Services — wholesale and distribution
CCTV Wholesale and Distribution: Building-Sized Orders for Distributors and Integrators
Wholesale here means one order that carries a whole building: cameras by form, PoE switches with the port count and the wattage to match them, CAT6 and accessories, recorders with the right bays for the retention the client promised, and the display layer that goes in the guard room. Buyers are regional distributors, system integrators and engineering contractors who would rather hold one supplier for the chain than four. Volume pricing is quoted at tier level for a specific model list and confirmed on a formal quotation.
- The whole chain in one order: camera, PoE, CAT6, NVR, wall
- Volume pricing at tier level, confirmed on a formal quotation
- Your logo on cartons and cases when the volume justifies a branded run
- A spares and replacement path agreed before the order ships
What you get
The output first, the process after. Every item maps to a line on the quotation.
- 01 Building-sized bill of materials One list per project or per stocking order: cameras by form, PoE switching with ports and wattage, CAT6 and accessories, recorders with bays and drives, the display layer, and the spares — with quantities against the building they are for.
- 02 Tiered pricing on a formal quotation Currency, tier, validity, Incoterm and the inclusions and exclusions in writing, priced per line so that a branded carton, a spare drive and a housing are each visible rather than averaged into a total.
- 03 Packing, marking and carton plan Palletised packing for sea freight, shipping marks to your instruction or ours, and a carton plan on mixed orders so that the consignment unpacks in the order the site needs it.
- 04 Spares and replacement plan The spares list agreed with the order, the warranty terms as quoted, and the replacement route — diagnosis first, then unit-level replacement — with the return process written down before the goods ship.
- 05 Remote commissioning support Our engineers work with your installers remotely through switch power-up, camera onboarding, recording and retention setup, remote access and the acceptance walk-through, so that the first project on a new platform is not attempted alone.
Who buys this way, and what each buyer needs
| Buyer | What they need from a wholesale order | What usually goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Regional distributor | A stock mix that covers most buildings in the market, cartons marked for their own warehouse, a spares quantity, and a supplier who can repeat the same configuration next quarter | Stocking by product category instead of by system: forty cameras, six switches, no recorder with the bays to hold the retention their installers keep promising |
| System integrator | One bill of materials per project, priced so the margin survives the tender, and technical support that reaches the commissioning session | Mixing generations or platforms between projects, which multiplies spares and doubles the configuration knowledge the technicians have to carry |
| Engineering and MEP contractor | The cabling and electrical accessories bought to a schedule that matches the build programme, with the containment and connectors in the same consignment as the hardware | Buying cable and accessories ad hoc as the programme slips, then paying retail prices in small quantities at the worst point in the schedule |
| Security installer moving up from analogue | A first project kit that works end to end, with the configuration done with support rather than alone | A recorder with the wrong bay count for the retention the client was promised, discovered in month two |
More detail
Three kinds of buyer order in wholesale quantities, and they need slightly different things from the same range. Naming the difference is the fastest way to a useful quotation, because a stocking order and a project order are packed, priced and documented differently.
If you are not sure which of these you are, describe the project instead of the product: what the building is, how many positions, how many days of recording and how it gets watched. The order structure follows from those four answers.
The whole building in one order
| Scale | Cameras and PoE | Recorder and storage | CAT6 and accessories |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8–16 positions — a small office, a single store, a first project | FC5B and FC5D mix by position, on one PS082 (8-port 120 W) or one PS162 (16-port 250 W) | NVR10-1-2 or NVR16-1-2 with one drive up to 14 TB; 16 channels at 5 MP for 30 days is about 4–7 TB | Roughly 200–850 m of CAT6 at 20–45 m per drop, with housings, mounts, patch leads and service loops in the same order |
| 17–32 positions — a mid-rise office, a multi-bay warehouse, a school with two or three blocks | Cameras as designed, on a PS242 (24-port 320 W) in the main cabinet and a PS162 or satellite switch in a distant one, with an SFP uplink between them | NVR32-2-2 with 2 drives, 14 TB or 18 TB each; 32 channels for 30 days is about 8–14 TB | Roughly 600–2,200 m of CAT6 at 30–60 m per drop, plus conduit, glands and the uplink between cabinets |
| 33–64 positions — a tower, a large plant, a shopping centre, a campus | Cameras as designed, one cabinet every six to eight floors or one per block, each with its own PS162 or PS242 and an SFP uplink on the 24G02GS-P | NVR49-4-2 or NVR64-8-2 with 4 or 8 bays; 64 channels for 30 days is about 15–29 TB | Roughly 1,100–4,400 m of CAT6 at 30–60 m per drop, and the accessories a multi-cabinet site consumes: patch panels, patch leads, labels and containment |
More detail
A wholesale order that arrives as four shipments from four suppliers is not cheaper, whatever the unit prices say. Freight, clearance, storage and the week the site waits for the last box all belong in the comparison, and they usually erase the difference in the invoice.
The table below shows the three common scales, so that a first quotation can be checked against the building it is for. They are typical configurations rather than fixed packages — every project is sized in its own design — but they are the ones most buildings land on, and they are the right size of answer for a first conversation.
Add spares to the same order: replacement cameras by form, one spare switch for the largest cabinet, and one spare drive for the largest recorder. Freight on a single spare camera six months later costs more than the camera, and a site that waits three weeks for a drive is a site that blames the system.
Pricing, lead time and shipping
Pricing is quoted at tier level against a specific model list and quantity. The formal quotation states the currency, the tier, the validity period, the Incoterm and what is inside or outside the price; nothing on a web page overrides that document. Tiers are set per model and per customisation item rather than as a discount on a total, so a branded carton and a plain one are visible side by side on the same sheet instead of being averaged into one number.
- Payment is by bank transfer (T/T) as standard. The schedule, the currency and the Incoterm are set out on the proforma invoice, which is the document that governs the order; nothing on a web page overrides it.
- Lead time is confirmed in writing on the proforma, because it depends on the model mix, the branding items and the production schedule at the time you order. We would rather confirm a date for your order than publish a lead time we cannot hold in your case.
- Packing for sea freight is palletised and marked; carton text and shipping marks follow your instruction where you have one, and ours where you do not. Branded cartons and cases are available on the same order — the OEM page sets out exactly which surfaces can carry your mark.
- Freight is quoted per shipment: full container, LCL or air. The mode is a real decision rather than a formality — a container is the cheapest per unit and the slowest, air is the fastest and the most expensive, and LCL sits between them while adding handling at both ends.
- Consolidation is planned before the order rather than after it. On a mixed order of several models, the cartons can be packed in the sequence the site will unpack them, which saves a warehouse day at the far end.
- Import clearance is not part of what we sell. Import licences, duties, local charges, customs clearance and market-specific certification belong to you or to your importer of record; we ship to the Incoterm agreed in writing and provide the commercial and technical documents that travel with the goods.
Where we ship: ports, paperwork and who holds what
| Destination | Ports we usually ship to | Held by you or your importer | Travels with the goods |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Africa — Nigeria, Ghana | Lagos (Apapa / Tin Can), Tema | Import licence, duties, clearance, and any conformity assessment your market requires — in Nigeria, SONCAP | Commercial invoice, packing list, model list, specification sheets |
| East Africa — Kenya, Tanzania | Mombasa, Dar es Salaam | Import licence, duties, clearance, and any pre-export verification of conformity — in Kenya, PVOC | Same document set; certificate of origin on request |
| Southern Africa — South Africa | Durban, Cape Town | Import licence, duties, clearance, and any compulsory specification approval — in South Africa, an NRCS letter of authority where it applies | Same document set |
| The Gulf — United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia | Jebel Ali, Dammam | Import licence, duties, clearance, and any conformity scheme the market operates — in the UAE, ECAS | Same document set |
| North Africa — Egypt | Alexandria, Port Said | Import licence, duties, clearance, and registration with the import authority — in Egypt, GOEIC | Same document set; documents can be legalised on request |
| South Asia — India, Sri Lanka | Nhava Sheva, Chennai, Colombo | Import licence, duties, clearance, and any product registration — in India, BIS registration where the model requires it | Same document set |
- Confirm what applies to your import with your importer or customs broker before the order ships. What is compulsory, what is a pre-shipment inspection and what is a product registration differs by market, and it is the importer of record that holds it, not the supplier.
- We have no installation crews in any of these markets. The physical work is done by you or by a local contractor, and our engineers commission the system with them remotely — switches, cameras, recording schedules, remote access and one alert test, worked through on a call.
- Tell us the destination port and the mode — full container, LCL or air — and the current transit time, the freight figure and the document list go on the quotation, so both numbers can be read in one place.
- Nothing about the goods changes with the destination: same models, same specification, same cartons everywhere. What changes is the paperwork around them, and that is settled before production rather than at the port.
More detail
We ship from Guangzhou to ports worldwide, and the same three questions are settled on every order: which port, which Incoterm, and which documents travel with the goods. The table below covers the destinations our wholesale orders go to most often. Transit time is stated on the quotation rather than here, because sailing schedules move and a stale number is worse than none.
Spares, replacement and after-sales
A wholesale relationship is judged in year two, not on the invoice. The parts of it that make that year painless are all decided at order stage: what spares travel with the shipment, how a failed unit is handled, and who diagnoses it.
- Agree a spares quantity with the order rather than reacting to failures: replacement cameras by form, one spare switch for the largest cabinet, and a spare drive for the largest recorder. Drives and outdoor units fail first; the spares that matter are the ones for the positions that are hardest to reach.
- Warranty terms are stated in the quotation, and the normal route is unit-level replacement with the return process agreed in writing before the order ships. Failed units are recorded by model and serial so that a pattern, if there is one, becomes visible rather than anecdotal.
- Diagnosis comes first, replacement second. Most reported faults on a building system are configuration, cable or power issues, and our engineers work through them remotely with your installer before anyone ships hardware across a border.
- Spare parts and accessories travel with the next order where the schedule allows, so that you are not paying international freight on a single camera or a box of connectors.
- Keep the configuration record for each site you install. It is what turns the next order into a repeat, and it is what lets a technician replace a unit without re-deriving the settings on site.
How wholesale and OEM sit together
They are the same order with a different amount of branding. Start with our cartons and plain cases while you establish the market, and move to your own logo when the volume and the customer expectation justify a branded run: the outer carton, the device case, the channel display page, the boot screen, the model naming, the manual and the packing are all available, and the client application keeps its own name either way.
More detail
Because branded and unbranded units are the same hardware with the same specification and the same warranty, a warehouse holding both is not holding two products. What it is holding is two documentation sets, and that is the part to keep tidy: the model mapping sheet from the branded run is what stops a spare part being ordered against the wrong code six months later.
If the branded route is where you are heading, tell us at the first order rather than the fourth. It costs nothing to set the model names on the first shipment so that the branded run is an addition rather than a rename.
Frequently asked questions
What quantities do you supply for wholesale?
There is no single figure, because the minimum is set per model and per customisation item — a plain carton and a branded one are different orders with different minimums, and so are a camera and a PoE switch. What we can do is be quick about it: send the model list with the quantities and tell us whether the cartons are yours or ours, and we will confirm the minimum for that exact combination in writing with the quotation. Stocking orders and project orders are both normal. The only thing we will not do is publish a floor number that turns out not to apply to your order once the artwork arrives.
Can I split a container across several models?
Yes, and mixed orders are the normal shape of a building project: cameras of two or three forms, one or two switch models, a recorder, drives and cable all in one consignment. What we ask is that the mix is planned before the order rather than adjusted after production, because the carton plan, the packing list and the shipping marks are all built from the model list. Mixed orders also load better, which is a small saving in the freight and a real saving in the week the site spends waiting for the last box to arrive separately.
Do you ship to our country, and who clears customs?
We ship to the Incoterm agreed in writing on the quotation, whether that is collection at the factory, delivery to a port or delivery further along the route. Clearance is not part of what we sell: import licences, duties, local charges, customs formalities and any market-specific product certification belong to you or to your importer of record. That is a normal division of labour in international trade, and it is written into the quotation so that nobody discovers it in the middle of a shipment. What travels with the goods is the commercial and technical documentation those formalities need.
What are your payment terms?
They are set per order and confirmed in writing on the proforma invoice before production starts. Terms depend on the order value, the model mix, the production cycle and the shipping route, so a term published on a web page would be misleading in half the cases it was applied to. What you can rely on is that nothing on this site overrides the proforma: the document that carries the currency, the amount, the method and the timing is the one that governs the order. If your business requires terms different from the standard for the order, raise it at the enquiry stage and we will answer it as part of the quotation.
What should a distributor stock first?
Stock the parts that fix the most buildings per unit of shelf space. In practice that means the two 5 MP camera forms — the bullet for outdoor and the dome for indoor positions — one 16-port and one 24-port PoE switch, one 16-channel and one 32-channel recorder, drives in one size, and camera housings and mounts. That mix covers a large majority of the buildings in most markets and lets an installer finish a job without waiting for a shipment. Cable and accessories are the exception: they are cheap to stock, heavy to ship, and the reason a project stops, so keep a working quantity rather than ordering per job.
Plan Your CCTV or Video Wall Project
Send us the building type, floor count and camera estimate — we will come back with a system layout, a bill of materials and a price.