Distributors serve to move product from manufacturer to market. Some are retail distributors, who sell directly to consumers (end users). Others are known as merchant wholesale distributors; they buy products from the manufacturer, or another source, then move them from their warehouses to companies that either want to resell the products to end users or use them in their own operations.
According to the National Association of Wholesale-Distributors (NAW), wholesale trade increased by 5.8 percent in 2012 (compared to the prior year) with sales reaching $4.9 trillion. The NAW says wholesale trade itself accounts for about 5.6 percent of U.S. GDP and is an integral part of other larger sectors of the economy—retail trade and manufacturing.
