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September 23, 2025
Are Brand Websites Cannibalizing Sales at Wholesale Partners?
Eoin Comerford, the former CEO of outdoor retailer Moosejaw, has come up with a “Retailer Partnership Score” system that ranks 25 leading outdoor brands on whether their websites are supporting, or cannibalizing, sales from their wholesale partner doors.
The analysis comes as outdoor specialty stores, often credited with helping brands establish credibility with outdoor enthusiasts, increasingly feel they’re competing against brand websites that are often promotional.
Comerford, now a consultant after Walmart’s sale of Moosejaw to Dick’s Sporting Goods, wrote on LinkedIn, “There are a lot of different elements that go into being a good partner — everything from on-time delivery to co-op advertising policies — but I decided to focus on two areas that could be verified on the brands’ websites: discount orientation and promotion of dealers as sellers of the brands’ products.”
Under his scoring system:
- E-mail sign up offer: Many brands in the outdoor space offer up to 20% off if a consumer provides an e-mail. Under the scoring system, brands with no such discount receive the maximum 30 points, 10% off gets 10 points, 15% off gets 5 points, and 20% off is worth zero.
- Main sale message: Brands receive 20 points if the main home page message is not a sale message.
- Top navigation sale section: Brands receive 10 points if they don’t have a sale section prominently displayed in their main navigation.
- Product display page (PDP) retailer promotion: Brands that show specific nearby retailers that have the item in stock receive 30 points. Providing a link to find nearby local dealers is worth 20 points.
- Top navigation dealer locator: Brands that include a link to their dealer locator in the top navigation receive 10 points.
Ranking as Tier 1 Brands (75-100 points) were Brooks Running, Oboz Footwear, Nemo Equipment, Yeti, and Salomon. Tier 2 Brands (50-74 points) included Arc’teryx, On, Big Agnes, EXPED, KÜHL, Clothing Company, Osprey Packs, Smartwool, Fjällräven, and Patagonia.
Many of the comments responding to the LinkedIn post explored the reasons that many branded sites were promotional (36% had a sales message on their main home page, and 46% had a sale section in their main navigation bar) rather than focused on product and messaging.
One reason cited for the e-mail sign up offer was that it helps brands build a customer mailing list — a critical tool for raising overall awareness and loyalty.
Some touted the value of a brand’s e-commerce site for clearance versus other methods, while noting that it often takes time to rebalance seasonal inventories to avoid heavy clearance. One commentator said they were okay with a periodic sale, especially if brands offer a chance for dealers to purchase aged inventory at a break before selling it at a discount through their website.
One commentator said “Intangible drivers like authentic culture, product innovation, and consumer connection outweigh these operating metrics,” ultimately elevating sales at third-party retailers.
Comerford believes the most critical aspect in retail partnership is “whether the brand is investing in top of the funnel brand advertising that drives overall demand (including to retail partners) vs. just focusing on bottom of the funnel where they compete on Google, etc. with their dealer.”
Discussion Questions
Are online promotions at brand websites too often undermining sales efforts at wholesale partners?
Are e-mail sign up discounts and online promotions in general creating unnecessary channel conflict?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Bob Phibbs
President/CEO, The Retail Doctor
Gene Detroyer
Professor, International Business, Guizhou University of Finance & Economics and University of Sanya, China.
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
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Yes, there is a degree of cannibalization. This is true for both the physical stores and websites of brands. However, brand websites pose a particular risk because they’re universally available and are often the first thing surfaced in search and from people researching the brand. That said, the overlap is only partial. There are many consumers who go directly to a retailer site for reasons of familiarity, having an account set up, and wanting to buy from multiple brands at the same time. The trick for retailers is to ensure that these points of differentiation are sticky.
Amazon traffic outweighs own-website traffic for most brands by anywhere from 10:1 to 100:1. In our situation, we had strongly promoted traffic from our website & print catalog to our independent resellers thru the 2000s – mid 2010s, but could never reasonably attribute volume to those actions (even with a LOT of assumptions), and when the retail dealers started to close en masse about ten years ago, there were whole cities and states without teaching-supply stores. So what were we to do? Of course we had to make our website more promotional.
If all they do is push product being sold by retailers, then the answer would seem to be yes (how could it not be?) OTOH, if the effort is at marketing vs (just) selling, i.e. if they’re actually growing the brand, perhaps not. Altho not 100% new, this would seem to be a relatively new problem – at least with regard to scope – that’s arisen with the internet, since few manufacturers were into DTC before that. And altho a retailer’s view on the topic is likely to be biased by self-interest, I suspect they’re often correct: a manufacurer that dabbles in retailing amateurishly risks damaging the brand…for everyone.
Comerford’s “Retailer Partnership Score” appears to treat channel harmony as a zero-sum game, but that’s pre-digital thinking (which is odd given his Moosejaw DNA). The most successful brands today recognize that consumer discovery journeys are inherently omnichannel. Brands aren’t cannibalizing partners – they’re subsidizing customer acquisition for the entire ecosystem. The crux of Comerford’s questions is whether outdoor brands are using their digital advantages to expand the pie or grab a bigger slice. Comerford has not touched on the cause of the channel disruption so much as he has documented it. Without examining the funnel behavior breakdown by brand, making broad generalizations can lead to incorrect decisions. Channel conflict here is more likely a symptom of unclear value differentiation, not proof of cannibalization.
“Undermine” is a big word. This is business. Each part has its own strategy. If the brand feels that the wholesale partner is undermining them, cut off the partnership. If the wholesale partner feels they are being undermined, stop selling the brand. Neither will happen, because they both want the business.
If you read me, there is no secret that I like Amazon. The simple reason is that I don’t want to go searching website by website to find the best deal or the perfect product. For the most part, Amazon fits my needs, saves time, and is very efficient. I visit two brand websites for the very same reason. Levi’s, because I have no interest in any other brand of jeans. Nike/Converse, because I have no interest in any other brand of sneakers (and I can customize them both).
Smaller retailers dispise the double-standard that they can only show MSRP prices yet the brands can run at 30% off sale any time they want. This is probably the biggest friction point between brands and retailers.
Yes—brand websites too often lean on aggressive online promotions that can undermine wholesale partners. Broad e-mail sign-up discounts and front-and-center sale messaging may win some direct-to-consumer traffic, but they risk eroding the trust and margin structure that brands rely on with their retail partners. Over time, this creates unnecessary channel conflict and makes it harder for retailers to justify supporting the brand at scale.
That doesn’t mean digital promotions are inherently bad. When deployed strategically, direct channels can build incremental demand that benefits the entire ecosystem. The difference lies in intent: if a brand is simply shifting volume away from wholesale by always offering a better deal online, it’s cannibalizing. But if promotions are used thoughtfully—limited to clearance, exclusives, or co-op support—they can complement retail partners rather than compete against them.
The healthiest brands strike this balance by calibrating their digital offers and recognizing that retail partnerships remain critical to long-term growth. In today’s market, it’s not about choosing between DTC and wholesale—it’s about ensuring both channels lift the brand together.
These types of discounts generally come from misaligned incentives and siloed P&Ls across revenue stream. Third party retail often cares about sell-through and will do whatever they can to hit their velocity targets, while in-house teams selling DTC often care about their internal metrics (revenue, margin, etc).
If teams are aligned around an overall sell-through number and how that translates to a blended EBITDA or CM2 then you typically don’t get into these kinds of cannibalizing contests.