Female Founder World

Your Faire Playbook: Exactly How To Win With Indie Stockists

October 27, 2025

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  • Independent retail, facilitated by platforms like Faire, is a massive opportunity that builds brand community and can create a halo effect boosting DTC and major retail business. 
  • Winning on Faire requires optimizing the shop page through high-quality photography (including lifestyle/packaging shots), robust product descriptions, and setting wholesale minimums between $150 and $200. 
  • Brands can leverage Faire's free marketing/CRM tools and the 0% commission FAIRDirect suite to drive sales and boost their marketplace ranking, as high conversion rates from invited retailers are a primary input for search ranking. 

Segments

Guest Introduction and Episode Roadmap
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(00:00:00)
  • Key Takeaway: The episode roadmap includes discussions on Jennifer Burke’s role, Faire’s function, indie retail strategy, case studies, and winning on the Faire platform.
  • Summary: Jennifer Burke, CRO of Faire, is introduced by host Jasmine Garnsworthy on the Female Founder World podcast. The planned discussion covers Burke’s background, how Faire supports businesses, the importance of indie retail, and actionable advice for success on the platform. The episode is framed as a practical, workshopy session.
Jennifer Burke’s Role at Faire
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(00:01:03)
  • Key Takeaway: As CRO, Jennifer Burke oversees all customer-facing commercial teams responsible for onboarding brands, optimizing performance, and educating retailers on Faire’s value proposition.
  • Summary: Faire is described as the largest online wholesale platform connecting consumer brands globally with independent retail stores. Burke’s role involves managing teams that support brands through onboarding and day-to-day performance management. A parallel team supports retailers, helping them with their initial orders.
Guest Career Trajectory and Ikigai
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(00:01:48)
  • Key Takeaway: Burke found her professional fulfillment (ikigai) in sales at ClassPass by working with small businesses, enjoying problem-solving sales, and engaging with the intellectual challenge of a two-sided marketplace.
  • Summary: Burke’s non-linear career path included Disney, advertising, consulting, and joining ClassPass in sales when it was very small. She defines ikigai as the intersection of enjoyment, skill, world need, and payment. She found resonance in supporting entrepreneurs, the co-creation process of sales, and marketplace dynamics.
Faire’s Scale and Origin Story
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(00:05:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Faire has grown exponentially since 2019, now supporting over 100,000 vendors and hundreds of thousands of retailers, generating billions in annual sales.
  • Summary: When Burke joined in 2019, Faire was doing a few million in sales with 1,000 vendors; it now processes billions annually, growing 30-40% year-over-year. The platform was founded in 2017 by Max Rhodes and others from Square after Rhodes experienced the difficulty of getting his side hustle, Blunt Umbrellas, into retail stores.
Faire’s Three Core Focus Areas
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(00:08:12)
  • Key Takeaway: Faire focuses on discovery/connection, providing financial value by mitigating risk (like Net 60 terms), and acting as a technology platform integrating with existing ERP/POS systems.
  • Summary: The first focus is discovery, aiming to be the ’endless aisle’ by using data to match retailers with high sell-through potential brands. The second involves financial value, notably offering Net 60 terms to retailers while guaranteeing payment to brands, absorbing credit risk, and funding free shipping for new retailers. The third focus is building technology tools that integrate with systems like Shopify to run wholesale businesses more effectively.
Value of Indie Retail Strategy
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(00:11:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Indie retail is a massive channel, representing a $400 billion global addressable market, and boutiques act as community tastemakers whose adoption can create a halo effect for major retail and DTC sales.
  • Summary: Indie retail offers control and predictability compared to mass retail gatekeepers, avoiding onerous early terms and marketing fees. Boutiques are crucial tastemakers; for example, a Whole Foods buyer discovered Mescla protein bars at a Faire-connected cafe, leading to placement in all Texas Whole Foods stores. Working directly with independents allows brands to gain valuable merchandising feedback and sell-through data often unavailable through brokers.
Faire Use Cases and Case Studies
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(00:17:41)
  • Key Takeaway: Faire serves diverse brand types, from Etsy-level part-timers seeking access to large established brands using it to manage their entire independent wholesale business efficiently.
  • Summary: Brands use Faire for access (Etsy-type), to reach the long tail of retailers missed by reps/shows (like Kitsch, doing $40M since joining), or to migrate 100% of their existing wholesale operations for efficiency (like Itsy Ritzy). Graza, an olive oil brand, used Faire to scale from cold-calling to over $1 million in sales.
How Brands Win on Faire: Optimization
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(00:20:21)
  • Key Takeaway: Winning on Faire requires foundational shop page investment, utilizing free CRM/marketing tools, and considering paid advertising or partnership programs for an extra boost.
  • Summary: Foundational success hinges on optimizing the shop page, ensuring full catalog upload, maintaining pricing parity, and using high-quality photography suitable for retailer evaluation. Free tools include CRM features for segmentation and FAIRDirect, which allows brands to use Faire’s benefits (Net 60, free returns) for their own customers at 0% commission. Paid options include advertising to boost search ranking and the Insider Partnership program to co-fund shipping for 0% commission orders.
FaireDirect and Search Ranking Impact
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(00:29:29)
  • Key Takeaway: Actively using FAIRDirect to bring existing or high-intent retailers onto the platform significantly boosts a brand’s overall marketplace ranking due to increased conversion signals.
  • Summary: Conversion rate (retailers landing on the page who actually order) is the number one input for Faire’s ranking algorithm. By inviting retailers via FAIRDirect, brands drive orders at 0% commission while simultaneously improving their organic ranking on the marketplace. Keyword stuffing irrelevant terms into descriptions will initially help search visibility but ultimately hurt long-term performance due to low conversion.
Inspiration and Career Resources
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(00:32:37)
  • Key Takeaway: Effective leadership and sales rely on focusing maniacally on inputs over outputs, and practicing empathy and co-creating solutions rather than prescribing answers.
  • Summary: Jennifer Burke recommends ‘The Score Takes Care of Itself’ by Bill Walsh, emphasizing that focusing on the inputs (actions) drives the desired outputs (results). She also recommends a parenting book, highlighting the need for presence, empathy, and co-creating solutions in both leadership and sales interactions.