Managing Retailers

When creating Rewards (Pledges) in Hive, you can mark one or more rewards as Retailer. These pledges are reserved exclusively for Verified Retailers, ensuring that wholesale offers remain available only to legitimate retail businesses.

Retailer verification is handled directly by Hive. When a backer selects a retailer pledge, they are asked to submit their business information before they can proceed to checkout. Our team then reviews each application by validating business details, checking company registries, verifying EU VAT IDs (where applicable), reviewing online presence, and performing other necessary checks. The verification process typically takes up to two business days.

Once approved, retailers receive an email notification and can immediately complete their retailer pledge. If an application cannot be verified, the applicant may either update and resubmit their information or select a standard (non-retailer) pledge instead.

Retailer Corner

Verified retailer pledges are now also featured in the Retailer Corner, a dedicated section of the Hive platform where retailers can discover crowdfunding projects offering wholesale opportunities.

The Retailer Corner allows verified retailers to:

1. Discover retailer-friendly crowdfunding campaigns.
2. Compare available retailer pledges and wholesale discounts.
3. View the contents of retailer bundles before committing.
4. Quickly find projects that match their business.

For creators, this means additional visibility among verified retailers actively looking for new products, helping expand your project's reach beyond the crowdfunding campaign itself.

Defining a Retailer Pledge

Before we proceed with the way retailer discounts can be defined in our platform, we need to clarify how rewards/pledges and add-ons work. This may be obvious but it still needs attention.

All backers start by selecting one Pledge Reward. Just like in Kickstarter, each backer can choose only one such Pledge Reward to begin. THEN they can proceed to the Add-ons section and add as many Add-Ons they wish.

A backer can not add the same Pledge Reward more than once. If you want to give them the ability to do so, then you must create an add-on that gives the same content as the pledge, so that the backers can add as many of them as they want.

For example, if you want the retailer to have to pledge for a minimum of 4 games, but also be able to add more on top of that, then you need to:

• Create a pledge marked as "Is Retailer" that has the right price and gives to the retailer 4 copies of your game.
• Create an add-on for a single extra copy of your game. The retailer can add as many of them as they need to their pledge.

Defining a Base Retailer Discount for your Project

In your project's Basics tab, you can fill the field "Retailer Discount". This discount applies to "Add-Ons" and only "Add-ons" (not to the pledge rewards). The retailer will see the regular price backers see stroke through and next to it the price they pay with the discount already applied.

You also have the option to set an MSRP for each add-on. When you do so, then the price the retailer sees is the MSRP and not the backers' one. Also, this price is visible only to the Retailers, not to the backers.

For example you can have an add-on priced for the backers at $50, that has an MSRP of $60 and the Retailer Discount set to 50%. The backers will see and pay $50, the Verified Retailers will see $60 stroke through and next to it $30 which is the amount they need to pay for that add-on.

Customizing Add-ons

You can also create "Add-Ons" that are "Available only to Retailers". This means that regular backers will NOT see them when they checkout. Only backers that are "Verified" AND have selected the "Retailer's" pledge will see them.

You also have the option to activate in the "Is Retailer" reward the flag "Hide non-Retailer Add-ons". This means that the Retailer will ONLY see the Add-ons that are marked "Available only to Retailers", they will not see the rest.

If you want more flexibility and the ability to:

• define a specific discount for a specific Retailer
• define a specific discount for a specific Retailer for a specific project

then you can do all that from the "Retailer Discounts" tab in the "Account Information" page.

This tab allows you to define a discount for specific emails (Retailers). For each such discount rule you create you can define:

• Email: This needs to match the retailer's Kickstarter email. The retailer will still need to get Verified in our platform (if they are not already Verified)
• Discount: This can be a float number and represents the percentage of the discount the retailer is eligible for. E.g. if you set it at "33.5", then they will get a 33.5% discount for their add-ons.
• Project: You can choose either "All Projects", or a specific project from your available ones. This will dictate whether the system will apply this discount for any project of yours this retailer supports, or to a specific project only. You can even apply different discounts for different projects. Please note that the system will first look for a discount defined for the specific retailer for the specific project, if it doesn't find one it will look for a discount for the specific retailer for "All Projects", if it still doesn't find any then it will use the base retailer discount you defined to your project.
• Note: This is a free text field for your convenience, perfect to keep notes to remember why you gave the retailer the specific discount, or the name of the retailer's store, or anything else you may need.

The retailers pay shipping normally (no discount is applied to it). Since your costs will be based on weight, the retailer will get a better rate "per game" since the costs to ship more game together will be a better one than shipping individual ones.

If you want to give a discount to the Retailers on their shipping costs then you can:

• discount directly the shipping costs for heavier packages. 99.9% of your backers will get either one or two games. If the Retailers start with a pack of 4 or 6 (as many as you can fit in one carton), then their weight is already much higher. You can apply the discount directly to the shipping cost calculation rules.
• give a coupon to specific retailers. This option should be used only for exceptions, when you want to give a special rate to a specific retailer. You can create a coupon that either gives them a flat discount and/or gives them free shipping. See the Coupons tab of your project for more information.

All backers (retailers included), after they finish their pledge they will be able to download an Invoice for their pledge from within Hive. That invoice is generated in PDF format and has your business information on it.

You define the information show on this invoice from the "Account Information" page (use the left menu to access it).

All backers (retailers included) pay inside our platform, using the payment method they prefer (Paypal, Stripe, etc). The amount they pay is added into your account, and when it is time for a payout our fee is applied. Our fee depends on your selected pack (Basic-3% or PRO-4%), which you can see in your "Account Information" page.

Please remember that the payment processor (Paypal, Stripe, etc) also applies a fee in all transactions. This varies from 3% to 5% depending on the amount and the payment method used.