For our “2024 State of B2B Commerce Report: Competing in the Digital Age of Wholesale”, we surveyed nearly 300 wholesale professionals, customers and non-customers, and across industries. Our team wanted to understand how brands are using technology to engage with retail partners and navigate changing market conditions in 2024.
Here’s a taste of what we’ve learned:
Wholesalers are eyeing growth
We asked, they answered — brands are focused on business expansion in 2024. Operational challenges plagued our respondents in previous years, but this year, businesses cite a need to improve sales.
Brands are ready to grow by finding new retailers and strengthening existing relationships. As noted in McKinsey’s The State of Fashion 2024 report, the global fashion industry is expected to grow 2 to 4% this year, with luxury brands faring better and growing between 3 and 5%. Wholesalers want a piece of this growth, and they’re investing in relationships and technology to make it happen. Nearly half said their biggest goal for 2024 is finding new retailers to increase sales, compared with just 18% mentioning supply chain woes.
Businesses are intent on making data-driven decisions
Wholesale businesses are increasingly adept at using data, but for some, data accessibility is still an ongoing challenge:
- 8 in 10 brands said their use of data is already an established part of their business.
- 4% fewer brands have moderate visibility into product sales compared to 2023. Indeed, almost half said they now have little or no visibility.
From the report:
“The narrative we see building around data is that brands are hungry and willing to use data for better decision making but there’s a growing disparity between accessible data and tools that offer those insights.”
Businesses essentially want more nuanced data and the right tools to leverage that data to make the greatest impact.
Brands are searching for new retailer partnerships
Increased optimism in the wholesale channel signals brands’ intent to invest more in building partnerships with retailers.
We see a 7% increase in outreach to attract new retailers, demonstrating that today’s brands are ready and eager to invest in wholesale marketing. This is unsurprising given their interest in growth — wholesale is an appealing way for these businesses to scale and expand into new markets.
Tech improves operations while enhancing the buying experience
Brands are preparing for growth by providing better experiences for retailers. Flexible tools and features that help businesses sell deeper into existing accounts are popular (custom pricing, shipping integrations, etc.).
Respondents said the biggest benefit of B2B wholesale software is bringing analytics-driven insights to the retailer experience. 3 in 4 brands use B2B software in wholesale distribution. These ERP integrations share order, product, pricing, and other data. Almost all brands are at least somewhat confident that their data are accurate.
Conclusion
We see evidence that brands are now more confident in how they’re using technology and they’re more confident in wholesale business as a growth strategy. With our finding that wholesale accounts for 60% of brands’ total sales, wholesale is already a big part of respondents’ businesses.
Brands feel good about investing in wholesale, and they’re transforming wholesale buying to feel more like B2C experiences.
