correct me if I'm wrong (I'm curoius about this, but everyone seems
kinda vague on the details), but I think that there are two different
types of wholesale agreements that bike projects might have with QBP.
Some of us have striaght up wholesale priviledges and some of us have a
special thing worked out for non-profits. The non-profit status makes
it easier to get the initial QBP account, but there are limits on how
much stuff you can order (and I think that you can't get the 'bike
builder' deals on frames/groupos). I've been told that this is the kind
of account that BICAS (where I work) has, but I can find nothing about
it on the QBP website.
If you have a regular wholesalers account, you are supposed
to follow all the rules and laws that any retailer would (charge
standard mark-ups, pay sales taxes, follow all federal state and local
laws, blah blah blah). However, it is common practise for retailers of
all sorts to sell shwag to their employees at cost (it probably cuts
down on employee theft), and it is pretty common practice for employees
to turn around and sell said shwag for next to retail price (witness
the 'EBay Store' phenomenon). QBP recognizes this and probably doesn't
care. Neither should we. As collectives, we don't offer stuff to our
'employees' for wholesale to prevent stealing, we offer wholesale to
ourselves because we recognize that we work hard for little or no money
and, frankly, we're in it because we love bikes.
If your org has the non-profit sort of account, all of the same
probably applies, except that you can't order that much stuff from them
week to week, so a large personal order might be a problem.
Not only does QBP not care if you sell stuff to employees/collective
members at wholesale, employees are elegable for pro-deals on selected
brands. See that portion of the website for details.
Ultimately it seems like QBP has little to say about it: they want you
to ensure that the parts bought on pro-deal won't be resold, and that's
about it. I can't think of any really good reasons why a shop wouldn't
give wholesale to its coremembers, except that sometimes patrons kind
of sneer when you finish helping them with their huffy and climb on
your carbon fiber blingbling to ride home.
BICAS has a really good relationship with a normal shop in town
(Ordinary Bikes). BICAS doesn't sell much stuff from QBP; we send folks
to them. Ordinary gives us some crazy discount on shwag. Nearly
wholesale. Good vibes, good gig.
On the otherhand, the BikeChurch in Santa Cruz where I used to work
sells tons of stuff from QBP (underselling the regular shops on small
ticket items) and tons of stuff at wholesale+tax to the core mechanics,
and still has an alright relationship with the shops. Even the snobby ones.
Damn that rambled on.
my hands are dirty but my clothes are clean,
kyle