Sell It Before You Stock It

From my desk today

We recently started distributing KeyBudz, an Apple accessories brand.

KeyBudz is well established in the USA. In Canada, it's practically a start-up.

The collection is available to every Randmar reseller. But to give KeyBudz national coverage quickly, we started with one move: we listed about 12 SKUs on the website of one of Canada's large national retailers, shipped by drop ship.

No stores to fill. No shelf space to fight for. Just products online, available to customers across Canada.

Then we hit a familiar wall.

KeyBudz has a deep assortment. Normally, we wouldn't stock every SKU before we knew the demand for each one. That's how distributors protect themselves from sitting on slow inventory.

So we talked with KeyBudz.

They agreed to let us order smaller quantities of more items. That one change meant we could list more SKUs on that retailer's website.

It works for everyone:

• The retailer gets a wider assortment without holding inventory
• KeyBudz gets national reach in a new market
• Randmar builds demand data before making big stocking bets

The retailer reality

Your website can hold thousands of products.

Your backroom can't. Neither can your bank account.

So every new brand turns into a guessing game:

• Which items will sell?
• How many of each?
• What happens to the ones that don't?

Guess wrong, and you're marking down stock that never moved. Guess too cautiously, and you list three products from a brand with fifty. Customers notice the gaps.

Most retailers end up somewhere in the middle. A thin assortment, a lot of cash tied up, and not much learned.

Behind the scenes at Randmar

Drop ship flips the order of things. You sell first. We ship second. Nobody guesses.

Here's how it works with Randmar.

Every SKU, one at a time.

All of our 20,000+ SKUs can be drop shipped. The minimum is one item. One customer, one order, one box.

Your name or no name.

Drop ship orders can go out unbranded, or show your store's information. Either way, your customer sees your business, not ours.

Same speed as everything else.

Drop ship orders follow the same 3 p.m. local cut-off for same-day shipping, from our Laval and Edmonton hubs.

Orders that flow on their own.

For larger retailers, we sync orders over EDI several times a day. If you sell on Shopify, Randmar Connect brings orders in automatically.

A clear cost.

The drop ship fee is as low as $10 per order. If you have volume, call us. We can work out an arrangement that fits.

Smaller buys are how omnichannel works.

Ordering smaller quantities of more items isn't only safer. It's what selling across channels actually needs.

The Omnichannel Playbook from commercetools points to two numbers worth keeping in mind:

• 75% of consumers research products online before buying in-store.
• 47% of shoppers rely on real-time inventory checks.

What it means for you: your customer often meets you online first, and wants to know what's available right now. A wide online assortment covered by drop ship, plus smaller store buys of the items that prove themselves, answers both.

The playbook calls this the endless aisle: giving shoppers access to the full catalogue, including items that aren't on the shelf.

Source: commercetools, The Omnichannel Playbook (2026), citing Capital One Shopping (75%) and Numerator (47%).

How big is drop ship for our biggest partners?

Over the last 90 days, across our top 5 resellers, 15,402 of 15,711 orders were drop ship. That's 98%.

Only 309 orders went the traditional route.

Source: Randmar, top 5 resellers by orders, last 90 days.

That number tells you something. The retailers who sell the most through Randmar have mostly stopped guessing. They list widely, sell, and let us ship.

Your turn

What would you add to your website tomorrow if you didn't have to stock it first?

Randmar. Your shelves, our warehouses.