Wholesale distributors have until now been largely unaffected by the disruptive impact of ecommerce and digital channels on the retail industry. This situation cannot last much longer. B2B buyers increasingly expect the same high levels of convenience, range, and low costs of ecommerce at all stages of their procurement processes, including wholesale distribution.
The boom in smaller ecommerce retailers also continues to fragment the retail industry, bringing down barriers of geography and market access. In fact, nearly 40 percent of wholesalers worldwide are already planning to improve ecommerce capabilities in order to build revenues in 2016.1 As a result, Australian wholesale distributors must look urgently to ecommerce to simplify how they take, fulfil, and optimise orders from more customers, across more locations, with more varied needs than ever before.