where wholesaling fits into the supply chain
wholesaling is one step in the supply chain which also includes suppliers of raw materials manufacturers of finished goods and retailers to end users retailers purchase goods from wholesalers and then sell them at a high enough price to cover their costs and generate profits supply chain management scm was developed in the 1980s to address the need to maximize efficiency in the business processes involved in moving goods from the original suppliers to end users wholesaling in banking and financein banking the term wholesaling refers to financial services provided to large institutional clients such as real estate developers pension funds and large corporate clients rather than individual retail customers in the financial services industry a wholesaler can also be a sponsor of a mutual fund or act as an underwriter in a new issue an asset management company that creates and manages mutual funds employs a mutual fund wholesaler also known as a mutual fund representative to sell the product to resellers typically the wholesaler is a salesperson in this case the wholesaler distributes access to mutual funds to companies that wish to make them available to investors for example a company that has a 401 k plan may meet with wholesalers before choosing the asset management company such as fidelity investments or the vanguard group that will offer its products to the company s employees mutual fund wholesalers are compensated from the fees of the mutual funds they sell 