1. The Spray and pray era of wholesale is over

With increased competition from D2C platforms and D2C brands taking an ever increasing percentage of consumer commerce from traditional retailers, wholesale buyers have never been more under the pump to ensure they make on-trend profitable purchasing decisions – in fact, they are overwhelmed:

Finding these tactics no longer work?

  • Cold emails sent to dozens of buyers.
  • RangeMe and Faire profiles gathering digital dust.
  • Long waffly brand stories that buyers don’t care about.
  • Endless follow-ups with nothing but crickets.

This reflects a broader industry move – from volume to precision.

2. Pretty packaging doesn’t close the deal any more:

We know this one can hurt, especially if you’ve invested thousand of dollars in professional packaging design. But beautiful branding is simply not enough.

They want to know:

  • Will this product move?
  • Will this product make me money?
  • Will this brand support sell-through?
  • Will AI assistants see past the product packaging and decide the product just isn’t good enough to rate highly?
  • Will this make sense for us?

Buyers don’t like taking risks in the current retail environment. They are rewarded for bringing in brands that impact the bottom line.

In an era of increasing competition from D2C, tighter margins and shrinking market share, traditional retailers are fighting just to stay relevant and survive.

3. Is your product actually good enough?

AI is transforming consumer buying decisions by unmasking products that don’t meet consumer expectations of price, quality, sustainability and value. Where once pretty packaging and clever marketing could result in product sales success, AI sees past that and recommends only the products are the best for each member of the consumer’s household – answering the question “what’s best for me?”

If you don’t nail this “brand awareness” or more accurately product awareness then it doesn’t matter which distribution and marketing channels you choose, your product will almost certainly fail.

4. Reading buyer behaviour.

Buyers are changing. And it’s not just because AI assistants are providing consumers with better information. There’s a number of factors at play. Retail buyers are struggling to get their product mix right while trying to stay profitable. Credit insurers have been reducing their risk exposure to wholesale and retail, meaning suppliers end up holding greater risk. Everyone is being squeezed from almost every angle.

Wholesale and retail buyers are managing this extra risk, plus dealing with packed inboxes, sales people smashing them with DMs on Linkedin, managing platforms like RangeMe and Faire, trade shows, staff development, internal processes and approvals based on team consensus, and inventory management, all while being asked to justify every SKU and every new product recommendation.

And this is before they are seeing their market share being eroded by D2C platforms and AI.

5. Drivers of change.

D2C and AI assistants are the biggest driver of change in buyer behaviour today – both for consumers and wholesale buyers.

D2C has taken 28% of sales – most of which that used to belong to retailers.

Buyers are not forgiving of brands that are just guessing what consumers might want.

The manufacturers who will win are the ones that understand buyer psychology well enough to stay focused, calm, clear and consistent, and can demonstrate clear value – again…answering the question – “what’s best for me?”

6. Stop taking advice that isn’t right for your brand or products.

We might upset quite a few people here! One of the biggest things holding back manufacturers isn’t product, price, sales channels, D2C challenges or wholesale buyers not “getting” your brand – it’s who they are learning from, who they are getting advice from and at what point of their business.

If you’re a small business doing under $1M a year taking advice from a bigger business doing $10M or $100M, or a business or marketing coach that is used to clients with larger revenue, or that doesn’t “get” the reasons for the current change in buyer behaviour, or has no deep industry knowledge or experience, then you’re not getting a shortcut or fast-tracked or the best advice.

You’re most likely getting advice that assumes:

  • You have a marketing budget that probably doesn’t exist
  • You have a team or outsourced contractors that you don’t currently have – or maybe even don’t know how to find
  • Capital and cash flow that you don’t have 
  • Connections, brokers and distributors that you don’t have
  • Operational capabilities that you haven’t put in place yet
  • You’re well financed – enough to grow at any pace or survive slower months or downtimes

And then you wonder why everything feels messy, too hard, confusing, or out of reach.…or all of these!

This is a real problem in consumer commerce right now.

Businesses are crowdsourcing strategy in Slack channels, getting advice on Reddit, outsourcing their decision making during founder coffee dates, updating their marketing plan based off podcast episodes or educational or industry events, or taking advice from people who are not experts in this field, or maybe had success in years gone by under different market conditions and before AI assistants or D2C platforms or their business is one step ahead, or sometimes not ahead at all.

It’s also dangerous to copy someone else’s strategy when you don’t know what’s going on inside their business.

It’s even more dangerous to take someone’s advice when they don’t know what’s going on in your business.

7. So, what makes a strategic business?

Borrowing strategy that is built for someone else’s brand isn’t good strategy. What works for someone else often doesn’t work for you.

What works at $10M can send you broke at $500K-$1M.

What works at $100M can destroy your margins at $1M-$5M.

The businesses that are succeeding right now are not blindly copying other businesses’ strategy.
They’re not trying to “act bigger” than they are.
They’re not trying to be the “authority” rather than a “commodity”.
They’re not chasing national retail distribution for the sake of “ego” over strategy.
They’re not chasing strategies they’re not resourced to execute.

They’re making stage-appropriate and market appropriate decisions.

  • which channels to focus on
  • which technologies to adopt
  • when to outsource or build internal capabilities
  • when to ignore advice that simply doesn’t apply anymore

That’s what makes a strategic business.

When your strategy actually matches where your business is right now, everything gets simpler:

It’s not “here’s what worked for me” – (often in the distant past)
It’s not “here’s how the big brands do it.”

But: Here’s what works at your stage, with your resources, in this market, in an AI powered world, in the new era of commerce.

And that’s why so many manufacturers now choose D2C. Because it mirrors buyer behaviour, it makes more sense strategically, it’s more easily scalable and it works no matter what stage your business is at!