Unverified, confirm before publishing. The projection below comes from a single source, Shayaike Hassan (May 22, 2026). Verify the figure and the growth claim before publishing or repeating them.
Most DTC founders think about wholesale on Amazon as an afterthought, if they think about it at all. The growth numbers suggest that is a costly blind spot. B2B ecommerce is projected to reach thirty six point one six trillion dollars by year end, growing nearly twice as fast as physical stores, driven by millennial buyers who now demand self-serve purchasing, according to Shayaike Hassan (May 22, 2026). While DTC brands pour budget into consumer acquisition, a larger and faster-growing channel is sitting right next to them, and the buyers in it no longer want a sales call to place an order.
That last part is the real shift. The friction that used to protect traditional wholesale, the rep, the quote, the phone tag, is exactly what the new buyer wants gone.
Why B2B scales differently than DTC
The DTC playbook is expensive by design. You pay to acquire a consumer, they buy one unit, and you pay again to bring them back. B2B on amazon and other channels behaves differently. A wholesale buyer orders in bulk and reorders on a cycle, which means the economics of a single acquisition stretch much further. Growing nearly twice as fast as physical retail (Shayaike Hassan, May 22, 2026), B2B can compound with less spend per acquisition than a purely consumer motion.
This does not mean abandoning DTC. It means recognizing that forcing all growth through paid consumer ads is often the more expensive path, and that a self-serve B2B channel can carry real volume alongside it.
The millennial buyer wants self-serve
The reason this is happening now is a generational shift in who does the buying. Millennial buyers running purchasing want the same frictionless, self-serve experience they have as consumers (Shayaike Hassan, May 22, 2026). They do not want to schedule a call to get pricing. They want to see bulk pricing, add to cart, and check out.
That is why knowing how to sell wholesale on amazon matters more than it used to. The infrastructure to serve a self-serve B2B buyer already exists, and the buyer is actively looking for sellers who use it. The brands that make bulk buying easy will capture demand that brands still gatekeeping behind a sales team will miss.
How to activate wholesale on Amazon and Shopify
Two concrete moves. First, activate Amazon Business so B2B buyers can find and purchase your catalog with business pricing and quantity discounts built in. This is where amazon business wholesale volume lives, and it is a self-serve path by design. Second, stand up Shopify wholesale so your own store can serve bulk buyers directly without a manual quoting process.
Underneath both, the fundamentals are the same as any strong channel: clean product data, clear bulk pricing tiers, and a checkout path that does not require a human. Get those right and the channel serves itself. Our Amazon growth team sets up the B2B motion so wholesale buyers can self-serve from day one.
Do not force all growth through paid DTC
The takeaway is not that DTC is dead. It is that a brand pushing every dollar of growth through paid consumer acquisition is likely ignoring a cheaper, faster-compounding channel next door. Activate self-serve B2B, make bulk buying frictionless, and let wholesale grow alongside your consumer business. If you want that built and managed as part of a broader plan, a growth retainer folds B2B into the same operation as your TikTok Shop and marketplace channels.