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The future of wholesale business.

Wholesale trade stands between manufacturing and retail and supports distribution. It was thought to be an essential part of distribution, but recently it seems that a dark cloud has entered the wholesale industry. What is happening to wholesale? I tried to summarize some possible future developments while exploring the actual situation.

What is the wholesale business

Let’s comment on the word wholesale that you often listen to here. Wholesale means purchasing goods from producers and selling them to retailers. It plays an important role in commerce, supporting logistics, coordinating demand and supply, and settling payments.

The current state of wholesale

Wholesale has been stable for many years and has been considered essential to life, but recently the industry has begun to stagnate. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises have deteriorated in business results, and some areas where management is difficult are also appearing.

Future development of wholesale

While analyzing the causes of the current state of wholesale, we summarized possible developments in the future.

（1）It becomes more and more difficult by the expansion of net shop

With the spread of the internet, the internet shop developed and people often bought online without buying directly at the store. As a result, the opportunities for manufacturers to deliver products directly to consumers are increasing, and wholesale jobs are decreasing. This trend is expected to continue in the future as net shops will also do marketing and further increase in scale in the future.

(2）Securing stable supply destinations

While the manufacturing industry directly leads to consumers, the pattern is also increasing that the retail industry manufactures directly. As a result, wholesale is becoming increasingly difficult. So what is expected to increase in the future is securing stable supply destinations. For example, in the case of wholesale of food materials used for lunch and transactions with local government counterparts, stable sales are possible because they are unlikely to enter the manufacturing industry.

(3) Value-added services

What has come to be seen recently is to add value to ordinary wholesales. For example, in the case of wholesale food, it is possible to reduce the burden on the site by not only wholesale ingredients but also completing part of the cooking work that has been done at the site on the wholesale side. In this way, a system that can receive a processing fee and receive a stable request will be the key to save the current situation.

Summary

With the development of net shops and the collapse of the conventional distribution system, wholesale business is in a difficult situation. It will be required to understand the situation and actively pursue new approaches.