Selling on CREOATE: How Does it Work?

Welcome to CREOATE! We’re a wholesale marketplace designed to help independent businesses thrive. 

We’re helping over 6,000 brands sell their products directly to independent retailers across the UK, Europe and the US. But how does selling on CREOATE work? 

Join us as we unpack what it means to be a seller on CREOATE, and how each part of the process works: from signup and verification, to processing your first order, and beyond. 

Who can sell on CREOATE? 

The brands that sell wholesale on CREOATE come in all different shapes and sizes; from individual makers, to international operations. It’s why independent retailers love shopping with us — there really is something for everyone.

That said, there are a few things we look for in brands selling on our platform: 

• A minimum of five distinct products (so not, say, the same product in five different colours) 
• Not selling any non-permitted products (see list below)
• Sufficient margins (the wholesale price (WSP) should be no more than 40-70% of the recommended retail price (RRP), depending on the category)  
• A business email domain (so something like hello@yourbusiness.com, rather than yourbusiness@gmail.com) 

📚 Bookmark for later: Setting Your Wholesale Pricing Strategy [Including Suggested Margins]

Non-permitted products

We don’t allow the following products on CREOATE:

‘Prescription or pharmacy-only medicine, gambling-related products, cash prizes, charity raffles, marijuana businesses & any products containing CBD or THC, large furniture, large tech devices (such as electric bikes and scooters), unlicensed/copied products, regulated or age-restricted items (with the exception of alcohol, which is permitted), including tobacco, e-cigarettes, and e-liquid.’

We still carefully evaluate each brand, so there will be a slight delay between creating your store and it appearing on our site. We’ll give you a heads-up via email when we have approved your store, or we’ll let you know why we haven’t been able to approve it. 

👋 Not part of the CREOATE community yet? Start selling through us today.

Getting your store set up 

Here’s what we need to get your store set up and approved on CREOATE: 

• Some basic contact & business information 
• Details of five distinct, permitted products (see above) 
• A short store description (around 200 words) 
• A banner image (2000px by 375px, with a file size under 1MB)
• A square logo image (minimum 200px x 200px or larger for best quality, with a file size under 1MB)  

Paper Plane's digital storefront is set up to be both inviting and interesting to potential stockists 

We’ve written a couple of thorough guides to optimising your store, and uploading products according to discovery best practice, so we won’t go into loads of detail on this here, but keep those handy for later. 

📚 Bookmark for later: Best Practices for Getting Your Products Found on CREOATE

📚 Bookmark for later: How to Optimise Your CREOATE Store

Payment and commission explained

CREOATE takes a commission on most orders that are placed through our platform. There are no joining or ongoing fees; if you don’t get any orders, there’s nothing to pay. 

Here’s how much commission you’ll pay depending on the order type:

• 20% on first-time orders (so the first time a retailer places an order with you) 
• 15% on reorders (when retailers place their second or more order from you)
• 0% on orders from your ‘referred retailers’ (orders from retailers you bring to the platform) 

📚 Bookmark for later: Everything You Need to Know About Referrals

You’ll receive payment from us within 30 days of fulfilling your order. To make sure you’re paid smoothly and without delay...

• Make sure you update the status of your order as soon as possible (you need to manually mark it as Fulfilled when it’s shipped, as well as add the tracking info)
• Go to Settings > Payment within your dashboard and make sure all your payment details are filled in and up to date 

Avoid payment delays by making sure your payment details are always kept up to date

👉 Find out more: Payment FAQs

Processing and shipping your orders 

Great news! When you sell through CREOATE, you pay nothing for shipping your order. We even come and collect it from you.  

Here’s how it works: 

• When an order comes in (you’ll get an email to notify you), check you’re able to fulfil it as expected. You can check on your orders here. 
• If you can fulfil the order, accept it by changing the status from Pending Approval to Processing. If you can’t, propose an order modification to your retailer (you can do this within the order itself), or cancel the order if you can’t fulfil it at all.
• Get the order ready as quickly as possible, request a shipping label & book a collection time. There’s a button for this within the order itself.
• Once shipped, mark the order as Fulfilled and add the shipping information where requested.

👉 Find out more: Shipping FAQs

Nailing your cross-border settings

Cross-border sales (i.e. sales where you and your buyer are based in different countries) make up around 35% of all CREOATE orders right now, but it’s a number that’s growing quickly. 

Here are the cross-border options that are currently available (more are in the works — watch this space!): 

Retailers love that they can use us to access brands from different countries as easily as buying from more local ones. 

But not all brands are set up to facilitate this. Here are a few steps to make sure you are:

1. Add your EORI number (under Settings > Store) 
2. Add an HS code for each of your products here (click the three dots next to each product)
3. If you’re selling to Germany, have your Lucid ID ready for the shipping label 
4. Make sure you haven’t restricted any countries you do want to ship to here
   
   

From Stockholm to Seattle: open your products up to stockists far and wide

Communicating with your buyers 

At CREOATE, we think it’s super important that retailers are able to reach out to brands they’re looking to shop wholesale from. It’s the most efficient way for them to get any clarifications they need, and also gives you the chance to build a great working relationship with each other. 

We expect the brands selling through CREOATE to respond to messages promptly and professionally, ideally within 24 hours (but the sooner, the better!). 

Once a retailer has placed an order with you, you are also able to reach out to them directly from within the messaging tool in your dashboard. This is a great way to build a rapport, and keep them updated on their order (although they’ll get some automated notifications too as it moves through the various stages).  

We also have an email marketing tool which you can use to keep your store’s CREOATE followers and previous customers updated with new releases. Check it out here. 

How to get in touch with us

We’re here to help you succeed. After all, when you grow, you grow! 

Our friendly customer success team is always on hand to help. Simply reach out to them via live chat. Our agents are available Monday to Friday 09:00am - 06:00pm GMT, but if it’s outside of these hours, leave a message anyway and they’ll get back to you ASAP. It's also worth checking out our FAQs to see if your question is already covered there.  

Aside from our brilliant customer success team, when you join the CREOATE seller community, you can expect: 

• A monthly newsletter with the latest platform insights and advice 
• Regular webinars to help you get the most out of CREOATE

👋 We can’t wait to see you selling on CREOATE! Sign up here and let’s make this your brand’s best year yet.