How anonymous sourcing works, from the seller's side

What buyer of record means

When Local Margin sources on your behalf, the account is ours, not yours. We take your request to a wholesaler as our own purchase. The quote is made to Local Margin, handled by Local Margin, and passed back to you. On the supplier's paperwork, you do not appear.

What the wholesaler never learns

Your name, your store, your brand. Your volumes, current or past. What you pay the suppliers you already use. Whether the request is exploratory or urgent. All of it stays with us, while we work on the request and after it.

Why the name on the account changes the quote

Suppliers do not quote products. They quote situations. A wholesaler who knows who you are can look up your storefront, estimate your sales velocity with the same public tools you use, and price accordingly. A small seller gets a small-account quote. A seller who visibly needs the stock gets an urgency quote.

A quote request also leaks strategy. Asking a supplier about a product announces that you are about to sell it, to a company that talks to your competitors every day. Anonymity closes both problems at once. The supplier prices the purchase, because the purchase is all they can see.

The anonymity runs both ways

You do not get the wholesaler's contact details either. We are straightforward about why. The supplier relationship is the thing Local Margin builds and maintains, and buying as the buyer of record is how the service works. You get the price and decide whether to take it. We keep the relationship that produced it.

The honest limits

Anonymity covers the buying, not the marketplace. Once you list a product, the listing is public, and nothing about this model hides it. Buyer of record protects how you buy, not what you sell.

It cannot be applied backwards. A supplier who already knows you cannot be made to forget, so this works for new sourcing, not for a supplier relationship where you have already been sized up.

And it moves the trust rather than removing it. The wholesaler does not know who you are because we do. You are trusting a Michigan LLC run by working sellers with your identity and your request, and you should weigh that the way you would weigh any business relationship, not treat it as magic.

Where this fits

Buyer of record is how every order through Local Margin works, not only a price you ask us to get. When you order from your Deal Feed, we buy the goods ourselves, our prep partner gets them Amazon-ready, and they ship to your Amazon store. The supplier never learns who you are, and you never need a supplier account of your own. The page at /how-it-works walks through the whole service.