February 17, 2026 • 7 minute read
Author: Phyllis Jackson, Senior Manager, US Marketing, UPS

Key Points

• Optimization efforts in key areas can help your wholesale business strengthen relationships with suppliers and retailers.
• UPS can help you benchmark your current operations, conduct a competitive analysis and identify areas for improvement or differentiation.
• Creating a digital presence makes it easier, faster and more efficient for customers to find and interact with your business.

A specialty coffee roaster in New York wanted to create a buzz around its products and needed a dependable partner to deliver fresh beans to cafes, restaurants and businesses nationwide. Due to a booming number of 100+ pound orders, the roaster needed reliable and flexible shipping solutions to support demand.

With UPS, the roaster found various shipping methods — and plenty of supply options too. And knowing the driver showed up on time, every time, was as comforting as the perfect café au lait.

What began as an initial engagement with UPS in 2013 has evolved into a large-scale partnership, demonstrating just how important reliability is to enjoying a great cup of coffee.

As competition intensifies in the $9.7 trillion U.S. wholesale market,¹ customer satisfaction remains your link to staying relevant. UPS supports your business by bringing ideas, products and services that help you operate better and faster — so you can pass those gains to customers.

Future-Proof Your Business

It’s a reality in business: you’re only as good as your last success. This means you need to be on point every time in two directions: with suppliers and retailers. It also means that fostering and strengthening relationships is a perpetual endeavor.

Your logistics partner can help you benchmark your current operations, conduct a competitive analysis and identify areas for improvement or differentiation. The information usually boils down to improving two main categories: margins and relationships. Here are ways UPS can help future-proof your business.

Improving Margins

The formula for wholesale success is deceptively simple: manage supply costs and maximize sales prices. Keep costs down when buying from suppliers and keep costs high when selling to retailers. How this translates to your business: optimization.

“Getting there means looking at ways to improve across several categories, such as supply chain and inventory management, automation, and choice of shipping products,” explains Charles Cawthorn, U.S. Go-to-Market Manager for UPS. “By looking at the data points, we can help businesses streamline and automate processes inbound (from suppliers) and outbound (to retailers), which leads to significant cost savings and growth.”

Cawthorn outlines four areas where you can focus your optimization goals:

Shipping
Moving from less-than-pallet load (LPL) shipments to a consolidated package network usually saves costs — and provides an easier delivery experience.

How UPS helps: Our team can help you evaluate consolidated ground shipping options and forecast cost savings. We can also recommend e-commerce shipping strategies.

Technology
Staying up to date with the technologies, tools and trends that matter to your customers ensures you’re listening. For example, taking a few minutes to learn the basics about artificial intelligence (AI) can help you better understand some of the business decisions your customers are making. And, if you identify how to use AI to help your business in some way (such as analyzing customer buying habits to recommend new products), the positivity will trickle down to help your customers too.

How UPS helps: We use AI for delivery route optimization, which helps to make our network operate more effectively. When we run our operations with greater efficiency, our wholesale customers gain greater efficiency.

Processes
Evolving from manual interactions to automation empowers your business to do more with fewer human touchpoints.

How UPS helps: Our team connects customers with trusted, vetted partners that can help with technology, software upgrades and middleware.

Cross-Channel Experience
Making it easy for customers to find and connect with your business saves them time and resources. While most business relationships include face-to-face meetings and interactions, having a digital channel is an essential step to providing convenience and avoiding obsolescence. Digital purchases are becoming the preferred way to conduct business, so establishing an easy store and purchasing experience is key to customer loyalty.

How UPS helps: We can introduce you to resources to assist with setting up or expanding your online presence to make transactions with retailers easier, faster and more convenient.

Improving Relationships

Wholesalers are required to do double duty when it comes to relationship building, and we understand the need to ensure everyone on both sides of the supply chain gets prioritized. Cawthorn says reliability, product visibility and communication are the areas to focus on.

Be available on Saturdays. When customers know they can depend on your business, they’ll have greater peace of mind — and you’ll have fewer service calls, damaged items and missed opportunities.

“Reliability is always first and foremost because if there are no products, there are no sales,” Cawthorn says. “To help you meet your customers’ needs, UPS has an integrated network for pickup and delivery, including Saturday services in select areas.”

Provide real-time intel. Knowing where products are in real time makes it easier for suppliers and retailers to manage and plan inventory. Providing businesses with frictionless real-time tracking and updates for inbound and outbound shipments keeps them informed and demonstrates your commitment to service excellence.

Ask for feedback. Give customers a way to provide feedback and be open to what they say. You can ask directly or give a quick survey to monitor your progress. The quest to learn what customers think and feel about your business can help you improve and act on their feedback.

Strong Connections Lead to Strong Sales

Customer experience is one of the most critical differentiators in business, and 53% of all consumers say they’ll stop buying from a company if they have a bad experience.³ In the ultra-competitive marketplace, suppliers and retailers have an abundance of choice. UPS is here to ensure your business remains the top pick.

¹ “Wholesale Industry Insights,” Statista, accessed May 14, 2025.
² “B2B Buyer Report: The Challenge of Web Store Adoption,” Sana, accessed May 14, 2025.
³ “'Lost sales' due to poor customer experiences could hit $1.4T in U.S.,” Chain Store Age, The Business of Retail, November 20, 2024.

*Individual results and options will vary. UPS makes no promises of any specific outcome in this document but instead provides only example outcomes based on certain UPS customer experiences.