Wholesale to Direct.
A business is an oil tanker. What it is, how it operates and who it sells to are large things, and large things are hard to move in a new direction — you put the wheel over and, for a good while, nothing much happens. The most common model is the one we all know: a brand makes something and sells it to stores, who sell that same thing on to their customers. Alongside, the same brand has probably made a start with its own site, and signals that it sells direct — a path to purchase, even. But the wholesale side is what fuels the business. The site is a nice-to-have. An afterthought.
Control is a fiction
And that's all fine if things roll on as they always have, with plenty of active partners doing business on the brand's behalf. But things don't stay the same, even when they feel like they do. The ground shifts, then tips, then turns everything on its head. Partners start their own brands, or take on other brands that steal the focus yours once had, or get into a bit of hot water and have to rethink what they do, dropping labels as they go.
Which is to say: if a brand's main business is selling to other businesses, it is never really in control. Nor is it in complete control if it only sells direct — control is a fiction. But it has a great deal more of it than a business whose survival depends on somebody else's, and that is the whole difference.
When to make the move from wholesale to direct
Pivoting to direct sales as the main revenue driver is painful. It takes time, thought and money, a lot of clarity, good partners to help (we know a few), and the nerve to push on through what will be a tricky couple of years. We'd argue it should be done while things are going well and the partner network is still active — you can't steer a ship that has stopped. Life doesn't always play out like that, and often it's the ground shifting that forces the question.
As we wrote this, it occurred to us that a list would be handy: the things to think about if your business is at this juncture, whether you're looking to bolster partner revenue with direct sales or replace it outright. So here it is — thoughts, actions and ideas, in roughly the order they'll come up.
What the transition asks of you
Your site is a product. Make it with the same care you put into the things you sell. It's no longer a brochure with a basket on the end. It is the shop now, and it will be judged the way your products are judged.
Your story supports the sale. It isn't the sale. Who you are, why you started and where you're going are worth talking about, and people like to hear it. But customers care rather less for your vision than for what you're doing for them. Lead with that.
The experience has to be exceptional. A catalogue with prices on it is not going to do anything for you. Education, guides, ideas — the stories inside what you make, the ones people searching for your product already know and enjoy hearing because they are intrinsic to the thing — all of it needs to play out across the site. Your site is an awful lot more than your products.
Welcome all comers. Visitors from home and from far away, wherever you have a natural following or wish to build one. There's a world inside this — languages, currencies, duties, delivery — but it all becomes understandable once you've worked out who you're selling to and want to welcome. Your years with an active partner network have told you more about that than you might think.
Everything has to happen fast. Page loads, and your replies to customers. Wholesale runs at the pace of the order book. Direct runs at the pace of a person waiting for an answer. Selling direct is a culture shift, and it may be the one your business is least ready for.
Prepare to be sold a million useless things. We've been doing this long enough to know what you need and what you don't, and most of what you'll be shown is simply not fit for purpose. There isn't much you need. It's case by case, but broadly:
A simple newsletter tool. Klaviyo or Mailchimp; either is fine.
Stripe for payments. Don't bother with anything else. We have no stake in it; it's just good.
A site built as a product, with e-commerce added to it, rather than an e-commerce platform with a site bolted on. Unless you have thousands of items and genuinely need a Shopify or similar, this will save you a fortune in apps and subscriptions. We've written about where that line falls.
A shared inbox, staffed by humans. Don't put an AI bot in front of your customers unless you want to actively annoy them. Every channel needs to land in one place, and the one we use and make is Vidual Inbox — priced per month rather than per seat, so the bill doesn't grow with the team.
Somewhere to keep files and hand out links: images for the press, assets for stockists. Stowary, by Vidual, is priced for storage rather than seats. Ours too.
Analytics and SEO in one place, tracking visits from every channel including the AI ones, with somewhere to research and plan what you'll write. That's Fly Away Paul. If anything is a digital distillation of what we know in this area, it's Paul.
Three of those are ours, built because we needed them and nothing we bought did the job. Take them or leave them. What matters is how short the list is. Drop us a line and we'll advise on the rest.
Expect it to take a couple of years. Yes, years. You can't go from selling to partners to relying on customers in a few weeks. We helped Pegoretti move from selling mostly through dealers to selling direct as the main source of revenue, and we know how long it takes to shake out — for the brand, and for the partners who stay.
Prepare to be a busy marketer. Not social media. It's necessary, it's not our favourite channel, and we're not the ones to advise on it. The real work is making sure the world knows about you directly, rather than by proxy through partners: the press, events, the right sort of attention in the right places. This is part of the cultural pivot, and it takes some learning and experimentation. Most of it lands as content — which brings us back to the site.
The site is the business now
That list got a lot longer than we'd planned. Some of it, we hope, is useful, and if any of it raises questions we'd welcome a chat to see if we can help — send us a line, or tell us where your business is in Discovery.
If there's one thing to leave you with, it's this: make your site with real depth. Imbue it with everything that is your business. No half measures. The site is your business now. Make it a good one.
Wholesale runs at the pace of the order book. Direct runs at the pace of a person waiting for an answer.