wholesaler
Americannoun
-
wholesalers
plural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Explanation
A wholesaler is a person or business that sells items to retail stores, which then sell them to individual customers for a higher price. You could also call a wholesaler a distributor. Anyone who sells goods to other businesses, rather than directly to customers, is a wholesaler. The bookshop in your town and the big-box store in a strip mall are both retailers; they buy goods from wholesalers, who sell them large quantities of books or patio furniture, etc., to be resold to individual shoppers.
Vocabulary lists containing wholesaler
"Curtis Aikens and the American Dream" and "Go For It!"
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"Principles of Business," Vocabulary from Chapter 10
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Citadel Securities, the largest retail wholesaler, said that SpaceX had the highest retail order activity it had ever seen for an IPO auction.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 12, 2026
Sysco agreed to buy family-owned wholesaler Jetro Restaurant Depot for $29.1 billion...
From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026
The water will move from one area to the other through the pipelines of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the regional wholesaler that imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2026
That is, until a tiny French beverage wholesaler joined the conversation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
“I got new seats on order from the wholesaler in Sarasota, but they won’t be here till Wednesday.”
From "Hoot" by Carl Hiaasen
The flat result for wholesalers was stronger than the data agency’s advance estimate for a 0.7% slide in sales following upwardly revised growth of 1.4% in April.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 15, 2026
He said the company engaged in "organised, planned, unlawful activity" and "misled wholesalers, retailers and consumers".
From BBC ● Jun. 6, 2026
What's more over the same period, factory gate prices - the amount producers charge retailers or other wholesalers - only rose by 4%.
From BBC ● May 24, 2026
Among wholesalers, the largest component of Canada’s services sector, sales were up in five of the seven sectors tracked.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 15, 2026
On one occasion, Borgenicht realized that his only chance to undercut bigger firms was to convince the wholesalers to sell cloth to him directly, eliminating the middleman.
From "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
