Getting your wholesale range into UK online shops: the supplier directory, feeds and purchase orders

This is for the wholesaler, importer or brand owner who wants independent online shops to stock the range without emailing spreadsheets. It covers how shops source products, what a retailer needs from you, the two supply models, why purchase orders beat emails, the rules on getting paid, and how to publish on Orbit’s supplier directory. Disclosure: we build Orbit Commerce and the directory is ours. Every figure was checked against its source on 9 November 2026.

How do independent online shops find new suppliers today?

Five routes, and most shops use more than one.

• Trade shows. Spring Fair runs every February at the NEC Birmingham; the 2027 show is 7 to 10 February, and the organiser says more than 1,500 wholesale brands exhibit (springfair.com, its own figure, read 9 November 2026).
• Wholesale marketplaces. Faire and Ankorstore list your catalogue to registered retailers, give them payment terms and charge you a commission or a fee; figures below.
• Direct trade accounts. The retailer applies, you agree terms, and it orders from a rep, a price list or your trade website. Cheapest per order, and usually run on email and a spreadsheet.
• Dropship feeds. The shop lists your products without buying stock and sends you each sale to ship to its customer; see our list of UK dropshipping suppliers.
• Platform directories. A directory inside the shop’s ecommerce platform: the shop connects to your catalogue and the platform carries products, stock and orders between you. Orbit’s works this way.

Whatever the route, the retailer still has to get your products onto its website and keep price and stock right; how dealers get supplier catalogues onto their websites describes that job.

What does a retailer need from you to list your range well?

Six things remove most of the listing work; they are also what Orbit’s supplier dashboard asks you for.

1. One row per SKU, meaning per sellable variant: name, SKU, barcode, description, category, brand, trade price, RRP, weight and dimensions, shipping class, lead time, stock, and options written the same way every time; a chair in 40 colours and sizes is 40 rows.
2. Images ready to publish: at least 1,200 pixels on the long side, JPG, PNG or WebP, on a plain background, named by SKU or listed as URLs in a column.
3. Stock and lead times that update, with notice of discontinued lines.
4. Carriage terms: free-delivery threshold, surcharges by zone or item, pallet against parcel, and the charge to deliver to the shop’s customer if you ship for it.
5. Returns terms: who takes back faulty and unwanted goods, who pays the carriage, and who to contact.
6. A clear price structure: trade price, dropship price if it differs, and a recommended retail price; the shop sets its own selling price on top, as markup versus margin on trade price lists shows.

Should the shop hold your stock, or should you ship for it?

The stockist buys at your trade price, usually a case or a minimum first order, holds the goods and ships them itself. You are paid on your terms, often 30 days from invoice. One carton to one address keeps your carriage low, and the shop carries the risk of a line that does not sell.

The shop you ship for sells a unit first and sends you a purchase order with its customer’s address; you post one parcel with the shop’s name on the slip. Its cash is never tied up. Your cost per unit is higher, so the dropship price usually sits above the case price with carriage added per order. With made-up numbers, ex VAT: a lamp retails at £60 and your trade price is £30. A stockist buying twelve ties up £360 and makes £30 a sale; on dropship at £34 plus £5.95 carriage the shop makes about £20 a sale with no stock, and you make £4 more a unit. Office furniture dropshipping in the UK shows the supplier-delivers model in a trade where it is the norm.

Why do purchase orders beat emailed orders?

An email saying “6 of the blue ones and 4 of the oak, same as last time” has no number, no SKUs, no prices, no address and no status, and every retyped line can send the wrong thing. A purchase order carries a number you both quote, each line by SKU with quantity and the agreed price, the delivery address, the payment terms and a required-by date. Then it has a life: you acknowledge it, hold a line with an expected date, ship line by line with a tracking number per parcel, and attach your invoice, and the shop sees each step without ringing you. So ask of any route: does the order arrive as a purchase order I can acknowledge, ship against and invoice from, in a system or file my team already uses?

CSV, Excel, JSON, SFTP, Google Sheets and APIs in plain words

Only the REST API and webhooks need a developer.

EDI, the older standard large retailers use for orders and invoices, is a separate system; routes for independent shops, Orbit’s included, run on the files, feeds and APIs above.

What are the legal basics of supplying shops on account?

General information, not legal advice; have a solicitor read your terms.

• A trade account agreement the retailer accepts on opening an account: carriage and minimum order terms, returns terms, payment terms, and who is responsible for the product and who for the sale to the shopper. You may publish a recommended retail price, but requiring a shop not to sell below a price is resale price maintenance, which the CMA says is illegal (CMA blog, 1 July 2022, read 9 November 2026).
• Payment terms in writing. With no agreed date, a business payment is late 30 days after the customer receives the invoice or you deliver, whichever is later. An agreed date must usually be within 60 days for business transactions, longer only if fair to both (gov.uk, read 9 November 2026).
• The Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. Once a payment is late you can charge statutory interest at 8% plus the Bank of England base rate in force on 30 June or 31 December before the interest starts (2002 Rate of Interest Order). You can also claim fixed recovery costs of £40 on a debt up to £999.99, £70 up to £9,999.99 and £100 from £10,000, once per payment, plus reasonable costs (gov.uk on interest and on costs, read 9 November 2026). You cannot claim statutory interest if your contract sets a different rate.

The rules are changing. The Commercial Payments Bill, introduced on 19 May 2026, would cap payment terms at 60 days where a large firm pays a smaller supplier, make statutory interest at 8% above base rate a term of every commercial contract, and let the Small Business Commissioner fine persistent late payers (gov.uk). It has passed the Lords and had its first reading in the Commons (smallbusinesscommissioner.gov.uk), and the March 2026 response to consultation put the cap’s start “no earlier than 2027” (consultation response, PDF). All read 9 November 2026; none of it is law yet and no start date is set.

Faire, Ankorstore, your own trade site or Orbit’s supplier directory?

The table compares what you pay, who owns the retailer relationship and what runs without you, from each company’s own pages read on 9 November 2026 (Faire’s UK page, Ankorstore’s announcement of 10 December 2025 with its January and April 2026 product news, and Orbit’s suppliers page). Terms change, so check before you sign.

Marketplaces earn their fee by finding you retailers and carrying their payment terms; the retailer is their customer, on their site. Your own trade site keeps the relationship but leaves the retailer to load your products, prices and stock itself. Our posts on taking a trade counter online and selling wholesale without a second platform cover trade accounts on Orbit’s B2B tools, where the retailer pays by card or bank transfer at checkout. A directory inside the shop’s platform fixes the listing problem for every shop on that platform.

Where Orbit fits

Orbit’s supplier programme gives you a supplier dashboard separate from any shop. You publish your catalogue once with trade prices, lead times, carriage terms and surcharges per reseller or across the board, returns terms, and a price list per customer. Your profile sits in the Suppliers directory every shop on Orbit can browse; you approve each reseller, hand chosen accounts a password, or open the range to anyone. Orbit approves each supplier account before it is listed.

On the shop’s side, supplier connections are part of every plan, from Solo at £25 a month. The shop imports the products it wants with your photos, variants, barcodes, weights and stock, and writes a pricing rule on your cost; your stock level follows onto its product as you change it. Every order for your lines raises one purchase order to you, whether the shop holds stock or you ship for it. Your tracking lands on the shop’s order and its customer’s shipped email, and price changes, new lines and retired products reach every connected shop as updates it reviews and accepts. The sale is between you and the shop: it pays you directly on the terms printed on the order, Net 30 from invoice date unless it changes its template.

All prices are ex VAT. The Free plan is £0 for 5 store connections and 1,000 live SKUs, with no card, and resellers you already supply count toward the five. Above the free plan, the Connect plans are a flat monthly fee by number of connections (25, 50, 100 or unlimited), priced on the suppliers page, with two months free billed yearly and no commission or per-order fee. The managed plans, where we build and maintain your catalogue, are priced by catalogue size on the same page, with a one-off onboarding fee stated as a floor and fixed after we see a sample.

Publishing your range and connecting your first five shops

1. Create a supplier account at supplier.myorbitcommerce.net on the Free plan and import your spreadsheet and images; the template matches your column headings to ours, and a Shopify or WooCommerce CSV imports too.
2. Set trade prices, lead times, carriage and returns terms, choose how shops join (Approval required, Password or Open), and tell the shops you already supply to find you under Suppliers in their Orbit dashboard; a shop new to Orbit starts a 14-day free trial first.
3. Point your stock at a feed you already produce, add an order export or a webhook if you run an ERP, then acknowledge the first order, ship it with tracking and upload your invoice.

Read next: reorder points and purchase orders and fifteen shop jobs you can stop doing by hand.

Questions people ask about getting a wholesale range into online shops

How do I get independent shops to stock my products in the UK?

Make your range easy to list: one row per SKU, publishable images, stock and lead times that update, clear carriage and returns terms, and a recommended retail price. Then meet buyers at trade shows, on marketplaces such as Faire and Ankorstore, through trade accounts, and in platform directories such as Orbit’s.

What commission do Faire and Ankorstore charge brands?

Faire’s UK page says 25% on a retailer’s opening order and 15% on reorders, with Faire Direct link orders commission-free. Ankorstore says it removed brand commissions on 10 December 2025 for a 3% payment fee plus a one-off acquisition cost per new retailer it brings. Both read 9 November 2026.

How much does it cost to list on Orbit’s supplier directory?

Nothing for your first 5 store connections and 1,000 live SKUs, with no setup fee and no card. Above that you pay a flat monthly fee by number of connections, priced on the suppliers page, with no commission or per-order fee; managed plans, where Orbit builds and maintains your catalogue, add a one-off onboarding fee fixed after a sample. All ex VAT, read on 9 November 2026.

Can I connect the supplier directory to my ERP or warehouse system?

Yes: purchase orders reach you by webhook, by scheduled export to an inbox or your SFTP server hourly, daily or weekly, or over the supplier REST API. Stock and despatch confirmations come back from a CSV upload, a URL, an FTP or SFTP drop, a Google Sheet or the API. An ERP built around EDI connects through the same routes.

What can I charge a shop that pays my invoice late?

Statutory interest at 8% plus the Bank of England base rate from the day a business payment is late, plus fixed recovery costs of £40, £70 or £100 by size of debt, under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998, unless your contract sets its own rate (gov.uk, read 9 November 2026).

A free supplier account shows you a connected purchase order from your side; a shop you supply can open the other end with a 14-day free trial, no card required.