How to Choose the Best Wholesale Platform for Your Brand

Choosing the right B2B wholesale e-commerce platform for your business can be difficult. There are several options in the market, each with their pros and cons, and trying to figure out what features you should even be looking for only makes the decision that much harder. 

While we can’t speak for all the options you might be looking at, we can say that one of the biggest reasons our customers like us as much as they do is because of the features we offer. 

So, we figured we’d give you a simple guide to the features and tools you should be on the lookout for as you're deciding what wholesale platform you’re going to use. 

Basic Features You Want

At the most fundamental level, the platform you decide to use should be able to showcase your brand’s product and allow your retailers to order that product online, 24/7. You should also have tools to help you manage your orders and your customers. 

These are the basics. If whatever you’re looking at doesn’t, at the very least, have these features going for it, then keep looking. 

Moving Past the Basic Features

To really set your wholesale operations up for success, you’ll want features and tools that move past the basics. 

Here’s a look at some additional features and tools you’ll want to look for. 

Management and Operations Tools

The main goal of a B2B Management & Operations tools is to save you time from the mundane tasks of your business so you can have more time to focus on the parts of your business that truly matter. 

Apart from the basics that we outlined above, your wholesale e-commerce platform should give you clear visibility of your orders, future orders, and inventory in real-time.

You should have access to reports that feed you actionable data to improve your wholesale operations. 

Invoice management should also be part of your available features, so you know the live status of your open, closed, and past-due invoices. And, you should have tools available that let you notify your buyers that they have open or past due invoices so they can easily pay it within the same wholesale platform. 

You should also be able to manage your team’s permissions within the platform so the right people are handling the correct tasks and sensitive information. Or simply be able to manage your reps to get insights into their activity to help them hit their numbers. 

Lastly, a very useful tool that you’ll want to ask about during a demo are customer dashboards that provide key account data about your customers. The reason you want this is because it allows you, or your reps, to use these dashboards, filled with easily digestible data, during calls to maximize product sell-through and improve gross margins. 

Integrations with Your Current Services 

The last thing you want is siloed information between your ERP and your wholesale e-commerce platform. 

So, you’ll want these two platforms to be able to talk to each other. 

Platform integrations between the two will ensure that your wholesale e-commerce platform will be your source of truth. Buyers will know exactly how much inventory you have and you’ll be able to manage your entire wholesale pipeline if your wholesale platform supports integrations through an open API. 

By the way, if your wholesale e-commerce platform supports open APIs, integrations with your ERP will be just the start. You’ll also be able to integrate with payment processors, CRMs such as Salesforce, and more. 

Simple Online Order Entry for Your Retailers

Your reps and retailers should be able to easily place orders for your product anytime and anywhere on your wholesale e-commerce platform. 

Your order entry tool should be able to show your real-time inventory as well, so your buyers know exactly how much they can order. 

Ideally, you want to have multiple ways to order, such as digital catalogs and line sheets. Bonus points for the platform you select if it offers your buyers tools to quickly reorder bestsellers or pre-book popular items to reserve merchandise in advance. 

While this isn’t a must-have, keep a look out to see if the platform you’re researching offers product customization tools for orders. 

Some platforms, such as RepSpark, allow your buyers to easily add logos and brand assets during the checkout process if the selected merchandise allows for it. Our customization tool, for example, offers mock-up previews that can help you eliminate back and forth emails with buyers trying to see what the end-product will look like. 

Tools to Bolster Your Branding

One of the best ways to build trust and loyalty between you and your retailers is through a cohesive brand identity. 

You want to create a unified image of your brand throughout your various channels to ensure that your buyers associate your brand with the image you’re trying to create, no matter where they’re buying your products. 

Some of the branded selling tools that your wholesale e-commerce platform can offer to aid in this regard include: 

• Branded home pages that showcase your top sellers featured products, video assets, and more; 
• Digital catalogs that eliminate the costly production of paper catalogs and provide real-time information about inventory
• Virtual showrooms that connect video assets and shoppable catalogs to create an engaging shopping experience for your buyers 
• Email marketing campaigns that let you easily communicate with your buyers 

A RepSpark Community for Retailers to Discover Your Brand

You want a Community that not only allows your existing retailers to find your product, but one that also encourages new retailers to discover and shop your products as well.

An ideal Community allows you to brand your digital storefront in a way that truly matches your brand’s image.

It should also allow you to create a digital catalog that you can showcase within the marketplace to present your products in the best light. 

Ideally, you’ll also want control over who shops your brand through the storefront. There might be new retailers that want to shop your brand, but you want to control which of those new retailers meet the criteria you’ve set for your retailers. 

Rejected retailers don’t get to shop your brand, and those that you approve should be able to receive a personalized onboarding experience (curated product assortments and branded home pages that encourage purchasing). 

Microsites Tailored for Events

Think of Microsites as websites tailored for a specific event. Within this website you can create a curated assortment ideal for the event you’re going to. 

Outside of the curated assortment that you feature on these Microsites, you also have the ability to personalize the website with your logo, or the events logo, to create a website that feels like a natural extension of your brand. 

These Microsites also allow you to customize payment methods. Visitors can pay with credit card if it's a revenue-generating event or pay with member credits if it's something like an employee retreat where employees will be comped the product. 

Microsites allow you options for how users can access the merchandise, such as drop-shipping or pick-up options.