Buying wholesale beads isn’t just for people who make jewelry, though those people certainly can benefit from wholesale pricing and availability. Buying beads at good prices can help start a stash of beads for a craft supply section at home or work. The benefits of buying wholesale beads are excellent pricing, wider availability, environmental friendliness and time savings.
Clearly the most important benefit of wholesale beads to most people is the pricing. Individual beads are relatively inexpensive, but marketing and packaging can make the cost jump pretty quickly in a retail setting. With wholesale beads, those factors are eliminated and you can buy the beads directly from their maker. Cutting out those middle-man costs means beads can cost as little as half the price asked in craft and general merchandising stores.
In addition to the lower cost, wholesale bead outlets often have a wider variety of items available than most retailers. With retail stores, some beads will be immensely popular. Pony beads — those tiny, plastic bits that come in a variety of colors — work well for children’s crafts, while letter beads and basic acrylic beads are popular with adult hobbyists. People who are more serious about their beading probably want to find something more original and possibly rarer, which makes wholesaling an attractive option when trying to access the many types of beads not found in average stores.
Packaging that causes the price to go up also can harm the environment, which matters to many people who make handmade crafts. Beads sold at retail outlets come in small plastic bags. These bags often have only a few beads in them. To be more environmentally friendly about a beading hobby or business, consider using wholesale beads, which often come in large boxes. Even if these beads come in plastic bags, the bags are typically thinner and closer to the right size for the number of beads enclosed.
Shipping larger quantities of the beads, as well as traveling to retail stores less often, further reduces the environmental impact of beading. In fact, the whole process of using wholesale beads takes up fewer resources, including less money, less waste and less time. For many bead crafters, time is important, as well, because time spent driving and choosing supplies is time not being spent working. When you buy wholesale beads, you can make single purchases of large quantities, which means you will be able to make more pieces without spending the time to restock supplies.