Handshake, Faire, and Orderchamp vs. a Custom Wholesale Portal: What Distributors Should Know

If you've been evaluating wholesale ordering platforms, you've probably encountered the same landscape: marketplaces that promise retailer access in exchange for a percentage of every sale, and custom portal options that cost more upfront but keep your margins and your client relationships intact. The choice matters more than most distributors realize, and a few things have changed recently that are worth knowing before you decide.

First: Handshake Is Gone

Handshake, Shopify's wholesale marketplace, shut down in May 2024. Distributors who built their ordering workflow on Handshake had to scramble to find alternatives. This is worth noting not just as history but as a strategic lesson: when your wholesale ordering runs through a third-party marketplace, you're dependent on that company's business decisions. If they pivot, price up, or shut down, your clients' ordering experience goes with them.

The Handshake shutdown displaced a significant number of small and mid-size distributors. Many of them are now looking at the remaining marketplace options or considering a custom portal for the first time.

The Marketplace Options That Remain

Faire

Faire is the dominant wholesale marketplace in the U.S., particularly strong in gift, home, and specialty food. Faire connects brands and distributors with independent retailers and handles payment terms (they offer Net 60 to retailers and pay distributors within a few days).

The cost structure is significant: Faire charges 15% commission on orders from new retailer accounts, plus $0.15 per transaction (per their published pricing). On established accounts that were introduced to Faire by the brand, the rate drops to around 3%, but the ongoing discovery benefit comes at 15% of every new account's purchases indefinitely.

Marketplace sellers report losing 18–22% in margin when accounting for commissions, transaction fees, and the competitive pressure of being listed alongside alternatives. On a $500 order to a new account, you're paying $75 in commission before you've covered a single cost of goods or delivery.

Faire also owns the retailer relationship in a meaningful sense: if a retailer discovers you through Faire, they may reorder through Faire even after you've established a direct relationship, continuing to trigger the commission. Faire's terms give them significant leverage over that relationship.

Orderchamp

Orderchamp is a European wholesale marketplace based in the Netherlands, primarily serving European brands and retailers. It's not a meaningful competitor in the U.S. market for most distributors, but it appears in comparison searches and is sometimes evaluated by U.S. brands with European distribution ambitions.

The business model is similar to Faire: marketplace discovery, commission-based pricing, payment facilitation. The commission structure varies by category and contract but follows the same general logic. If you're a U.S.-focused distributor, Orderchamp is not a practical option.

The Custom Portal Alternative

A custom wholesale ordering portal — like what Wholesail builds — works differently from a marketplace at every level:

The Commission Math at Scale

The 15% commission on new accounts sounds manageable for a small distributor. It becomes a structural problem as you grow.

A distributor with $50,000/month in GMV through Faire — not a large operation by any measure — is paying $7,500/month in commissions just to new accounts. At $500,000/month, which is a realistic scale for a regional distributor, the commission burden on new accounts alone is $75,000/month. That's $900,000/year in fees to a marketplace that owns your client relationships.

Contrast this with a flat monthly fee for a custom portal, where the cost is fixed regardless of order volume. At $50,000/month in orders, the economics of a custom portal are competitive. At $200,000/month, the custom portal pays for itself many times over compared to marketplace commissions.

When Marketplaces Make Sense

Marketplaces are not always the wrong choice. There are situations where they genuinely make sense:

• You're launching into a new market and need discovery to find your first accounts. Faire's retailer network is real and valuable for new brand introductions
• You have a consumer brand with retail ambitions and want access to boutique retailers who actively browse Faire for new products
• You're testing demand for a new product category before investing in direct sales infrastructure

For established distributors with an existing account base, the case for a marketplace is much weaker. You're paying 15% to maintain relationships with accounts you already have.

The Data Ownership Question

The most underappreciated risk of marketplace dependency is data ownership. When your clients order through a marketplace, the marketplace has visibility into your order history, your client list, and your pricing. That data is an asset — your most valuable sales intelligence. On a marketplace, it's also their data.

Handshake's shutdown in May 2024 was a reminder that a marketplace can take that data access away from you at any time. A custom portal means you own the order history, the client contacts, and the purchasing patterns — permanently, regardless of what any third party decides to do.

For more on the Shopify B2B question specifically — since many Handshake refugees are evaluating Shopify's wholesale features — see our comparison of Shopify B2B vs. a custom wholesale portal.

And if you're evaluating CRM platforms as part of this decision, our post on HubSpot and Salesforce alternatives for distributors is worth reading alongside this one.

The Bottom Line

Marketplaces trade discovery for margin and data. If you need discovery, that trade can make sense. If you have an established client base, you're paying 15% for a service you don't need.

The Handshake shutdown is a concrete example of platform risk that the wholesale industry watched play out in real time. Building your ordering infrastructure on a platform you don't control is a risk that compounds the more dependent you become on it.

A custom portal costs more to set up. But at any meaningful order volume, the commission savings cover the cost within months — and you keep the client relationships, the data, and the pricing control permanently.