Ok, I'm a reseller. What now?

Once you get a resale license, you can open accounts with all the distributors you want to buy from. In general, you should choose distributors in your area for convenience (and to save on shipping charges.) Most likely you will be choosing a few distributors out of state because of lower prices - especially if you are not planning to buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware. Not all distributors will give you good prices if you order in small quantities. In fact, some distributors sell at prices even higher than mail-order prices unless you order in quantities of 100 or more. Finding good distributors is usually even harder than finding a decent retailer. This is because 1) most distributors won't even quote you a price unless you open an account, 2) you have to fill out a bunch of forms to open an account, and 3) it is hard to find a list of distributors. To make your life easier, here are two distributors we highly recommend.

Ingram Micro

http://www.ingrammicro.com

One of the 3 largest distributors in the U.S. Their prices for small quantity orders are high, but they carry pretty much everything. They also have hundreds of promotions at any given time. Typical promotions include: "Buy 2 monitors, get 1 Free" and "Buy a Hub, get 2 NICs Free". They also frequently have reseller demo units for sale at substantially lower prices. Ingram would be the place to go to buy software at demo pricing. (Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, etc.) Their prices are generally negotiable, and they will match price. Shipping is also free if the order is over $1000. They also allow credit card orders with no additional surcharge.

Ma Laboratories

http://www.malabs.com

Located in San Jose, California, Ma Labs is the place to go for OEM parts such as CPUs, RAM, CD-ROMs, video cards, sound cards, and hard drives. They sell both retail versions (boxed) and OEM versions (bare card & drivers) of most products. Opt for the retail versions if there is not a huge price difference. Unlike most other distributors, they have fixed pricing - so the prices are the same regardless of whether you order 1 item or 100 items. With most other distributors of this size (small - medium), you will have to haggle a bit to get low prices. One drawback with Ma Labs is that they don't accept credit card orders. Most of the time people pay with cash or cashier's checks. Don't expect the sales people here to know many technical details about the products though, so do your research before calling.

Sample Ma Labs prices as of Dec 28th, 1998
	Ma Labs	Lowest Price on KillerApp.Com	Micro X-press
Celeron 300A	$77.00	$89.99	$99.99
P2-450	$524.50	$559.00	$589.99
128MB PC100 SDRAM	$158.25	$167.97	$177.00

There are other good distributors out there, but for small quantity orders, we suggest you stick with those two first. Most other places don't like to be bothered with orders under $1000, and also require some haggling to get good prices.

Also note that while you can buy everything from distributors without paying sales tax, you will need to pay the sales tax to the State Board of Equalization if you resell the parts. You are also supposed to pay sales tax on hardware you keep for yourself, but as long as you say the parts are for demo purposes, you should be fine. (skip sales tax at your own risk! If you fail to pay, and the Board of Equalization suspects something, expect an audit.)

Other big name distributors

Tech Data
Pinacor
Merisel
Inacom
Gates/Arrow

Understandably, these big distributors only want to deal with serious resellers, but it's pretty easy to open an account with the distributors that have the application process automated on their website. These distributors focus primarily on large volume resellers, so don't expect to get the best service if you have any problems or questions. Sometimes even the smaller legit companies have trouble dealing with top 10 distributors. You might have more luck with the smaller grey market distributors, but opening an account with a smaller outfit might actually be more difficult. Here's Yahoo's hardware distributor list.