IGD column: Is collaboration the route to success for wholesalers?
With the supply chain under pressure to deliver despite rising costs, is working together the way to win, asks James Rothwell, IGD Head of Supply Chain Insight
The UK’s £24bn away-from-home (AFH) market can be complex and difficult to navigate for manufacturers. Its fragmentation limits the ability to scale direct distribution, leaving operators reliant on multiple supply partners.
It’s this complexity that has ensured wholesalers remain the nexus of the market. In a system where no other single route can efficiently connect supply with demand, wholesalers make it work.
But systemic pressures are changing the rules. As rising costs force supply chains to ‘do more with less’, even traditional rivals are starting to collaborate to drive efficiencies.
For wholesalers, that shift could elevate their role from essential intermediaries to true orchestrators.
The wholesaler’s edge: solving complexity
The commercial reality of the away from home sector is that manufacturers do not have a clear, scalable path to the end customer without wholesalers.
The market is a complex patchwork of independents, regional groups and national operators, each with different needs that no single supplier can meet alone. At least not efficiently.
Wholesalers bridge that gap. They consolidate demand, simplify purchasing, and curate ranges that allow operators to differentiate, while giving suppliers access to a fragmented customer base. Together, this creates truly essential economies of scale, offsetting rising cost pressures right across the supply chain.
That leaves wholesalers in a uniquely powerful position at the heart of the away from home ecosystem – one that goes far beyond a traditional intermediary role.
Shifting from competitors to collaborators
But the model is evolving. Across the supply chain, rising costs and increasing output expectations are exposing inefficiencies that businesses can no longer absorb alone. This means the biggest gains now sit between organisations, in the links that connect the system.
That shift is already breaking down barriers and turning competitors into collaborators. We are seeing former rivals sharing infrastructure, aligning logistics networks, and pooling resources to improve efficiency.
For wholesalers, this could soon mean working with competitors in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. And that changes the nature of competition.
Owning the network advantage
The implications are that growth will be increasingly driven by how effectively businesses collaborate to connect and optimise their networks.
That means the role of wholesale will need to evolve. The same capabilities that have underpinned success in away from home would become even more valuable when efficiency depends on coordination across networks.
With wholesalers already sitting at the intersection of fragmented demand and diverse supply, they have the opportunity to shape how a more collaborative system operates.
By helping suppliers unlock hard-to-reach demand, supporting operators with smarter, more simplified purchasing, and playing a more active role in how supply networks are structured, wholesalers can move from connectors in the system to architects of it.
The away-from-home channel has rewarded wholesalers who simplify complexity. Now it could reward those who help build and orchestrate it.
Because in a market defined by fragmentation, and increasingly powered by collaboration, the real competitive advantage will come from how well you connect and how much value you create across networks.
away from home collaboration IGD James Rothwell