RepSpark Blog

How Fast a Wholesale Retailer Network Actually Grows

Written by Tim McLain | September 1, 2026

Retailer count is the metric most B2B wholesale teams are measured on and the one they have the least outside context for. You know whether you added accounts. You do not know whether the number you added was good.

Two figures are useful here, and they are very different from each other.   

The platform figure

Across the RepSpark platform, the number of retailers identifying as selling golf products grew 41.8 percent in 2025. That is the closest thing to a category number we can publish, because it covers every brand in that vertical rather than the ones with a story worth telling.

Treat something in that range as a strong year in a growing category. Not the 100 percent figures below.

The named brand range

These are outcomes at individual brands, drawn from published RepSpark case studies.

TYR grew independent retail users 160 percent.

johnnie-O grew B2B retailer count 102 percent.

Southern Tide grew B2B users 71 percent in its first year, with order volume up 88 percent.

NAOT added 400 retailers, alongside a 15 percent revenue increase in its first three months.

Primo Golf approved 120 retailers in its first 30 days live, with another 63 awaiting approval.

Read that range with the bias attached

We are showing you brands that succeeded. That is what a case study is. Every one of those numbers is real and verifiable, and none of them is an average, because brands whose retailer count went sideways do not get written up.

So the honest way to use this list is as a picture of what is achievable rather than what is typical. If your network grew 20 percent last year, you did not underperform a 100 percent benchmark. There is no 100 percent benchmark. You performed within a category growing in the 40 percent range at the vertical level.

What the named brands do tell you is where the growth came from, and the pattern is consistent. Every one of them changed who could place an order rather than adding salespeople. johnnie-O put reps on complex accounts and let independents self serve. NAOT gave small and mid tier accounts 24/7 access against live inventory and watched customer service calls fall. Primo trained every new retailer on a call before approving them.

Retailer count follows access. It is a distribution question before it is a sales question.

Three questions worth answering

How many retailers placed at least one order last year, as opposed to how many are in your system. What share of new accounts placed a second order within two seasons. And how long does it take you to get a newly approved retailer to their first order, because that interval is the one most brands have never measured and the one Primo built its whole approach around.

Methodology. The platform figure reflects year over year change in the number of retailers on the RepSpark platform identifying as selling golf products, comparing 2025 to 2024. RepSpark works with 250 brands and 100,000 retailers. Named brand results are drawn from published RepSpark case studies and reflect those brands' own reported outcomes over the periods stated. Case study results are self selected by definition and are presented as an achievable range rather than a category average.