You have probably heard this in the past, but it's worth revisiting here. The problem with most "Wholesale Suppliers" you find online is that they are actually sitting between the true wholesaler and you. (continued...)
(As it should be!)
As you see above: products are crafted by the manufacturer and then sold in large volume to a wholesale supplier which in turn sells them to a retailer, in this case, you.
The Manufacturer / Originator
A manufacturer is primarily concerned with producing products at the lowest possible cost and then marking them up minimally when selling to the wholesaler. A manufacturer's primary concern is logistics and production.
Their main challenges are to locate raw materials at the lowest possible price, use those materials in their fabricating process to produce finished products, and to ship the finished products to their network of distributors.
Manufacturers aren't interested in maintaining huge warehouses to store product or in having a large sales force to manage selling of the product. This would increase their complexity and costs beyond the scope of producing the products.
The Wholesale Supplier / Distributor
The wholesale supplier fills the next gap in the supply chain by maintaining huge warehouses to store products from many different manufaturers.
They also have logistics as a primary concern, but instead of worrying about finding raw materials they are mainly concerned with storing and shipping a large numbers of products.
While they don't maintain a large sales force, they do have one or more sales reps who are responsible for establishing and maintaing accounts with retailers.
