Retail refers to the business model of a merchant that sells products directly to the end consumer. Wholesale on the other hand is when a merchant sells products to other businesses who then distribute through different channels to the end user.
Traditionally, wholesale distribution was not a channel that many founders or merchants would consider expanding into, especially in the first few years of the business. The capital cost was usually too high and the supply chain complications made it impossible for small teams to manage manually.
The retail industry may have been quick to digitize but wholesale lagged behind. To a certain degree it still does; even with affordable and reliable cloud SaaS solutions that provide end-to-end supply chain solutions for wholesalers, many retailers are still hesitant to take the leap of faith. However these merchants are missing out on a huge opportunity for growth; the wholesale market is expected to reach a value of nearly $47768.95 billion by 2022 and more and more of these sales are being made online.