Wholesaling My Artwork

I have been making and selling my own jewelry for almost 15 years, but it wasn't until a year ago that I considered expanding my sales to a wholesale level.
Selling wholesale on a large scale basis, or at least much larger scale than I have been requires a lot of preparation. It is completely different than selling directly to the end user.
Selling at art shows and in a few galleries does not require the production levels and duplication that selling wholesale does.
But I have decided that it is time to take my work to the next level and that I would rather do less art shows and more selling through retail stores.
Frankly, I am tired of the hauling, traveling, and long show days. I would like to see an end of that.
Also, by setting up wholesale accounts I, in essence, create a bunch of salespeople to sell my work. That will exponentially increase the number of people that be able to purchase my jewelry.

There were a lot of things that I had to think through and experiment with before I could begin to seriously sell wholesale.
My biggest issue was that I was making each fine silver component of my jewelry by hand with Precious Metal Clay, and that took a lot of time. Yet I didn't want to give up the originality that I got by making them by hand.
Another issue was that I needed to have multiples of the same pieces so that customers could place an order for a specific piece and know what they were getting. But I needed to be able to retain enough originality and variety to attract different customers.
So I had to do some research. Precious Metal Clay is fine silver. What I looked into was casting pieces from my PMC originals. A caster would have to make a mold from my originals, then fill the mold with liquid metal to make duplicates. I really had no idea how close they would look and feel.
Casting is expensive because you need to buy a minimum quantity to make it worth the caster's time.
The caster I was talking to was very accomodating. He had never worked with PMC originals before. He was willing to make 200 copies total of any number of originals.
I picked out pieces that were basic and could be made into lots of different items and sets. And I went for it.
When I got the pieces back, I was totally amazed at the quality of the copies. They looked exactly like my originals, exactly.
Now I had to come up with set styles that I loved and could repeat without trouble.

I mentioned my two biggest issues already, but there were lots of other obstacles.
How many products did I need?
How could I reach all of the accounts I needed?
What would my lead time be to create and ship orders?
I needed some money upfront? Where would it come from?
My two biggest problems are always time and money.
Some of these problems I will have to continue to work out as I grow, but I have managed to work through most of the logistics and I am very happy with the designs I have worked out.
I am really looking forward this new twist to my business.