Fashion Business 101: Wholesale Distribution - how does it work?
365 days of fashion: the e-ncyclopedia of fashion
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
There are two main ways fashion brands operate to sell their collections: via their own stores (retail or DTC direct-to-consumer) or via multi-brand stores. (think of department stores, and online multi-brand stores such as Farfetch, Net-a-Porter…) When brands sell their products via a multi-brand store, that is a wholesale business model. Let’s learn quickly what the wholesale model looks like.
“Wholesale” is the industry term used to define a business-to-business agreement between a company (the store) and another (the brand) to distribute the collection. So there is a company standing between the brand and the customers. Net-a-Porter for example, buys in bulk products from Saint Laurent, to sell them in their online store to customers.