What should I say if a supplier asks me for my monthly spend on PPC/marketing?
You want to get the message across to your potential new suppliers that you plan to invest heavily in the marketing of their products. Although the really large numbers will come further down the line, you can get the point across that you intend to scale your ad spend as high as is profitable.
I would mention that you are in a position to focus all of your investment into marketing since you do not have the overheads involved with a physical location.
Therefore, I would say to them that you will be scaling your ad spend to be a few thousand per month on PPC marketing. This is realistic as soon as you are profitable and want to increase your profit by increasing your ad spend.
Initially it will most likely be lower than this so that you can discover which brands and products are most popular with our customers and then you will be increasing your ad spend to keep up with demand.
You could also say that you will be able to increase our ad spend towards brands that can offer us the best margins. This will turn the table on the conversation and ensure they are going to be offering you the best margin they can!