Wholesale

Wholesale refers to all companies that buy or sell goods and services exclusively to other professional buyers, whether in brick-and-mortar stores or online.

This activity is also known as business-to-business (B2B) trade or trading.

It generally involves the sale of large quantities of products in bulk by wholesalers to distributors.

Wholesale incorporates three main sectors:

• inter-industry capital goods,
• non-food consumer goods, and
• food consumer goods.

More concretely, almost all goods can give rise to wholesale trade. On the other hand, not all goods give rise to retail trade.

The activities of a wholesaler can be divided into five distinct functions:

• commercial activity, i.e., all purchase and resale price negotiations;
• physical and logistical activity, which consists of generating an assortment and managing its storage and transport;
• the information function, which requires a real technical knowledge of the product, an essential prerequisite when talking about a B2B activity;
• the financial function, which involves managing financial flows, payment deadlines, and administrative procedures related to the change of ownership; and
• other service functions that complement the commercial offer according to the needs of professional customers (market research, technical studies, etc.).

According to Statista, in 2021, wholesale trade in the US accounted for approximately $9.7 trillion in sales and involved a little over 258,500 companies.