The moment a buying session ends, a different kind of work starts. The wholesale order process in Italy is not one transaction but a chain of steps involving several suppliers, a warehouse, two separate payments and a courier, each with its own timing. Buyers placing a first order often underestimate how much happens between the confirmation of a selection and the arrival of cartons at their shop. What follows is that chain in the order it actually occurs, so that a boutique owner or an e-commerce manager knows what is included, what is optional and where the real constraints sit.
Closing the Session Starts the Wholesale Order Process in Italy
A session closes when the client confirms the final selection in writing: models, colours, sizes and quantities per style. Nothing is held on a verbal maybe. Quantities shift constantly while the session is live, because supplier minimums normally sit between 300 and 500 euros per warehouse and between two and twelve pieces per style, and the selection has to clear those thresholds supplier by supplier. Once the consolidated list is approved, the order is frozen and the pricing is locked. Everything described below then runs in a fixed sequence.
Clients who have already read how a buying day is structured across the Prato district will recognise the underlying logic: the selection is assembled warehouse by warehouse, not brand by brand. That structure matters after the session too, because the order does not exist as a single purchase but as several small purchases from several independent companies, each with its own stock, its own invoice and its own collection point. IFS never discloses supplier names, so the client keeps dealing with one counterpart instead of a dozen.
The Proforma and the First Payment in the Wholesale Order Timeline
A proforma invoice is issued quickly, sometimes within a few hours of the session closing. It lists every confirmed line, the total purchase value and the service fee, which is 10% of the confirmed purchase value with a minimum of 250 euros per working day. If on-site assistance was requested, the day rate for that appears as a separate line. The document becomes the client’s reference for everything that follows: any later discrepancy is measured against the proforma, not against notes taken during the call.
Payment of the goods and of the commission is expected within 24 to 48 hours. The reason is commercial rather than bureaucratic. IFS does not advance money to suppliers, and pronto moda stock is not reserved indefinitely, since a style confirmed on Monday can be sold to a walk-in wholesaler by Wednesday. Full settlement before shipment is the standard condition, and the collection round only begins once the funds have cleared. Clients who schedule the transfer in the same week they close a session run into far less of the friction that surfaces further down the line.
Collection From Suppliers and Consolidated Shipment in Italy
Once payment clears, the merchandise is collected from each supplier and brought together at the IFS base. The client deals with none of this: no separate pickups to arrange, no supplier contacts to chase, no partial deliveries landing on different days. Whether the order covers a couple of warehouses or a long list of them, the result is the same consolidated shipment in Italy, with one invoice and one set of export documents. Six years of daily work across the Prato district is what makes this stage predictable rather than improvised.
Consolidation is also what keeps freight sensible. A scattering of small parcels leaving as many separate addresses costs far more than one properly built group of cartons leaving a single address, and it multiplies the chance of one box travelling on its own tracking number while the rest of the collection is already on the shop floor. The sequence from selection to dispatch is described step by step in the article on the workflow that runs from samples to shipment, which covers the earlier phases in more detail.
Piece Count and Quality Control on the Confirmed Order
Every carton that arrives is opened and counted. The piece count is reconciled line by line against the confirmed order, and a sample quality control is carried out on the goods before packing. Both operations are included in the service and are never billed separately. The check is not an inspection of every single garment: in low-cost pronto moda up to 5% of the pieces can present minor irregularities, a loose thread or an imperfect seam, and that tolerance belongs to the product category rather than to a specific supplier.
Photographs or video of the merchandise and a detailed packing list are available on request, priced according to the quantity involved. E-commerce clients ask for them often, because the material doubles as a first content asset and because a packing list makes receiving far easier when warehouse staff unbox without the buyer present. Boutiques placing small repeat orders usually skip both. The request has to arrive before packing starts, since reopening sealed cartons costs time that nobody recovers afterwards.
Why Freight Becomes a Second Payment in the Buying Process
After the count, the goods are packed and the cartons are weighed and measured. Buyers regularly ask why the shipping cost was not part of the proforma, and the answer is mechanical: freight is quoted on the real weight and volume of the finished cartons, which nobody can know before the merchandise is physically boxed. The same quantity of lightweight summer tops and of wool coats produces entirely different figures. Estimating in advance would mean either overcharging the client or absorbing a loss on every second order.
This produces a second payment, separate from and later than the payment for the goods. It is the single point where first-time clients are most often caught off guard, so it deserves a line in the budget from the start. Shipments travel DAP, which means duties and local taxes at destination are the client’s responsibility and are settled with the local authorities or with the carrier, not with IFS. A short conversation with a customs broker before the first order removes most of the uncertainty around landed cost.
Courier Handover and Transit Times From Order to Delivery in Fashion
Once the freight is paid, the shipment is handed to the courier. DHL and UPS are the recommended carriers, and the tracking number is always sent to the client on the day of collection. From full settlement of the goods to that handover the working window is three to five working days, provided no additional checks were requested. Transit then depends on geography: European destinations are a matter of days, while North America, the Gulf and Asia-Pacific take noticeably longer, with clearance adding a variable step.
Transit times are indicative and belong to the carrier, not to the supplier and not to IFS. What can be controlled sits upstream: the speed of the proforma, the accuracy of the piece count, the correctness of the declared weights. Clients who want the full picture before booking a first session, including screening and pre-scouting, will find it on the page explaining how the service works from interview to delivery, where each phase is set out in sequence.
What Actually Delays a Wholesale Order Timeline
Late payment is the most frequent cause by a wide margin. The merchandise does not move until the balance is settled, and a collection round cannot be scheduled against a promise. Italian holiday closures come second: August empties the districts for most of the month, and a session closed in late July with a transfer arriving mid-August will not be collected before the warehouses reopen. Buyers working towards autumn deliveries plan around that period instead of fighting it.
The third cause is stock that disappears. Pronto moda works on limited runs, and a style confirmed during a session can be sold before collection when payment arrives slowly. In that case the client is offered a substitution in an equivalent style or a credit applied against the shipping cost, and the choice stays with the client. The fourth is self-inflicted in a useful way: advanced quality control requested garment by garment rather than by sample adds days, because someone has to handle every piece individually.
None of these steps compresses much further, and the sequence runs best when the client treats the weeks after a session as part of the buying plan rather than as dead time. Two payments, one consolidated invoice, one tracking number, and a window of three to five working days between the last euro received and the courier collection. Knowing that shape in advance is what separates a first purchase handled calmly from one that generates weekly emails asking where the goods have got to.
