Here’s a List of Wholesale Trends We Saw in 2025

If you're selling wholesale in 2025, you’ve probably noticed that B2B ecommerce looks drastically different from what it did a few years ago. 

Buyers today want speed, transparency, autonomy, and a digital experience that feels as polished as the consumer brands they shop personally. At the same time, wholesalers are under pressure to deliver that experience without overwhelming their reps, complicating operations, or sacrificing margin.

To give you a better understanding of some of the trends that have defined wholesale in 2025, now that we’re close to finishing off the year, here’s a list of some of the top B2B ecommerce trends that have shaped wholesale growth this year. 

We're also in the first phase of building our very own State of Wholesale Trends Report, and we need your brand's help. We have more information on this at the end of this blog, but we're looking for brands' input on a survey we've built here. We appreciate any brand that participates in the survey and helps us create a report that is truly representative of what wholesale brands are experiencing. 

Buyers Expect Consumer-Grade B2B Shopping Experiences

The most dramatic shift in 2025 is that wholesale buyers now expect B2B buying to feel like DTC shopping. 

They want clean product pages, fast filtering, real-time inventory, friction-free checkout, and navigation that makes sense. Brands winning in this space are simplifying the path to purchase by reducing clicks, improving catalog searchability, building persistent carts, and offering digital line sheets that feel less like static PDFs and more like shoppable experiences. 

The “Amazon effect” has officially reached wholesale buyers, who expect everything to be intuitive.

Self-Service Ordering Has Become a Non-Negotiable Standard

Buyers no longer want to email reps, wait for order confirmations, or wrestle with spreadsheets. 

They want control. 

In 2025, successful wholesale brands have embraced always-on ecommerce portals where buyers can place orders whenever they need, view real-time pricing and availability, save assortments, build carts over time, and reorder without friction. 

We want to reinforce this point: self-service doesn’t replace reps; it strengthens them by freeing their time for high-value conversations and strategic selling.

AI Forecasting and Data-Driven Planning Are Becoming Everyday Tools

AI is moving far beyond buzzword status. 

Wholesalers are using predictive tools to forecast prebooks, flag slow-moving SKUs before they become problems, analyze buying patterns, optimize size runs, and model sell-through outcomes. 

Even lean teams are adopting lightweight forecasting tools to avoid stockouts and overproduction, placing safer buys and creating more efficient inventory strategies.

Digital Merchandising Is Replacing Static Line Sheets

PDF line sheets are losing their place as the primary merchandising tool. In 2025, buyers want dynamic, interactive digital experiences where they can browse products visually, build assortments in real time, filter items by story, fabric, or margin targets, and see recommended buys based on their segment. 

This shift helps buyers make faster decisions and helps brands present collections in a more compelling, consumer-grade way.

Reorder Behavior Is Increasing, But Only When the Brand Enables It

Retailers are shifting away from large seasonal buys and toward smaller, more frequent orders. 

But this only works if the brand makes reordering easy. 

Buyers can’t and won’t reorder if they lack visibility into inventory or if the process feels slow or confusing. Brands that streamline replenishment, provide “running low” alerts, and enable 1-click reorders are capturing more mid-season revenue than ever before.

Retailer Expectations for Digital Support Have Accelerated

Today’s retailers want digital access to merchandising guides, product knowledge, image libraries, sell-through tips, marketing assets, and seasonal buying guidance. 

Brands investing in robust retail resource hubs are seeing stronger retailer engagement and loyalty. The more tools retailers have to sell your products, the more likely they are to reorder.

Connected Systems Are Now a Major Competitive Advantage

Disconnected tools slow teams down. In 2025, brands are centralizing data across ecommerce, ERP, inventory, rep tools, and financial systems to build a single source of truth. 

Unified data improves pricing accuracy, prevents inventory errors, accelerates fulfillment, and makes ecommerce smarter. 

The days of spreadsheets managing wholesale are fading quickly.

Reps Are Leaning On Ecommerce as a Selling Tool

Instead of competing with ecommerce, modern sales reps are using it to sell smarter. 

They rely on digital catalogs during appointments, send curated assortments, track buyer engagement, and use portal activity to identify when accounts are ready to reorder. 

The winning model is a hybrid one: ecommerce supports reps, and reps drive higher adoption of ecommerce. Everyone wins.

Wholesale Analytics Are Becoming the Power Move

Brands are analyzing everything: SKU-level sell-through, margin performance, reorder velocity, account-specific buying behavior, and retailer engagement. 

When these insights are shared with retailers, they lead directly to better selling decisions, stronger trust, and more repeat orders.

Sustainability and Operational Efficiency Are Converging

In 2025, sustainability is less about recycled materials and more about producing closer to demand and reducing waste. 

Efficient ecommerce ecosystems help brands cut unnecessary production, reduce returns, and manage inventory more responsibly. Operational efficiency has become the most meaningful sustainability effort a wholesale brand can undertake.

Help Us Create the Gold Standard Wholesale Report

These are trends we’ve personally observed and researched from third-party sources, but we’re looking to create a wholesale report based on responses from brands in the wholesale space. 

We’re looking for brands across a range of verticals, including outdoor, footwear, golf, pickleball, and more. 

To do this, we need your help. 

We have a survey that you can fill out. 

We’ll be honest, there are quite a few questions, but we think they’re necessary to get a really good look at what brands in the wholesale industry are going through. 

Still, it should take about 8-10 minutes to complete, and your responses will go a long way toward building the most accurate report of what wholesale brands are going through. 

FAQ

Why is B2B ecommerce changing so quickly in 2025?

Because wholesale buyers increasingly expect digital experiences that mirror consumer shopping: fast, intuitive, accessible, and self-service focused. Technology, AI, and shifting buying behaviors are accelerating that change.

Do self-service portals replace sales reps?

No. They actually make reps more effective by handling routine orders while reps focus on strategic selling, assortment planning, and relationship building.

Why are interactive line sheets replacing PDFs?

PDFs can’t update in real time or help buyers interact with products. Digital merchandising tools offer filtering, visual assortments, collection storytelling, and faster buying workflows.

How does AI support wholesale planning?

AI helps forecast demand, identify risky SKUs early, optimize sizing, predict reorders, and prevent overproduction, saving both time and margin.

Why is retailer support so important for ecommerce success?

When brands empower retailers with the digital tools, imagery, and insights they need, retailers sell more confidently and reorder more often.