What changes as an Amazon wholesale business grows

Search for the habits of seven-figure Amazon sellers and you'll find plenty of lists. Very few of them say where the habits came from. This page takes a narrower route. It follows Stef, who teaches Apex University, through the parts of his lessons that deal with growth: moving up the supply chain, adding suppliers, restocking, cash and getting help. Where he speaks from his own buying, we say so.

Each passage gives its time in the lesson, and most link straight to that minute, so you can hear it in his words. Where something is our suggestion rather than his, we say that too. And it's about the work, not the money: we don't quote any seller's revenue here, and nothing below promises a result.

What we know about seven-figure sellers, and what we don't

The most useful public number comes from Amazon itself. In its Small Business Empowerment Report, Amazon says more than 75,000 independent sellers passed $1 million in sales in 2025.

Two things to keep in mind about that figure. It counts sales, not profit, and wholesale margins are thin enough that the gap matters. And the report doesn't say how many of those sellers are in the US store, or how many resell other brands' products the way wholesale sellers do. So it tells you that sellers do reach seven figures in sales. It doesn't tell you what those sellers have in common, how much they started with or how long it took them.

That last question comes up a lot, so here it is: there is no reliable timeline. It depends on how much money you can put into stock, which categories and brands you can get approved for, how quickly you reinvest, and how many of your first products turn into steady reorders. Anyone who quotes you a timeline is guessing.

What we can show you is what changes along the way. That's the rest of this page.

Your suppliers move up the supply chain

Early in his Finding Suppliers lesson, Stef walks through the supply chain, because where you sit in it decides who will sell to you. He lays it out from the manufacturer down to the shopper, and talks about climbing it as your business grows (Finding Suppliers, at 1:49):

His advice for the bottom of the ladder is short:

"When you are just starting out and you don't have a ton of upfront capital, it is very important to find yourself some wholesalers and distributors."

From Stef's lesson (Finding Suppliers, at 2:15)

As you climb, he says, buying from redistributors is what makes a bigger business sustainable. He also corrects a common assumption on the way up: going straight to the manufacturer isn't automatically the best price, because you aren't buying the volume a redistributor buys. As he puts it, a redistributor supplies the whole United States, while you supply the Amazon marketplace (at 2:34). There are good reasons to buy from a brand directly, and our guide to brand-direct wholesale covers when it's worth it. A lower price just isn't always one of them.

When a big supplier says no

The higher you aim, the more often the answer is no. In the lesson, Stef looks at a large redistributor's website, one with a long list of the brands it carries, and says straight away that it will have a very high minimum order and be hard to open. He says it's still worth a try (at 8:40).

The reason is what he says to do with the no: ask the company that turned you down who it supplies, and who you could buy from instead. He asks manufacturers the same thing, since their job in his process isn't to sell to you but to hand you their list of distributors (at 4:03). He says a no can even come with the names of five or six other suppliers to approach (at 22:35).

He adds one more habit to the rejection: work out why it happened, so you can fix it before the next application (at 9:31). Our distributor email templates include what to send when the answer is no.

More suppliers, and more from each one

Amazon's own guide to finding wholesalers says how much rides on a supplier: "your ability to sell and meet demand will largely depend on the reliability of your wholesaler." If most of your products come from one supplier and it runs short or changes its prices, most of your catalog changes at once.

Stef's reason for more suppliers is practical rather than defensive. Once he finds a good distributor, he looks for its competitors. If one doesn't stock certain products, the other might. If one quotes you one price and the other quotes a better one, you can buy each product wherever it's cheaper, even when both carry it (at 15:57). Our negotiation guide shows how to use a competing quote without burning the relationship.

Finding them follows the same routes at any size. In the lesson Stef asks ChatGPT for a list of distributors in a category, then checks each company's website and drops the ones that sell things he wouldn't sell on Amazon, like fresh meat and vegetables, before spending time on an application (at 5:11). He also uses directories such as Wholesale Central, where companies pay to be listed, and reverse sourcing: start from a brand that sells on Amazon, find its manufacturer, and ask for its distributors (at 23:15). The Distributor Vault lists distributors by category, and the names and contacts open with an Apex subscription. Our suppliers hub covers the rest.

Ask the suppliers you already have

The quieter way to grow your catalog is through accounts you've already opened. Stef describes it like this:

"Some suppliers may carry a brand and have only two SKUs from that brand. But you're looking for the other four that they don't have in their catalog. You ask them about it. You place a preliminary purchase order of those units, because they have access to a source that can get access to that brand, which you don't."

From Stef's lesson (Finding Suppliers, at 21:40), lightly edited for reading

That kind of request lands better once you've bought from them. Just before that passage, Stef says some suppliers won't give you their best prices at the start, and you may have to place one or two purchase orders before they take you seriously (at 21:24). Early orders are partly an investment in being the customer they say yes to.

Relationships start doing some of the work

Early on, the supplier side of wholesale feels like all effort: applications, follow-ups and rejections. Later, some of it starts coming to you. Stef gives a seasonal example, at about 20:25 in the Finding Suppliers lesson:

"I remember I had this one supplier that was selling me this candy that I always purchased a few pallets of before Halloween. And our relationship was so great that he even called me weeks in advance, letting me know of the shipment. [...] I placed my order. The order came in on time, right before Halloween."

From Stef's lesson (Finding Suppliers, at about 20:25), lightly edited for reading

A rep who knows what you buy, and when, can plan around you. Calls like that come from buying the same product, in quantity, more than once.

Trade shows

Stef has attended wholesale trade shows, and he's direct about the cost: travel, days away from work and money. For sellers whose Amazon business has become their full-time work, he calls it an investment they make. He recommends it especially when you're getting started, because it makes the business feel more real (at 17:21), and because the companies at a show are there to find buyers, so you get to talk face to face instead of by phone or email. His examples are ASD Market Week in Las Vegas and the International Beauty Show.

He's also clear that a show can be hit or miss without a plan. His plan has three parts (at 19:01):

1. Get the exhibitor list before you go. Ask the organizer which companies and brands will be there.
2. Research those brands on Amazon. Shortlist the five or six companies with real opportunities for you, and write them down.
3. Go back to the ones that said no. A company that turned down your email months ago gets to meet you in person, which is a different conversation (at 20:05).

If you have a job or can't travel yet, he suggests searching for shows in your category in your own state (at 18:27).

More of your buying becomes restocks

In his Purchasing lesson, Stef splits every purchase order into two kinds: a new-product order, for something you've never sold, and a restock order, for something you have. The restock comes with your own sales history behind it, so it's the better informed of the two (Purchasing, at 0:19). As your catalog fills with products that have proven themselves, more and more of your orders are the second kind.

Stef describes learning restock math on one product he used to resell as a turning point:

"This right here actually is a product that I used to resell. This is an item that I had to understand this math and make sure that I did not miss out on my daily sales. [...] This was a changing point within my business."

From Stef's lesson (Restocking, at 3:43), lightly edited for reading

The math itself is simple: how many units sell a day, how many days it takes for new stock to become sellable, and how much stock covers that gap. In his example, the lead time was 19 days: 12 from the supplier, 3 at the prep center and 4 to reach Amazon (Restocking, at 1:35). Our guide to when to reorder works it through with a calculator.

Later in the same Restocking lesson, at about 6:40, Stef says the majority of a business's profit comes from restocking its most profitable products on time. Three things follow from that as orders get bigger:

• The reorder is where you negotiate. You've paid the supplier and you're buying the same item again, so it's the moment to ask about volume pricing (Restocking, at 5:00). Amazon's guide to finding wholesalers states the general rule: "Typically, the more you order, the lower your cost per unit." Just check that the bigger tier is worth the cash it ties up.
• Running out costs more than it looks. Every day a steady seller is out of stock, its sales go to someone else. In Stef's example, 12 days without stock at 12.5 sales a day meant 150 missed sales (Restocking, at 2:08). A bigger business has more products to run out of.
• Too much stock is a signal too. When Stef sorts his products by days of stock and sees some above 60 days, he reads it as a pricing problem: the price probably isn't winning the sales (at 10:52). Our Buy Box guide covers what decides who wins them.

The math outgrows paper

One product's reorder fits on a napkin. Thirty products from six suppliers doesn't. Stef says it in the same lesson:

"Where this gets more complex is when we're analyzing this across all of our active SKUs. This is a lot of math, because you may be dealing with several suppliers, and every SKU is performing differently within your Amazon business. So you cannot always be calculating this on pen and paper, on spreadsheets."

From Stef's lesson (Restocking, at 6:00), lightly edited for reading

Whatever you keep it in, a growing catalog needs the same few numbers for every product, kept current:

Our guides to landed cost and Amazon bookkeeping cover how to work out and record the money side of each row.

Cash becomes the limit

Bigger orders across more products mean more of your money sits in stock at any moment. Here's the gap for one order, as an illustration that uses the 19-day lead time from Stef's restocking example. Your days will differ.

Amazon's part of that wait is set by its payout policy, called DD+7:

Seven days is the usual hold, not a promise. Amazon's public page on seller payments says it typically holds funds for seven days after delivery, generally settles accounts every two weeks, and that a transfer can take up to five business days to reach your bank. That's where the last row of the table comes from: delivery to the customer, the hold, the wait for a settlement and the transfer. Our guide to Amazon payouts traces one order from the click to your bank, including the reserve.

Stef's answer is to choose how many days of stock to buy based on the cash you have. In his walkthrough lesson (filmed on an older version of Apex), he suggests about fifteen days of stock when cash is tight, thirty as the default, and forty-five if you'd rather place orders less often. He recommends thirty, as the balance between enough stock to keep selling and not too much money sitting in inventory (walkthrough, at 23:43).

Payment terms change the table too. On net 30, you'd pay the supplier around day 30 instead of day 0, while the order is already selling. Distributors usually give terms only after a few orders paid on time, and our guide to opening a wholesale account covers how to ask. If you're planning the cash for a first order rather than a growing one, start with what it costs to start.

Help arrives before hires

Stef's lessons don't cover hiring staff, so we won't put words in his mouth about it. What they do show is that the first help in a wholesale business comes from outside it.

Your sales reps. Once you're spending money with a distributor, Stef says, its sales reps become an asset to your business. In his words, they're "like freelance employees that you don't have to pay" (The Game, at 5:21). They earn when you buy, so they tell you about promotions and when the next shipment of a product you buy every month is coming.

A prep center. In the Purchasing lesson, Stef's supplier ships the order straight to his prep center (Purchasing, at 3:19), which labels and prepares it and ships it on to Amazon. Receiving, labeling and packing boxes is a whole job you don't have to do yourself. Our prep centers guide covers choosing one.

People in your accounts. When someone joins you, give them their own login. In a staff post on the US Seller Forums about user permissions, one of Amazon's tips is "Don't share your password with other people." The same post says to give each user only the permissions their job needs, to add outside companies as authorized partners rather than users, and that user permissions are only on the Professional selling plan.

What to hand over first is our suggestion, not Stef's: start with work that follows a clear rule and leaves a record you can check. Counting a delivery against its purchase order, entering product costs and drafting restock orders from the numbers all fit. Keep the judgment calls, like opening new suppliers, choosing new products and negotiating, until you've seen how someone works.

Apex works the same way: each person signs in with their own login. The number of users included depends on the plan: 1 on Beginner, 1 on Starter and 5 on Pro, and the pricing page shows which plans can add extra seats.

What doesn't change

Some things stay exactly as they were on your first order. Stef names the biggest one in his first lesson:

"The cons of doing wholesale is you don't own the brand. So you are reselling Colgate, Tide. You're selling all these big name brand products, therefore your storefront will never be an asset that you can sell for a lot of money."

From Stef's lesson (The Game, at 4:30), lightly edited for reading

So in wholesale, growth shows up in what the business earns while you run it, rather than in a brand you could sell later. A few other things hold at any size:

• Every product still earns its place. A new product gets the same checks at fifty suppliers as it did at one. Our price list guide lists them, and the profit margins guide shows the math.
• Approvals and invoices still matter. Bigger catalogs mean more brands, and more brands mean more chances Amazon asks where a product came from. Keep every invoice with its purchase order, as the account health guide explains, and check approvals before you buy with the ungating guide.
• Relationships still get built one order at a time. Paying on time and coming back for the same products is what turns a supplier into the one who calls you first.

Where Apex fits

Apex is built around the changes on this page. In Apex Blue, each supplier has a record with its lead time, minimums and rep. Purchase orders show landed cost, projected revenue, profit and ROI before you send them, and the inventory view shows days of stock left and a restock status for every product. Apex Green matches a supplier's whole price list to Amazon by UPC and filters the matches by profit, ROI, rank and competition, which matters more as the number of price lists grows.

One limit to know: restock suggestions come from your stock, your sales pace and the days of cover you set. They aren't a demand forecast, so a product about to spike for a holiday still needs your judgment.

Every lesson quoted here is part of Apex University, which comes with a free Apex account (nine lessons, no card). If you'd rather see the inventory side first, our page on inventory management software walks through it.