Should a packaging maker sell through dealers or direct online?

A dealer buys pallets of corrugated boxes, mailers and tape and sells to local shops by the carton, moving freight, warehouse space and slow payers off your books. Many makers built whole businesses this way.

Dealers also know their buyers. A restaurant owner rings the dealer for takeaway boxes at seven in the morning and gets them by noon, which no web store can match.

Their weakness is reach. A dealer sells what sits on the shelf and rarely stocks your full range, so a buyer who wants a size they lack simply goes elsewhere.

Some buyers sit outside dealer reach. A candle maker or a sticker seller needs fifty mailers in one size, once a month, with a tracking number, and pays by card.

That order is too small for your pallet minimum, yet online it needs no sales call, no quote and no credit check, only a payment and a label. Dealers see it as a nuisance.

Count pick, pack and postage costs first. A parcel of flat mailers is light, but a parcel of folded cartons or tall tubes may cost more to send than the goods themselves. Flat stock suits the web best.

Dealers leave when you undercut them. Your public price list reaches every dealer within a day, and it damages the trust that keeps them stocking your range for years afterwards.

Set a clear rule. The online price for any item should sit at or above the dealer’s resale price for the same pack, whatever the buyer’s order size. Dealer rates, minimum order quantities and pallet tiers belong in a private rate list that no public page can reach and that opens only after a dealer logs in.

Tell dealers what you sell online. Dealers accept a store aimed at tiny buyers, but a store aimed at their own best customers starts channel fights, usually over one quote a dealer saw online.

A dealer reorders the same forty codes every fortnight and wants a rate list, a stock check, a credit balance and a way to upload a spreadsheet of codes. A shop window fits poorly.

A portal gives each dealer a login, pallet and carton quantities and a monthly statement, and it shows your stock by warehouse. The dealer sees at once what can ship tomorrow and what waits for the next production run on the corrugator, which saves your sales desk a call.

Mostly repeat dealer orders? Build the portal first. Mostly enquiries from strangers? Start with the store. Many makers end up with both, one front door for strangers and one back door for the trade, each tuned to how its visitors actually buy.

Nobody has to pick a side. Put ten best selling standard items online in parcel quantities, choosing flat shippers that sell in repeat sizes and carry no print. Pallets, printing and credit stay with dealers.

Track two numbers for a quarter. Count how many online buyers reorder and whether any dealer complains, because a rising reorder count with no complaints says the split works. If dealers start losing orders in the same sizes you sell online, narrow the online range or raise the online price until the dealer margin holds.

This week, list the ten items you would sell online and write the dealer resale price beside each one, then check whether your own online price sits above it.