Wholesale ‘best performing’ industry post-Covid

Recent analysis of the latest government data on businesses that rose and fell in the past two years has revealed that the wholesale industry has weathered the Covid storm better than other industries in the UK

The study by marketing training hub School of Marketing, compared the number of businesses born versus business deaths from Q2 2020 to Q1 2022 and discovered that post-pandemic, more businesses were born than died. In fact, 81.44 businesses died for every 100 wholesale businesses born.

“Wholesalers did not receive anything like the financial support from government during the pandemic that their customers did, and with the hospitality sector closed for long periods it’s remarkable that there were no permanent closures among FWD members in 2020-21,” said James Bielby, Chief Executive, FWD.

“This is due to several factors, including good business practice in building reserves in previous years. Wholesalers had the ability to quickly switch to alternative income streams, such as direct to consumer sales, and the agility to find efficiencies that cut costs while revenues were reduced. While there are undoubtedly supply chain challenges ahead, we’re seeing members emerging strongly from two very turbulent years and sales are already back to pre-Covid levels.”

Businesses in retail were found to be the next most successful following Covid, with financial, insurance, information and communications industries proving to be the least resilient.

covid-19 Government James Bielby research wholesale