6 - Want to get into a startup in WD?
Make it stand out
So you want to get into a startup company in the wholesale distribution. You may have seen our post about the Top 50 companies in this field as reported by Industrial Distribution (“Top 50”). That list has companies with revenue from rrr to ddd billion. The startups are certainly the opposite of that.
This is random, but here is what one person found is finding a role in a WD startup.
San Francisco. GrubMarket is a food technology company with a mission to digitally transform the American food supply chain industry.
Founded in 2014, GrubMarket is a food tech/eCommerce company operating in the U.S and Canadian food supply chain, serving both business customers and end consumers, as well as providing software-as-a-service solutions to digitally transform businesses throughout the food supply chain. GrubMarket operates in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Missouri, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington and British Columbia (Canada), with plans to expand to the rest of the U.S., Canada, and other parts of the world
New York. You don’t have time to chase factories. You don’t have time for fake suppliers wasting your inbox. You need real factories in Vietnam that can deliver. That’s what we built Vietnamia for. You’ll see verified suppliers in footwear, furniture, coffee, rice, coconut, and more. No middlemen. No guessing. Every factory vetted. Every profile built for serious buyers. You stay in control. Compare suppliers, check their background, and start deals with confidence. Vietnamia saves you months of travel and endless messages. We built this platform so you meet the right factory faster, safer, smarter. Your buyers expect reliability. Your brand depends on trust. Vietnamia gives you both.
Burnaby, British Columbia. Official distributor of Hyundai L&C for the product Bodaq interior finishing material
Others that surfaced are:
AirGoods, New York, wholesale marketplace for specialty food
Turn, Menlo Park, ERP that gives distributors an “unfair advantage”
Affiliated Distributors, Wayne, PA, member-owned for creating supplier-distributor partnerships
Faction, San Francisco, AI partners for distributors
Pepper, Los Angeles, AI partners for distributors
Distribution Hub, Austin, mobile supply chain support
We have here a small, random group of companies that surfaced as being possibilities for entry points into the world of distribution startups.
They all seem to have identified a niche and structured a branded service with claims of excellence and differentiation. No surprise and good for them.
The other takeaway is that more than half are not product companies but rather support companies. Startup and technology go together much more easily than than startup and actual supply chain product movement.
An interesting exercise with some spillover into future hiring of talent.