If you’ve been paying attention to ecommerce in the last couple of years, you’ll have noticed a phrase appearing more and more frequently.
B2B2C.
Business to Business to Consumer.
BigCommerce describes it as a model where brands sell through partners — distributors, wholesalers, retailers — who then sell to the end consumer. The brand gets reach. The partner gets product. The customer gets a seamless experience.
On paper it’s perfect.
In practice, there’s a problem nobody talks about.
The Theory Is Sound. The Execution Is Missing.
B2B2C as a concept has been around for decades. Brands have always sold through reseller networks. That’s not new.
What’s new is the ecommerce layer.
Consumers now go directly to brand websites to research, discover and decide. They want to buy at the point of intent — not be redirected to a stockist finder and left to figure it out themselves.
So brands face a choice.
Do they sell direct and upset the retailers who’ve built their business?
Or do they hold back on ecommerce and watch customers disappear?
BigCommerce and other major platforms have recognised this tension and positioned B2B2C as the answer. And they’re right — it is the answer.
But here’s what they don’t tell you.
Describing the model isn’t the same as solving the problem.
The Questions Nobody Answers
If a customer places an order on a brand’s website, and that order is supposed to be fulfilled by a reseller — how does it actually get there?
Which reseller gets the order? The nearest one? The fastest one? The one with stock?
What happens if that reseller doesn’t have the product in the size or variant the customer ordered?
What happens if two resellers try to claim the same order simultaneously?
How does the brand keep the customer data when a reseller fulfils?
How does the reseller know the order is coming in time to ship it same day?
These are not hypothetical questions. These are the operational realities that sit between the B2B2C theory and the B2B2C reality. And until now, nobody has built a clean answer to any of them.
Enter Relay Orders
Relay Orders is the operational layer that makes B2B2C actually work.
Here’s how it works in practice.
A customer visits a brand’s website and places an order. That order is instantly broadcast in real time to every reseller in the brand’s network. Every eligible reseller receives a notification simultaneously — not sequentially, not regionally pre-assigned, but all at once.
The first reseller to confirm they have the stock claims the order. They fulfil it from their own inventory. The customer gets their product, often faster than if the brand had shipped it themselves.
The brand retains the customer relationship, the payment, and — critically — the data. They know who bought, what they bought, when they bought, and where it was fulfilled from. That data feeds back into their marketing, their demand visibility, and their reseller relationships.
The reseller gets a sale they didn’t have to generate. No advertising spend. No customer acquisition cost. Just a notification, a claim, and a fulfilment.
Why This Changes Everything for Resellers
One of the most underappreciated aspects of this model is what it does to reseller behaviour.
In a traditional wholesale relationship, resellers cherry pick. They stock the bestselling sizes, the most popular colours, the highest margin lines. The awkward sizes, the slower moving variants, the newer product lines — they get ignored.
Why would a reseller stock something they’re not sure they can sell?
Relay Orders changes that calculation entirely.
Every product a reseller stocks is now a potential Relay Orders fulfilment opportunity. Holding a broader range, deeper stock, and faster response times all increase the reseller’s chance of winning orders. The incentive to hold “difficult” stock suddenly makes commercial sense.
This is what BigCommerce means by B2B2C creating a win-win-win. But it only actually becomes a win-win-win when the operational mechanics are in place to make it work.
The Moment of Intent
There’s another dimension to this that the B2B2C theory often glosses over.
The window between a customer deciding they want something and actually completing a purchase is incredibly short.
The moment a customer leaves a brand’s website without buying, the internet works against that brand. Cookies fire. Algorithms activate. Competitor retargeting campaigns begin appearing across every platform the customer visits. Within minutes, what started as your customer is being actively pursued by someone else.
This is why capturing demand at the exact point of intent isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s essential.
Every redirect to a stockist finder is a gamble. Every “where to buy” page is a leak in your funnel. Every moment between intent and purchase is an opportunity for a competitor to intervene.
Relay Orders closes that window. The customer buys on the brand’s site, at the moment of intent, and the fulfilment happens invisibly behind the scenes through the reseller network.
Built for the Platforms Brands Already Use
Relay Orders integrates directly with WooCommerce, Shopify and BigCommerce — the three platforms powering the majority of UK brand ecommerce.
There’s no rip and replace. No six month implementation project. No disruption to existing operations. Brands are live within days, not months.
Resellers need nothing more than an email notification and access to a lightweight dashboard. The barrier to participation is deliberately minimal.
The B2B2C Future Is Here
BigCommerce called it. The model works. The theory is sound.
Relay Orders is the piece that was missing.
We’re currently looking for founding brands to pilot Relay Orders completely free for six months. If you run a wholesale brand with a reseller network and you’ve ever felt the tension between growing online and protecting your retailer relationships — we’d love to talk.
The demand is already there.
Relay Orders makes sure it doesn’t go to waste.