Every day, billions of shoppers turn to the opinion of people they’ve never met as they decide whether or not to buy a product. This user-generated content comes in the form of ratings & reviews, which shoppers express about products they’ve purchased and used. Recognizing the positive impact of this content, the team behind Wholescale spent several years developing their now-proven formula that not only increases demand among new audiences, but also drives direct-to-consumer revenue and wholesale expansion.
As is the case with many great innovations, Wholescale was born out of necessity. Our journey began in 2015, when co-founder David Rapps was developing an unknown consumer brand called iFLY. iFLY was sold exclusively at Walmart as a quasi-private label, and David made it his mission to transform iFLY into a nationally recognized, digital consumer brand.
With no website or social media, David focused all his efforts on connecting with the brand’s end-consumers and converting their experiences with iFLY’s product into ratings & reviews, digital content and brand growth. The strategy was a success and iFLY has since generated hundreds of thousands of displayable ratings & reviews across their full line of products, allowing what was once thought of as simply a private label to seize new business opportunities and scale.
By 2019, iFLY was included in NPD Research’s Top 5 Hottest Holiday Accessories Brands, a list that included Nike, Tory Burch and Yves Saint Laurent. Today, iFLY luggage remains the undisputed ratings & reviews leader in luggage, bags and health & wellness products and was the recipient of Walmart’s Supplier of the Year.
With such great results, David and his team decided to share their insights under a new banner and mission called Wholescale. Unlike other digital marketing companies that help consumer product companies, the Wholescale team actually owns and operates multiple consumer-product businesses and brands whose revenue models revolve around selling products through leading retailers and marketplaces. This means they practice what they preach and have first-hand insights and sensibilities about wholesale distribution, retail and digital.
Whether through their proprietary brands or through the licensed and private label brands the team uses to produce and distribute various consumer products, they consistently beat their competitors at generating ratings & reviews, driving revenue and building value across their portfolio of brands.
Wholescale was built to put the power back in the hands of the innovators and product builders, not just the marketers and digitally-native start-ups. Welcome to the next evolution of consumer brand-building with Wholescale.