B2B and D2C Omnichannel

Two worlds, one warehouse, zero margin for confusion

Most brands hit a point where they no longer live in just one world. On one side you have B2B orders from retailers, distributors, and wholesale partners who care deeply about pallets, labels, and delivery windows. On the other side you have D2C orders from customers who care about fast shipping, clean tracking, and boxes that actually show up when promised. If those two worlds run on separate systems, your warehouse turns into a tug of war. B2B and D2C omnichannel is how you stop the tugging and get everyone pulling in the same direction.

Search data shows how often this goes wrong. Operators look up phrases like balance wholesale and D2C, pallets versus parcels from one warehouse, and fix conflicts between retail and D2C orders. Underneath is the same question. How do you treat both sides of the business as equally important without letting either one break the other.

What happens when B2B and D2C run on different planets

When B2B and D2C do not share a system, they behave like rival departments competing for the same inventory and attention. B2B wants full pallets, perfect labels, and rigid timelines. D2C wants every available unit on the shelf, ready for same day or next day cutoffs. If your warehouse management system cannot see both at once, someone gets surprised, and the surprise is usually expensive.

Maureen Milligan hears this from brands leaving other 3PLs all the time. She said, "Most of the customers who come to us from another 3PL, their challenges have always been access to their data, order accuracy and efficiency, and basically just meeting the committed requirements." Those requirements are different for B2B and D2C, but they are equally non negotiable. If your systems are split, it is only a matter of time before one side slips.

Omnichannel starts with a single operational brain

B2B and D2C omnichannel works only when both worlds share one operational brain. That means purchase orders from big box retailers, wholesale accounts, and distributors flow into the same warehouse management system as orders from Shopify or other D2C platforms. The WMS does not see two separate universes. It sees one pool of inventory and one flow of work, with different rules applied to each order type.

Connor Perkins described how that looks from the client side. He said, "Our clients get best in class visibility and transparency. They can see their daily orders, they can see KPIs, and they can see historical transactions." That kind of visibility is what lets a brand see B2B and D2C together instead of guessing which one is causing the strain.

One inventory pool, many ways to ship it

The heart of B2B and D2C omnichannel is unified inventory. Instead of holding separate piles of stock in separate systems, you maintain one accurate pool that both sides can draw from. The WMS tracks what is on hand, what is committed to open D2C orders, what is staged for upcoming retailer shipments, and what will be needed for planned promotions. The brand no longer has to guess whether it can say yes to a large retail PO while a campaign runs on the D2C site. The system already knows.

Connor has seen what happens when that accuracy is missing. He said, "One of the pain points our clients have experienced with previous 3PLs is inventory accuracy. They were losing money by shipping wrong items or wrong quantities." When pallets and parcels share the same truthful stock picture, those errors do not have room to grow.

The WMS as the referee that understands both sides

B2B and D2C omnichannel depends on a warehouse management system that actually understands B2B complexity, not just D2C convenience. Bryan Wright, who designed the WMS used by G10, put it plainly. He said, "A bad WMS system will not track inventory 100 percent as it should." If the system does not track every unit, B2B and D2C will always step on each other.

Bryan also explained that the system was built around retailer demands from day one. "If they have a Walmart account that they are trying to bring on, we can turn on the integration. We can create the Walmart specific shipping label, send them Walmart specific EDI transaction, pick it in a specific way for Walmart, and all of that stuff is inherent in the software." That same engine is what routes D2C orders cleanly through the building. The result is not a D2C system with B2B bolted on. It is a system that was designed for pallets and later taught to love parcels.

Robots help pallets and parcels share the same floor

Even with a strong WMS, omnichannel will fall apart if the warehouse floor is chaos. B2B and D2C have different physical needs. One wants pallet positions and case picking. The other wants high velocity bin locations and rapid small picks. If people are wandering the aisles trying to bounce between the two, accuracy drops and speed fades.

Holly Woods described how robotics changes that picture. She said, "The robot is round, it looks like an industrial Roomba," talking about the Zebra robots that move carts along optimized routes. Those routes are not just cute. They let pickers handle D2C work and case picks for B2B orders in a structured, predictable way. The robots cut wasted walking, which means staff can focus on doing each job right instead of racing around hoping to keep up.

D2C speed meets B2B discipline in the same building

D2C has a simple promise. You order today, we ship very soon. B2B has a longer and stricter promise. We will hit your delivery window, meet your label rules, follow your routing guide, and avoid chargebacks. B2B and D2C omnichannel means you keep both promises without asking your warehouse to pick a favorite.

Joel Malmquist explained how this works on the service side. He said, "We are the ones shipping the orders for these brands," and highlighted that every account has clear expectations around cutoffs and service levels. For D2C, Joel described a model where orders before noon aim to ship same day and orders after ship next day. For B2B, the same system watches retailer deadlines, plans dock schedules, and ensures each PO leaves the building in compliance. One brain, two styles, both honored.

Omnichannel gets tested when everything spikes at once

The real test of B2B and D2C omnichannel is not during quiet weeks. It is when everything spikes at once. A retailer launches an in store promotion and sends a rush of POs. A creator posts about your product and D2C orders surge. Marketplaces add a fresh layer of demand on top. Without omnichannel, your warehouse falls into pure reaction mode. With it, the operation becomes intense but not unhinged.

Joel shared a stress test story when a client asked if G10 could handle a scenario where "Target drops 10 POs and gives us 48 hours to turn it around." Joel answered, "Yes we can," because the system could distribute work, inventory, and staff across multiple sites. That same resilience is what lets a brand ride out a D2C spike without missing retailer deadlines, and serve retailers without starving direct customers.

Customer service needs one story across B2B and D2C

When B2B and D2C run on different systems, customer service becomes a translator. Wholesale partners hear one story about delays. D2C customers hear another. Internally, nobody is quite sure which version is closest to the truth. Omnichannel fixes this by giving everyone the same data and the same context.

Joel described how communication works when the data is unified. "Every single account at G10 has a direct point of contact," he said. That person can see whether an issue is rooted in inventory, carrier performance, retailer constraints, or a D2C surge. Instead of vague answers, they can give specific ones grounded in a single view of the operation.

Institutional knowledge turns B2B from scary to scalable

Many founder led brands are comfortable with D2C and more nervous about B2B. Retailers bring routing guides, compliance rules, forecasts, and long email threads. It is not that founders do not want B2B. They just do not want B2B to wreck what is already working on the D2C side.

Jen Myers has seen this anxiety up close. She said, "If you send stuff to Amazon that has the wrong labels on, or it is not to their specs, or the wrong dimensions, you get chargebacks basically they fine you." The same risk applies to other large retailers. Having a team that knows those rules cold, plus a WMS built to enforce them, makes B2B feel less like a leap of faith and more like a skill set the operation already has.

Matt Bradbury added another dimension, talking about how many brands arrive with trust issues. "A lot of these brands have been around for 10 years or less, and a lot of them have had really bad experiences with 3PLs, so there is a big mistrust in the space." B2B and D2C omnichannel gives those brands something solid to stand on. They can see orders, inventory, and performance in one view instead of hoping someone is telling them the full story.

A system built for founders who love both channels

Some operators still talk about B2B versus D2C as if you have to choose. Modern brands rarely see it that way. They want the reach and volume of B2B and the margin and relationship depth of D2C. B2B and D2C omnichannel is how you say yes to both without burning out your team.

Mark Becker summed up the mindset behind this approach in one line. He said, "At the end of the day, all we are is builders. The two of us love to build." Builders do not want to throw away a working D2C channel to chase a retail win, or freeze B2B growth to protect their online store. They want both to thrive, supported by systems that are as serious as their goals.

Next steps toward true B2B and D2C omnichannel

If your pallets and parcels currently feel like they belong to different companies, the problem is not demand. It is fragmentation. B2B and D2C omnichannel solves that by giving every order the same WMS, the same inventory truth, and the same operational playbook, with rules layered on top instead of separate worlds built side by side.

With that structure in place, you can say yes to bigger POs and bigger campaigns at the same time. Your retailers get what you promised. Your D2C customers get what they ordered. Your team gets out of constant crisis mode. And your brand finally gets an operation that grows at the same pace as your ambition.