Wholesale
What is a line sheet?
A line sheet is a one-to-two page document that wholesale buyers order from. It lists every product with its SKU, wholesale price and minimum order quantity, grouped by category, with the brand's ordering terms and contact details on the sheet itself. It is an ordering document rather than a sales piece: a lookbook persuades a buyer, and a line sheet is what they place the order from.
The four fields a line sheet cannot omit
- Product name — what the buyer is ordering.
- SKU — what they write on the purchase order.
- Wholesale price — labelled as wholesale, never ambiguous.
- Minimum order quantity — the number that decides whether they can buy at all.
Line sheet, lookbook, catalog, sell sheet and tech pack
These five get used interchangeably and are not interchangeable. Sending the wrong one is the most common reason a buyer goes quiet.
| Document | Purpose | Audience | Contains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line sheet | Placing a wholesale order | Retail buyers | SKU, wholesale price, MOQ, terms |
| Lookbook | Creating desire for the range | Buyers, press, stylists | Photography, styling, minimal copy |
| Catalog | Browsing the full range | Buyers and end customers | Photo, name, price, description by category |
| Sell sheet | Arguing for one product | Buyers, distributors | Benefits, positioning, one product |
| Tech pack | Manufacturing a product | Factories | Measurements, materials, construction |
What is a line sheet?
A line sheet is a one-to-two page document that wholesale buyers order from. It lists every product with its SKU, wholesale price and minimum order quantity, grouped by category, with the brand's ordering terms and contact details on the sheet itself. It is an ordering document rather than a sales piece: a lookbook persuades a buyer, and a line sheet is what they place the order from.
What should a line sheet include?
Every line sheet needs a product name, SKU, wholesale price and minimum order quantity per item. It also needs the brand name, season, ordering terms, lead time and contact details on the sheet itself, because a line sheet gets forwarded away from the email that sent it and has to make sense alone.
Optional but common: available colourways or sizes, case pack quantity, suggested retail price, and a small product image. Anything a buyer would otherwise have to email you to ask belongs on the sheet.
What is the difference between a line sheet and a lookbook?
A lookbook is a visual sales piece built around photography, designed to make a buyer want the range. A line sheet is a dense ordering document built around SKUs, wholesale prices and minimum order quantities, designed to make ordering unambiguous. Buyers browse a lookbook and order from a line sheet, and most brands send both.
What is the difference between a line sheet and a catalog?
A catalog presents the whole range with photography and description, organised by category for browsing, and often runs to dozens of pages. A line sheet compresses the same range into one or two pages optimised for placing an order. A catalog is for looking; a line sheet is for buying.
What is the difference between a line sheet and a sell sheet?
A sell sheet covers one product or one story in a single page, leading with benefits and positioning. A line sheet covers the entire range and leads with SKUs and prices. A sell sheet argues; a line sheet informs.
Should a line sheet show wholesale or retail prices?
Wholesale, clearly labelled as such. Many brands show both so the buyer can see their margin, in which case each column must be unambiguously labelled — an unlabelled price column is the most common cause of a disputed wholesale order.
How do you make a line sheet?
Export your products to a spreadsheet with a column each for name, SKU, wholesale price and minimum order quantity. Group them by category, add your brand name, season and ordering terms, then export to PDF at A4 or US Letter. Starting from a spreadsheet rather than a design file is what makes next season's version a re-export instead of a rebuild.
How do you make a line sheet in Excel or Google Sheets?
Put one product per row with columns for SKU, name, category, wholesale price and minimum order quantity, then print to PDF with the header row repeating on every page. It works, and it is what most small brands actually do — the limitation is that formatting a spreadsheet to look like a document takes longer each season than the data changes.
What file format should a line sheet be?
PDF. It gets forwarded, printed and annotated by buyers, and it renders identically everywhere. A hosted link is a useful addition but a poor substitute, because buyers routinely forward the file to colleagues who will not open a link.
How often should a line sheet be updated?
Every season at minimum, and immediately whenever a price or minimum order quantity changes. A line sheet with an out-of-date price is worse than no line sheet, because a buyer may place an order against it.
How many products should be on a line sheet?
As many as the range holds, at roughly nine to twelve per page. Past about two pages the document is really a catalog, and buyers scanning for a SKU will start missing things — at that point split by category rather than shrinking the type.
Build one now, free
Drop a product CSV in and get a designed, updatable line sheet in your dashboard. Free plan, and re-importing price changes never costs credits.
Open the line sheet maker →