Anyone can send you a price list. A spreadsheet costs nothing to produce, and the number on it tells you almost nothing about whether the product will actually land on your dock in eleven days, in the quantity you ordered, in packaging that won't get you written up.
Reliability is the part you find out about on the third order. By then you've already built a planogram around it.
Retailers who have been through a bad supplier relationship usually describe the same arc: great first order, fine second order, and then a stockout during the one week of the year that actually mattered. The failure is rarely dramatic. It's a slow drift — a backorder that becomes two, an email that takes four days, a substitution nobody warned you about.
Here's what to test for before you're the one holding the bag.
- They can prove where the product came from
This is the first question and it is not a formality. In categories built on recognizable brand names — borosilicate glass especially — the counterfeit trade is large, sophisticated, and aimed directly at wholesale buyers. Fakes have gotten good. Logos are close, boxes are close, the joint work is close enough that you won't catch it in a warehouse under fluorescent light.
What you cannot fake is the paperwork.
A reliable supplier can tell you, without hedging, whether they are an authorized distributor for a given brand and can produce something that supports it. If the answer is a shrug, a story about a "direct European connection," or a price that sits meaningfully under everyone else's floor, you have your answer. Selling counterfeit branded goods becomes your liability once it's on your shelf — not theirs.
Ask directly: Are you authorized for this brand, and can you show me?
- Their inventory number is a real number
Most wholesale sites will happily show you "in stock" on a product that is sitting on a container somewhere off Long Beach.
The metric that matters is fill rate — of the units you ordered, how many actually shipped on the first attempt? Not "did it eventually arrive." Did the PO ship complete, the first time?
A supplier who tracks this and will tell you the number is a supplier who has decided to be accountable to it. A supplier who has never heard the term is telling you something too.
The related tell is how they handle a genuine shortage, because every distributor has them. Reliable ones tell you before you ask, offer a substitution or a partial ship, and give you a date they'll actually hit. Unreliable ones let the PO sit and hope you don't notice until you do.
- Lead times are consistent, not just fast
Fast is nice. Predictable is what lets you run a business.
A supplier who ships in nine days every single time is more valuable than one who averages five but swings between two and fourteen. You can build a reorder point around the first one. The second one forces you to carry extra safety stock, which is money sitting on a shelf doing nothing.
When you're evaluating, ask for the range, not the average. "Three to five business days" is a commitment. "Usually pretty quick" is not.
- Compliance is handled before it reaches you
This is the one that separates distributors from box-movers, and in regulated and semi-regulated categories it is worth more than a few points of margin.
Depending on what you're buying, the questions look like:
Consumables and supplements — Are labels compliant with current FDA requirements? Is there a Supplement Facts panel, a full ingredient declaration, an allergen statement? Are third-party COAs available on request? Is there a lot number you could trace if you ever needed to?
Age-restricted goods — Does the supplier understand PACT Act obligations, adult-signature delivery, and which carriers will and won't move the category?
Anything imported — Is country of origin marked correctly? Is there packaging that satisfies your state's requirements, not just the federal baseline?
You do not want to be discovering the answers to these during an inspection. A supplier who volunteers this documentation is a supplier who has already been through it.
- A person answers the phone
It sounds soft next to fill rates and COAs. It is not.
When a pallet arrives short, or a customer returns something damaged, or you need to know whether you can get forty more units before Saturday — the difference between a supplier with a direct line and a supplier with a contact form is the difference between a twenty-minute problem and a two-week one.
Test this before you commit. Call during business hours with a real question. Note how long it takes to reach someone who can actually make a decision, not just take a message. That response time is the response time you get when something has gone wrong, and it will not improve under pressure.
- The pricing structure is transparent — and stable
Reliable suppliers publish their tier structure. You should be able to see what changes at each quantity break, and the answer should be the same in March as it was in January.
Two red flags worth naming:
Negotiated-in-the-dark pricing. If every account gets a different number based on how hard they pushed, you have no way of knowing whether you're competitive with the shop four miles away. Published tiers protect you.
Your supplier competing with you. Check whether the distributor also sells direct to consumers at retail, and if so, at what price. A supplier who undercuts their own wholesale accounts on their own storefront is not a partner — they're using your PO to fund their DTC channel. Ask about territory, MAP policy, and whether they enforce it.
The short version: red flags
If you want a checklist to run before your first PO, these are the ones worth walking away over:
No verifiable authorization for the brands they claim to carry
Pricing significantly below market with no explanation for how
No published tier structure
Won't give you a lead time range in writing
No COAs or compliance documentation available for consumables
No direct phone contact — support goes through a form only
Vague on returns, damages, and who eats the freight
No physical address, or an address that doesn't match a warehouse
Any one of these is a conversation. Three of them is a decision.
Questions to ask before you commit
Copy these into your next supplier call:
- Are you an authorized distributor for these brands, and can you document it?
- What was your fill rate last quarter?
- What's your lead time range — not average — to my zip?
- What happens when something's backordered? Who tells me, and when?
- What's your MOQ, and what's the reorder minimum after the opening order?
- Do you sell direct to consumers? At what price?
- Do you enforce MAP?
- Who do I call when something's wrong, and what hours?
- What's the return policy on damaged and on defective?
- Can I get COAs and label documentation on the consumable lines?
A supplier worth having will answer all ten without getting defensive. That's the real test.
About Sream Inc
Sream Inc is a wholesale distributor supplying smoke shops, dispensaries, and specialty retailers across the United States — including authentic ROOR® borosilicate glass, King Kone pre-roll production equipment, and Hello Vero wellness products.
We publish our tier pricing, we answer the phone, and we'll show you the paperwork before you ask.
Talk to us: 951-783-4246
Wholesale accounts: https://sreaminc.com/pages/wholesale-info
Meeting us at CHAMPS Las Vegas? Come see the line in person.