Consumerisation Nation: The Future of Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing

August 27, 2014

Posted by Mark Woodhams, Managing Director of EMEA

The wholesale distribution(opens in new tab) and manufacturing sector has often, in the past, been criticised for its resistance to change and lack of technological innovation. This is fast changing. Today, companies like PAG Leisurewear are making incredible leaps and bounds adopting the latest technology. These businesses are taking advantage of the benefits cloud(opens in new tab) technology has to offer. Adopting new tools that are available on-demand from any location, rapidly scalable and purpose-built help them to streamline the mission critical business processes and increase efficiency within their organisations.

The companies that are resisting the move to cloud within the wholesale distribution and manufacturing sectors will soon be left behind. They will be limited by their outdated infrastructure and lack of a single, comprehensive, view of their organisation – which enables them to make the best decisions for their businesses.

In the era of connected consumers, wholesale distributors and manufacturers need to be able to be flexible and adapt to the demands of, not only their clients, but the customers of these clients too.

People do business with people
With increasing levels of consumer demand impacting how B2B companies do business, wholesale distributors and manufacturers are looking for ways to transform their businesses. Companies must become agile enterprises with timely execution that can provide an online consumer-like experience appealing to the employees within the organisations they are selling to, as much as the organisation itself. In order to succeed in this very competitive market, enterprises must focus on giving the customer a quick, easy and consumer influenced experience.

Follow the leader
That’s exactly what one of the UK’s leading apparel wholesalers, PAG Leisurewear, has done. The brand has embraced the future of wholesale by delivering B2B services in a B2C style. The company is using NetSuite SuiteCommerce(opens in new tab) to manage its omnichannel business from end-to-end in one unified business management suite. PAG Leisurewear found that the traditional ways of doing business, relying on fax and telesales, were no longer leading the market or enabling it to make the right decisions for growth. In fact, in an interview, PAG Leisurewear noted(opens in new tab) that technology is constantly changing and the pace of that change is only accelerating, making the cloud an optimal investment.

With the web truly becoming the core of any wholesale and distribution business, giving any organisation a truly global reach, NetSuite’s cloud-based technology not only reduces IT costs whilst providing a seamless customer shopping experience, it also provides the business agility to rapidly expand into new markets and sales channels. In addition, NetSuite SuiteCommerce’s advanced web store allows the creation of rich interactive and engaging shopping experiences with features like faceted search and navigation, advanced product imagery, search and dynamic merchandising, all able to display elegantly across all devices. This feature alone, helps to bridge the divide between the B2B and B2C side of business.

It is clear that technology that empowers employees and places the web at the center of the business is necessary to future-proof wholesale distributors and manufacturers with aspirations of growth and sustainable success.

Read the full story of PAG Leisurewear’s digital transformation with NetSuite(opens in new tab).



NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.