Why Wholesale Ops Is Stuck in the 90s — And What Modern CPG Brands Should Demand

There's a strange paradox at the heart of the consumer packaged goods industry. On the direct-to-consumer side, the infrastructure is sleek and modern. Shopify handles your storefront. Stripe processes your payments instantly. Order-to-invoice happens at checkout — automatically, in seconds. The entire stack is integrated, real-time, and largely self-service.

Then there's wholesale — the channel that, for most CPG brands, represents the vast majority of revenue. And it runs on infrastructure that hasn't meaningfully changed since the 1990s.

The DTC Stack vs. The Wholesale Stack

When a DTC order comes in, the flow is elegant in its simplicity: a customer places an order, payment is captured, shipping is triggered, and an invoice is generated. The whole cycle can complete in seconds. Every tool in the stack talks to every other tool.

Wholesale is a different universe. Orders arrive via email, spreadsheet, or a retailer-specific EDI portal — and there's a different portal for every retail partner. Payment terms stretch to net-30, net-60, or even net-120. Volume moves in pallets and truckloads, not parcels. And logistics requires coordinating freight brokers, third-party warehouses, and 3PL portals that don't share data with one another.

The result is a patchwork of disconnected systems held together by manual processes and the heroic efforts of operations teams.

How Did We Get Here?

Wholesale distribution is one of the oldest commercial models in existence, and its digital infrastructure reflects that lineage. EDI — Electronic Data Interchange — became the industry standard for exchanging purchase orders and invoices between trading partners. The core specification dates back to the 1970s and 1980s. While EDI has been updated over the decades, the fundamental architecture remains a batch-based, document-exchange model designed for a world without APIs, cloud computing, or real-time data.

The ecosystem built around wholesale also evolved slowly because the incumbents — major retailers, distributors, and legacy software providers — had little incentive to modernize. Their systems worked well enough for large enterprises with dedicated IT departments. The cost of change was high, and the pain was distributed across thousands of smaller brands who lacked the leverage to demand better tooling.

Meanwhile, e-commerce infrastructure was built from scratch in the 2000s and 2010s, designed natively for the internet. That's why the DTC stack feels so much more modern — it literally is.

What This Means for Growing CPG Brands

For a brand doing $2 million to $30 million in wholesale revenue, this infrastructure gap creates real operational pain. Every new retail door adds complexity: a new set of compliance requirements, a new EDI connection to manage, a new logistics flow to coordinate. The work scales linearly with growth, and the tools available to manage it haven't kept pace.

This is where operations teams become bottlenecks — not because they aren't talented, but because they're spending their time on manual data entry, chasing freight quotes, reconciling invoices, and copying information between systems that should be talking to each other automatically.

The numbers are striking. Brands operating in this revenue range routinely spend hundreds of hours per week on tasks that are repetitive, rules-based, and ripe for automation. Those hours aren't just expensive — they're hours that could be spent on growth, product development, and building retail relationships.

What Modern Brands Should Demand

The gap between DTC and wholesale infrastructure isn't going to close overnight, but brands don't have to wait for the entire industry to modernize. The shift is already underway, and the brands moving fastest are the ones demanding three things from their operational tooling.

First, they want systems that integrate with what they already have. Ripping and replacing an ERP or inventory management system is a six-to-eighteen-month project that most scaling brands can't afford. The right approach meets brands where they are — whether that's spreadsheets, QuickBooks, NetSuite, or a full enterprise ERP.

Second, they want automation that handles the full order-to-cash lifecycle, not just one slice of it. Point solutions that automate invoicing but leave freight coordination manual, or that handle EDI but ignore payment reconciliation, just move the bottleneck from one place to another.

Third, they want speed to value. A tool that takes months to implement isn't solving the problem — it's adding to it. The best wholesale automation platforms deliver results in days, not quarters.

The Opportunity Is Enormous

Wholesale distribution is roughly seven times the size of e-commerce. It represents the backbone of how physical goods move from brands to consumers. And yet the software infrastructure serving this market is a fraction of what exists for DTC.

That gap isn't just a problem — it's an opportunity. The brands that modernize their wholesale operations today won't just run more efficiently. They'll move faster, scale with less overhead, and free their teams to focus on what actually drives growth.

The 1990s called. It's time to stop answering.

This Is Why We Built Jampack

Jampack AI exists to bring wholesale operations into the 21st century. Our agentic platform automates the entire order-to-cash lifecycle — from purchase order intake through freight coordination, invoicing, and payment reconciliation — without asking brands to rip out the systems they already use. Whether you're running on spreadsheets or a full ERP, Jampack integrates with your existing stack and delivers value in days, not months. The result: 90% less manual entry, 50x faster order-to-cash cycles, and operations that finally scale with your distribution instead of against it. If you're ready to leave the 90s behind, get in touch.