made this year was admitting her wholesale business was being run like a D2C channel.

If you started in direct-to-consumer and layered wholesale on top, this episode will feel familiar. Rachel came into Paper Camp with a thriving business at Loftipop and left with major enhancements: separate pricing logic, a leaner product line, and a strategy built around the retailers she already has.

In this episode, you'll learn:

Why wholesale is not an extension of your D2C business — it's a separate model with its own pricing, margins, and rules
How Loftipop added 60 accounts in the 6 months after Paper Camp, growing from 690 to about 750
Why Rachel discontinued SKUs that were still selling — and why she felt "so much lighter" afterward
How to run channel-by-channel margin math before keeping a product in your wholesale catalog
What it looks like to nurture current retailers — email outreach, direct mail, and consistent touchpoints — instead of only chasing new accounts
How staying open to change, 13 years in, became the shift that moved her whole business forward

From the episode:

"The biggest takeaway is that your wholesale business is not D2C. We came into wholesale thinking it was just an extension of our D2C... it's actually a whole separate business model and strategy." — Rachel O'Neill

"If you're serious about wholesale, it's 100% worth the investment. In terms of numbers, we've already made our money back and more." — Rachel O'Neill

About Rachel:

Rachel O'Neill is the owner of Loftipop, where she and her team design and print fun, unique gifts and apparel. Thirteen years into business, Loftipop serves roughly 750 wholesale accounts alongside its direct-to-consumer channel.

PAPER CAMP

Today's episode is brought to you by our Paper Camp program. Paper Camp is our wholesale coaching program where we teach you everything you need to know to build strong wholesale foundations. Over the course of 4 weeks, we tackle your product line, sales tools, and marketing plan, and we even talk about how to exhibit at trade shows if that's what you want to do. We start with your product line and go into everything from how often you should be releasing new products to ensuring that your numbers are sustainable for the wholesale market and their price for profit.

Then we move into sales tools you must have for selling wholesale so you make a strong first impression with buyers like catalogs and your terms and conditions. Then, we cover marketing strategies and ways to reach various store owners.

Each week's teachings build on the previous week, and we host weekly live, engaging coaching calls to answer all of your questions. We will open enrollment for our next round of Paper Camp soon, and we sell this program out every time we run it. Join the waitlist, and you’ll get early access to enroll.

Connect with Katie Hunt

Katie Hunt is a business strategist, podcaster, mentor and mama to four. She helps product based businesses build profitable, sustainable companies through her conferences, courses and coaching programs.

Website: prooftoproduct.com | Instagram: @prooftoproduct