Your ecommerce brand is growing steadily. Sales are ticking up, your audience is expanding, and you're building strong brand recognition. At some point, a new challenge starts to crop up: figuring out how to scale beyond your online store.
Maybe you're considering wholesaling, or perhaps you’ve already landed a few retail accounts and want to expand. Either way, it’s a big step—and not always a straightforward one. You don’t just need to get your products on shelves; you need to show retailers why your brand is worth backing, and then work to keep those partnerships thriving.
That’s where trade marketing comes in.
Trade marketing is all about building relationships with retailers, wholesalers, and distributors to help grow your market share beyond your own online store. It’s a crucial part of scaling your ecommerce brand from direct-to-consumer success to omnichannel visibility.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- What trade marketing actually means for ecommerce brands today
- When it makes sense to start building a trade marketing strategy
- Practical trade marketing tactics with real-world examples from DTC brands
By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for attracting retail partners, boosting product visibility, and building lasting relationships that help you grow beyond your ecommerce storefront.
What is trade marketing?
Trade marketing is a type of B2B marketing strategy focused on increasing demand among wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. Unlike consumer marketing—which targets the end shopper—trade marketing is all about convincing businesses to stock, promote, and sell your products in-store or online.
The goal of trade marketing efforts is to increase market share by:
- Attracting good-fit retailers to sell your products
- Building product demand
- Increase brand awareness
- Persuading your distribution channels to not only stock your product, but also promote it over other competitor brands.
Trade marketing vs DTC marketing: what’s the difference?
The major difference between trade marketing activities and DTC marketing is the audience. Trade marketing targets B2B audiences, like retail trade managers and store owners. DTC ecommerce marketing targets your end-consumer directly.
As a result, the approaches to both types of marketing are very different. DTC customers want to know if your products help them get their jobs done (like decorate their home, hydrate them, keep kids occupied, etc.)
Your trade marketing audience will want to know they can market your products to their own audiences and make a healthy profit from them.
When should you start building a trade marketing strategy?
For some store owners we spoke to, their brand has to meet the following criteria to start investing in trade marketing:
- There’s been an increasing and consistent demand for their products
- They have a solid brand awareness strategy and identity in place
For example, Tiago Pita, Brand and Ecommerce Director at Whole Food Earth, underlines the importance of demand consistency and the need for a strong brand identity:
"For us, we started to think about trade marketing strategies once we saw consistent demand for our products online and knew we could replicate that success in retail. It’s important to have a solid base and brand identity first, retailers want to know that your product will sell."
While Sam Speller, CEO and Founder of Kenko Tea, realized they were hitting a growth ceiling in their online matcha niche:
"The moment we started thinking about trading marketing was when we hit a plateau in our online expansion. We had a good reputation on the online matcha scene, but we also felt like there was a whole new audience we could potentially tap into with stores.
Trade marketing allowed us to present Kenko Tea to stores as a good product on their shelves while promoting the quality and growing consumer demand for our matcha products."
If you’ve built a steady flow of sales and have a clear understanding of your bestsellers, it might be time to explore trade marketing. That doesn’t mean you need massive volume—but having reliable demand and signs of product-market fit can make a strong case to retailers.
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Why market research matters for trade marketing
Before you start pitching your products to retailers, it’s essential to conduct market research to get a solid understanding of the market you’re stepping into. It’s not just about knowing your product sells well online. Trade marketing success depends on knowing which retail partners to target, where customer demand exists, and how your competitors are positioning themselves in-store.
Skip this step, and you could end up spending time and energy chasing retailer partnerships that just aren’t the right fit for your brand.
Here are 3 areas to focus your trade marketing research on:
Retailer fit
Not every store is the right store for your products. Start by creating a target list of retailers that:
- Align with your product’s price point and brand values
- Cater to your ideal customer demographic
- Have a history of stocking similar (but not identical) products
We cover this in more detail in our article that guides you on how to get your products into stores.
Consumer demand and location
Where are people looking for your product category right now?
- Use tools like Google Trends or marketplace search data to spot regions with growing interest in your niche.
- If you already sell on marketplaces (like Amazon or eBay), dig into your sales data by region.
- Ask existing customers where they’d like to buy your products in-store via surveys or social media polls.
Analyse the competition
It’s always smart to see what other brands in your space are doing:
- Visit stores in your category and look at competitors’ point of sales (POS) displays, product bundles and retail exclusives
- Take note of product packaging trends and in-store promotions
- Check your competitors’ websites or press releases for trade show appearances or retailer partnership announcements
By combining all this research, you’ll know exactly where and how to focus your trade marketing efforts. This gives you a better shot at landing high-quality retail partnerships that really move the needle for your brand.
7 trade marketing strategies to help you boost sales
Now let's get into detail with some successful trade marketing strategies to help you sell more products to retailers. These tips come straight from people working inside successful DTC brands. We spoke directly to marketers and founders who’ve navigated the move into retail—and they shared what’s actually worked for them when it comes to trade marketing.
1. Attending trade shows
Making personal connections can help retailer store owners and managers learn more about you, your brand, and your products. A great way to do that is through attending relevant trade shows to network.
For example, Gaynor Humphrey, Director of Best Years (a children's toy brand), found a ton of value in networking:
“Attending trade shows helped me better understand the retail market in the US, especially since our brand originates in the UK. It wasn’t just about meeting retailers — I also built new relationships with customers and even competitors in the industry.”
But don’t just turn up to any event. Make sure you pick trade shows that specialise in your product niche or focus on your target market. That way, you’ll have a better chance of building relationships with the right potential trade partners and key partners.
Where to find the right trade shows:
- Check directories like 10times, Events in America, and Exhibition World.
- Look at industry-specific sites like Craft Focus or The Toy Fair if you’re in categories like homewares, food and beverage, or consumer electronics.
- Search on LinkedIn for events your competitors or channel partners are attending.
- Keep an eye on retailer and distributor websites — some larger stores list recommended supplier events.
- If you're a UK-based brand, check out events like Spring Fair, Top Drawer, or Autumn Fair for retail and gifting categories.
Attending the right events helps you not only meet potential trade partners but also get valuable insights into market trends and consumer preferences.
2. Creating samples for retailers
Offering potential retail partners product samples helps them better understand your product by being able to touch or taste them in real life. This is also an essential approach if your product is in the food and beverage category.
You can try finding a direct contact for the people dealing with merchandise (buying managers or trade managers, for example) and send them product samples directly.
Bonus: you can tick off two checkboxes if you have product samples to take to a trade show booth, just like Tyler Watson of Dan-O's Seasoning did at Expo West in California:
3. Creating POP or POS assets for your retailers
Both you and your retail partners want to increase sales and make sure your products stand out in-store. One way to support them is by providing high-quality point of purchase (POP) and point of sale (POS) display assets.
What’s the difference? POP and POS materials refer to branded displays or signage placed in-store to catch a shopper’s attention.
- Point of Sale (POS) is usually located right where the customer makes a purchase — like near tills or checkout areas.
- Point of Purchase (POP) can be placed anywhere in the store — like end-of-aisle displays or freestanding units.
For example, a drinks brand might have a branded fridge (POP) as well as small counter display cards (POS). Both help improve product visibility and boost sales.
To create these assets, pull together a folder (or use a digital asset management tool like Dash) with essentials such as:
- Brand logos
- Relevant product photography
- Digital renderings of display options to show retailers exactly what in-store setups could look like
With these materials ready, you can easily share them with retailers and display manufacturers. Take this example from Yerbae:
Their POS display rendering shows exactly how their products would look on a shelf, complete with branded visuals and product photography. Giving retailers access to ready-to-go marketing materials makes it far more likely they’ll feature and actively promote your products in-store.
4. Use cross-promotional campaigns
If you're trying to improve your existing retail partnerships with better trade marketing, you can try collaborating on campaigns with trade partners.
Cross-promotion is a strategy that all the brands we spoke to recommended, for good reason. It’s a popular trade promotions strategy to help both your brand and retail outlets. Try getting creative with your retail partners to build engaging collabs.
For example, Kunal Madan, Founder of Amarra (a fashion brand specialising in event wear), uses special promotions to increase sales volumes across a number of his brands:
"I have often collaborated with retail partners to bundle products or offer an in-store exclusive product—this helps incentivize customers to visit the physical retail stores."
Here are a few more cross-promotion ideas to inspire your next successful trade marketing strategy:
- Bundled product offers: Pair your products with complementary items from another brand stocked by the same retailer. Think fashion accessories bundled with clothing or skincare products paired with cosmetics.
- Co-branded online and offline campaigns: Collaborate on joint social media posts, email newsletters, or online advertising that promotes both your brand and the retailer. This is especially useful for ecommerce-first brands expanding into physical stores.
- Event partnerships: Host pop-ups, workshops, or tasting events together. This tactic works well for consumer packaged goods and consumer electronics brands looking to showcase products in person.
- Loyalty programme tie-ins: If your trade partners run customer loyalty schemes, work with them to include your products as rewards or incentives.
Cross-promotion helps boost both product visibility and brand equity. Get creative with your marketing strategies and collaborate with your channel partners to design promotions that serve your shared broader business goals.
5. Offer store-exclusive SKUs
Taking collaboration a step further, Adam Tishman, Co-Founder of Helix Sleep, offers their retailers exclusive SKUs:
"Offering retail-exclusive SKUs has really helped us build strong relationships with retailers. We created unique product variations and limited editions available only at certain physical stores.
This strategy encourages retailers to promote our products more and gets customers excited about visiting those stores. It's been a great way to create buzz and foster collaboration with our retail partners."
This approach works even better when you’ve nailed your customer segments. For example, you could launch a limited-edition product aimed at customers in a specific area—like city-specific drops for local fans.
6. Invest in your relationships with retail partners
For brands like Mountain Equipment, retail partnerships aren’t just a side project — they’re the heart of the business. The majority of Mountain Equipment’s revenue comes from its global network of over 900 retail partners. That’s why maintaining strong, efficient relationships with those partners isn’t optional, it’s essential.
To stay ahead of the competition, Mountain Equipment uses Dash portals to give each retailer easy, self-serve access to up-to-date marketing assets, point of sale materials, and product photography.
Rather than relying on endless email threads or outdated shared folders, retailers can log into their personalised portal and grab exactly what they need — no waiting, no chasing. This smooth, organised approach not only saves time but helps Mountain Equipment’s partners sell more products, faster, while ensuring the brand always looks consistent in-store.
When retailers make up such a large part of your business, tools like Dash don’t just make things easier, they give you a real competitive advantage by helping your brand stand out as reliable, organised and ready to support your partners at scale.
7. Offer a product training workshop for retail staff
The better the retail staff know your products, the more they can talk about them with customers.
That’s what Tiago from Whole Food Earth, recommends. He said:
"We offer training for store staff so they understand the unique benefits of our products, which helps them sell better in-store. The key is building a partnership that benefits both your brand and the retailer’s goals."
Product training workshops can involve educating staff about how your products function or taste. But to take this strategy a step further, you can also train them on your brand story, and help them better explain the ’why’ behind your product.
How to maintain strong retail partnerships
Strong trade marketing efforts aren’t just about landing new retail deals — they’re about keeping those relationships healthy and profitable over the long term. If stock runs low, supply chain issues pop up, or products don’t sell as expected, your retail partners will look to you for solutions.
Adam from Helix highlights how proactive problem-solving helps build trust:
“Building strong relationships really depends on how we handle issues proactively. When we quickly address product defects, delivery delays, or supply chain disruptions, it helps build trust. By being responsive, we can create lasting strategic partnerships that benefit everyone involved.”
Kunal from Amarra adds that clear, regular communication is just as important:
“Transparency and regular communication are key. Providing our retail partners with clear product information, marketing materials, and honouring agreements ensures a solid and profitable business-to-business relationship.”
5 ways to strengthen retailer relationships
- Set up regular check-ins via email, video calls or face-to-face meetings.
- Share updates proactively about stock levels, new product launches or promotional strategies.
- Be upfront when issues arise, whether it’s a supply hiccup or a product change.
- Celebrate shared wins — shout out your retail partners in your brand marketing or on social media.
- Make it easy for retailers to access the tools they need to promote your products with Dash.
With Dash portals, brands like Haws, Mountain Equipment, and BrewDog share everything from point of sale materials to region-specific compliance details, all in one place:
- You can create branded portals to give each retailer a tailored experience, complete with welcome messages and curated assets relevant to their region or store type.
- Use folder permissions and custom metadata to keep content organised and easy to find, no matter how many retail partners you work with.
- Plus, built-in analytics let you see which assets are being viewed or downloaded—so you know what’s working and where to focus next.
Instead of endless email requests or messy shared folders, Dash helps keep your trade marketing activities smooth, consistent, and stress-free for both you and your partners.
If you’d like to see how Dash can help your brand manage retail partnerships, sign up for a 14-day free trial, no strings attached.
Alexander Boswell is a freelance content writer for B2B martech and ecommerce software brands as well as a consumer behaviour academic.
