We Checked 1,141 Brands: Only 61% Can Be Bought Wholesale (2026 Study)

We researched the wholesale channel of 1,141 consumer brands, link by link — opening every dealer portal, distributor list and wholesale page we found. The result: only 61% of brands can be bought wholesale through an authorized route. 16% exist in bulk only on the gray market. 23% cannot be legitimately bought wholesale at all.

This page summarises the findings and publishes the full dataset as open data. Every status was verified by a human opening a live source — not scraped claims, not directory listings.

Key findings

• 61% of brands (699) are open — an authorized wholesale route exists and we verified a live link: the brand’s own trade portal or appointed distributors. For most of them the barrier is paperwork (resale certificate, business entity), not access.
• 16% (185) are gray-market only — bulk quantities trade through unauthorized wholesalers. The goods are typically genuine, but invoices from these sources routinely fail Amazon verification and offer no protection against IP complaints.
• 23% (257) are closed — no wholesale channel exists at all. Everything sold as “wholesale” for these brands is diverted stock or counterfeit. This bucket includes some of the most-searched wholesale queries on Google.
• The most dangerous segment is not “closed” — it is gray: sellers find real stock, assume the channel is legitimate, and discover the paperwork problem only when a marketplace asks for invoices.

Notable closed brands

Among brands with heavy “wholesale” search demand where our research found no authorized reseller channel: Bath & Body Works, Trader Joe’s, Jellycat, Pandora, Mary Kay, Sephora (retailer), Cirkul, Gorilla Grip, OUAI, TATCHA, Rhode, Zara. Anyone offering these “wholesale” is selling diverted or fake goods — see our gray-market guide for what happens next.

Methodology

Each brand was processed through the same pipeline: a region-scoped US search with marketplace exclusions (Amazon, eBay, Alibaba and social platforms filtered at query level), triage of results to company-owned sources, and a human-verified opening of the best leads. A brand is marked open only when we confirmed a live authorized route; gray when the only bulk sources are unauthorized wholesalers; closed when no wholesale channel could be verified. Full method: How we verify.

Open data

The full dataset — 1,141 brands with status and the verified source URL where one exists — is free to download and reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0): supplyrank-brand-availability-2026.csv. If you use it in reporting or research, link to this page as the source. The dataset grows by roughly 60 brands per day; this page reflects the August 2026 snapshot.

Quotable statistics

• Only 61% of consumer brands can be bought wholesale through an authorized channel (SupplyRank, n=1,141, Aug 2026).
• Nearly 1 in 4 brands (23%) have no legitimate wholesale route at all.
• 16% of brands trade in bulk exclusively on the gray market — genuine goods, non-compliant paperwork.

Check any brand’s status instantly and free: Wholesale Availability Checker. Press and data enquiries: [email protected].