What is a B2B marketplace and why do wholesalers use them?

You may already be selling your products to consumers, but if you’re looking to scale up and branch out into wholesale, it may be time to consider a business-to-business model. We call this B2B, and it’s a massive sales channel that’s showing no signs of slowing down, especially online. According to recent research from Forrester, US B2B e-commerce sales will reach $3 trillion by 2027 and will account for almost a quarter of B2B sales in the country. 

Historically, businesses have utilized sales representatives, trade shows, and direct-to-consumer channels to sell their products. These days, there are online marketplaces like Faire, where sellers offer their products or services and the opportunity to buy in bulk to retailers, suppliers, manufacturers, and other businesses online. These B2B marketplaces give businesses another robust channel to add to their overall sales strategy. 

Below, we’ll explore how B2B marketplaces can help you boost your business’s profitability while reducing overhead costs like marketing.

What are the advantages of using a B2B marketplace?

Wholesalers depend heavily on their networks to build relationships, gain referrals, and ultimately, connect with new retailers. In order to grow, wholesalers market themselves across multiple channels, both online and in person. Leveraging a B2B marketplace is an effective way for wholesalers to get their brand in front of hundreds of thousands of retailers who might otherwise not discover their products. Marketplaces come with several distinct advantages.

Increased exposure 

B2B marketplaces bring wholesalers and retailers together in one platform. This transforms the traditional model, where you’d have to do one-on-one outreach and were limited by the retailers you already knew or found through painstaking research. With a marketplace, you can get inbound interest around the clock, including from newly opened retailers and shops that are expanding into new categories. This way, finding new partners is scalable and less time-intensive.

Less friction

Buying and selling through online marketplaces eliminates many of the inefficiencies businesses might encounter when selling in person. Getting paid on time is essential to keeping your business running, and a marketplace that manages payment collection can help. This means you don’t have to manually process each individual payment. Your payments are guaranteed—even if a customer defaults—so your cash flow is always predictable. B2B marketplaces also make recordkeeping easier since there’s a digital trail of everything that happens between a wholesaler and retailer.

Wider coverage  

In traditional B2B selling, businesses have sales reps who promote their brand to potential retail buyers through meetings and consultations. Though these one-on-one interactions can be effective, they can be limiting geographically since sales reps tend to focus on a certain territory or region. In a marketplace, you can easily reach retailer buyers across the country or around the world.

Ability to scale 

A common challenge for a growing B2B brand is not being able to scale sustainably. That’s because growth comes with costs like spending money on staff or space. Using a B2B marketplace makes it easier for you to scale without taking on additional administrative burdens. In an e-commerce marketplace, it doesn’t matter if you go from 10 clients to 100 clients in a year: You can accelerate your growth and attract new audiences without needing to worry about new tech integrations or increased employee overhead.

More cost effective than trade shows 

B2B businesses will often attend in-person trade shows to connect with retail brands. These trade shows have entrance fees, registration fees, and booth fees that can add up to a significant expense—especially for a wholesale brand that is just starting out. While B2B marketplaces have fees, too, they are less costly than attending trade shows and come with some key perks, like getting 0% commission on eligible Faire Direct relationships. Instead of spending up to tens of thousands of dollars on a trade show, wholesalers can make connections online. 

How does Faire make B2B selling easier?

Faire is the leading B2B retail marketplace, and thousands of independent retailers and wholesalers use the marketplace to increase their reach, grow their businesses, and simplify their operations. 

Reach 

When wholesalers join Faire, they gain access to hundreds of thousands of retailers around the globe. In fact, Faire has facilitated more than seven million connections between brands and retailers.

The platform offers tools to help brands share their brand story and values, and brands with exemplary quality and service are rewarded with a Top Shop badge to help them stand out. 

Fair’s search algorithm helps match retailers with products that fit their store. With helpful filters on Faire, retailers can narrow those results to find wholesale partners according to location, shipping window, order minimums, or lead time. And when it comes to giving new brands a shot, 60-day payment terms , free returns on opening orders, and Faire Markets—virtual trade shows during which Faire has matched brands’ discounts on eligible orders, up to 5%—lower the risk for retailers.

Growth

Faire provides the marketing tools and infrastructure to grow your business. Benefits like 24/7 access, flexible payments, low minimums, easy shipping, and customer support inspire retailers to shop more often on Faire. 

Every brand that sells on Faire gets its own personalized Faire Direct link, which wholesales use to convert leads into buyers at 0% commission. 

The platform’s effective and easy-to-use CRM tools help brands communicate with their customers and drive sales. With Faire’s lower cost financing and fewer logistics for you to worry about, you can concentrate on deepening your relationships and increasing your sales. 

Ease 

In addition to boosting your visibility, a marketplace like Faire offers a suite of tools to make running your wholesale business easier. That starts with the Faire mobile app for brands. Use it to manage Faire orders, inventory, and customer communications anytime and from anywhere.

Integrations with other e-commerce platforms, like Shopify, make it easier than ever for brands to sell on Faire and manage their orders from the platforms that make the most sense for them. These apps sync inventory, order, and fulfillment details, helping brands avoid oversold products (and the customer issues that come with them).

Millions of products are sold on Faire each year, and retailers are discovering new products to love from wholesalers that share their values—like being eco-friendly, locally sourced, or woman-owned. By joining a B2B marketplace, you’re becoming a member of a vast community of sellers and buyers who have the same goals: to grow, to connect, and to thrive.