Laminar Team · 5 min read
If you've been selling primarily on Amazon or through your own DTC site, you've probably felt the squeeze tightening over the past year. Fees going up. Ad costs climbing. Tariffs eating into whatever margin was left.
For a lot of ecommerce and CPG brands, 2025 was the year the math stopped working on a single-channel strategy. And 2026 is shaping up to be the year more of them do something about it.
The move to omnichannel, specifically expanding into wholesale and retail, is accelerating fast. But it comes with a financing challenge that most founders don't see coming until they're in the middle of it.
The margin squeeze is real
Let's start with the numbers.
Amazon's 2026 FBA fee increases added an average of $0.08 per unit sold. That sounds small until you do the math. If you're moving 10,000 units a month, that's an extra $800 per month, or nearly $10,000 a year, just in fulfillment. For multi-channel fulfillment orders, the hit is even bigger. And that's on top of referral fees that already take 8 to 15% of every sale.
Amazon seller fees now eat up roughly half of the average cost per sale. The platform generated over $150 billion in seller fees in 2024 alone, up 7% from the previous year. One industry veteran described the yearly increases as a "slow squeeze" on margins that has become impossible to ignore.
Then there's tariffs. The 2025 tariff changes hit hard. A universal 10% tariff on all imports, with rates climbing as high as 145% on Chinese goods, has fundamentally changed the cost structure for brands that manufacture overseas. Even a modest 5 to 10% increase in import duties can make a product line unprofitable when applied across thousands of shipments per month.
And digital advertising keeps getting more expensive. Customer acquisition costs for DTC brands now range from $45 to $150 per customer. For many brands, ad spend consumes 30 to 40% of revenue. At some point, the math simply breaks.
Why wholesale changes the equation
When margins get squeezed on one channel, the answer isn't always to optimize harder on that same channel. Sometimes the answer is to open a new one.
Wholesale distribution is growing at a pace that's hard to ignore. One study found wholesale was on track to grow 51% in 2024 and account for 60% of brand sales. Compare that to 11% growth from branded retail stores and 6% from DTC websites.
The economics are different and, for many brands, better. Customer acquisition cost drops dramatically when a retailer does the selling for you. Combined online, retail, and wholesale strategies reduce CAC to $25 to $50, compared to $45 to $150 for DTC alone. Customer retention also improves, with omnichannel brands seeing retention rates around 89%.
The success stories are piling up. Glossier transitioned from pure DTC to a wholesale partnership with Sephora and hit $100 million in annual sales in the first year. Vuori achieved profitability just two years after launch, largely through wholesale. Nike learned the hard way what happens when you cut wholesale ties to go direct, losing 30% of its customer base before reversing course.
The pattern is clear: brands that combine DTC with wholesale and retail are growing faster and more profitably than those that don't.
The financing gap nobody talks about
Here's the part that catches most founders off guard. Moving from DTC or Amazon into wholesale doesn't just change your sales strategy. It fundamentally changes your cash flow.
When you sell on Amazon or your own site, you get paid relatively quickly. Amazon pays out every two weeks. Shopify processes payments in days. Your cash conversion cycle is short.
Wholesale works differently. A retailer places a purchase order. You manufacture the goods, which takes weeks. You ship them. The retailer receives them and puts them on shelves. Then you wait 30, 60, or 90 days for payment. Your cash conversion cycle just went from 2 weeks to 3 or 4 months.
During that entire period, your money is tied up. You've paid your supplier. You've covered freight and packaging. You've shipped the goods. And you won't see a dollar back for months.
If you're doing $50,000 a month in DTC sales and you land a $200,000 wholesale order from a national retailer, you need to fund that production and then survive the 90-day payment gap. Most brands don't have that kind of cash sitting around, especially while still funding their existing DTC operations.
How to finance the omnichannel shift
The good news is that there are financing products built specifically for this exact problem. The key is matching the right product to the right phase of the wholesale cycle.
Before you ship: PO financing. When you have a confirmed purchase order from a retailer but need cash to pay your manufacturer, PO financing covers that gap. The lender pays your supplier directly, typically covering 70 to 100% of the supplier cost. The lender underwrites the creditworthiness of the retailer placing the order, not your personal credit. If Target or Whole Foods is on the other end of that PO, you're in a strong position even if your brand is relatively new.
After you ship: invoice factoring. Once you've delivered the goods and invoiced the retailer, you're waiting for payment. Invoice factoring lets you sell that receivable for immediate cash, typically 80 to 95% of the invoice value within 48 hours. This lets you repay the PO lender, fund your next production run, or keep your DTC operations running while the wholesale revenue comes in.
Ongoing: inventory financing. As your wholesale business grows, you'll be carrying more inventory across more channels. Inventory financing lets you borrow against stock you already own, freeing up cash for marketing, hiring, or placing the next round of production orders. Advance rates typically run 50 to 80% of inventory value.
For general working capital: revenue-based financing or a line of credit. If you need flexible cash to bridge the transition period, revenue-based financing (repaid as a percentage of monthly revenue) or a revolving line of credit can cover the gaps that product-specific financing doesn't reach.
Many brands stack two or three of these products across a single wholesale order cycle. The combined cost might run 8 to 12% of the order value. Whether that math works depends on your gross margins. For most CPG brands operating at 40 to 60% margins, it works comfortably.
Plan the financing before you land the order
The founders who navigate this transition most smoothly are the ones who set up their financing facilities before the first wholesale order comes in. They know which products they'd use, which lenders they'd approach, and what the total cost looks like at different order sizes.
Waiting until a retailer places a $300,000 PO to start figuring out how to fund it is a recipe for expensive, last-minute capital. Planning ahead gets you better rates, faster approvals, and less stress.
This is exactly the kind of multi-product comparison that Laminar is built for. You submit one lending profile and see normalized offers across PO financing, factoring, inventory financing, lines of credit, and more. Instead of trying to compare term sheets that all use different fee structures and terminology, you see the true cost side by side.
The bottom line
The single-channel playbook is running out of room. Rising Amazon fees, tariffs on imports, and climbing ad costs are making it harder to build a sustainable business on one platform. The brands that are thriving are the ones diversifying into wholesale and retail, capturing the volume and lower acquisition costs those channels offer.
But the shift requires capital, specifically working capital to bridge the longer cash conversion cycle that wholesale demands. Getting the right financing in place before you need it is the difference between a smooth expansion and a cash crunch.
If you're an ecommerce, DTC, or CPG brand planning to expand into wholesale or retail, join our waitlist to see how Laminar can help you compare financing options and fund the transition.