Joseph Ribkoff Goes Direct, What Wholesale Brands Learn
Joseph Ribkoff has sold clothing since 1957 without ever selling directly to the person who wears it. Thousands of retail partners, more than 65 countries, and no storefront of its own. This month that changed, and Shopify president Harley Finkelstein announced the brand's first direct to consumer flagship. The interesting question is not why a 69 year old wholesale business finally went direct. It is what it has to rebuild internally to survive the decision.
Company details verified against josephribkoff.com and the brand's own announcement, checked on 20 September 2026.
What actually happened?
Joseph Ribkoff, founded in Montreal in 1957 by a 21 year old, built one of the most established wholesale fashion businesses in the world. Its own site describes selling in over 65 countries, supported by a separate B2B platform for retail partners.
The new launch is a consumer storefront running on Shopify, described by Finkelstein as "not just a basic online store" but a digital flagship that blends shopping with editorial and curated collections. The brand now runs both motions: wholesale to retailers, and direct to the customer.
Why would a successful wholesale brand go direct now?
Three pressures, and they apply to almost every wholesale business we talk to.
- You do not own the customer. When a retailer sells your dress, they learn who bought it, what size, how often they return, and what they buy next. You learn a purchase order quantity.
- Retail shelf space is shrinking while the brands competing for it multiply. A channel you do not control is a risk you cannot manage.
- Margin. Wholesale margin is structurally lower. One direct sale can be worth two or three wholesale units, which is what makes the operational cost of going direct survivable.
None of that is new. What changed is that the cost of running a credible direct channel fell far enough that a brand can test it without rebuilding the company.
There is a fourth pressure specific to this moment. AI assistants now recommend products directly to shoppers, and they read structured product data from the brands that publish it. A wholesale business whose product information lives only in retailer catalogues is invisible to that entire layer of discovery, and it has no way to fix that through a partner. Owning your own storefront is increasingly how a brand stays legible to the systems doing the recommending.
What breaks when wholesale brands go direct?
The storefront is the easy part. These are the things that actually cause trouble, in the order they usually surface:
| What breaks | Why | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| Channel conflict | Your retail partners see you competing on their product at their price | An explicit pricing and assortment policy agreed before launch |
| Product data | Wholesale line sheets assume a buyer who already knows the product | Consumer-grade descriptions, measurements, fabric and fit detail |
| Fulfilment | Picking one dress is a different operation from shipping a pallet | Single-unit picking, packing and returns handling |
| Customer service | You have never answered a consumer question before | Someone who owns sizing, delivery and returns queries |
| Returns | Fashion returns run far higher direct than wholesale | A policy and a cost model built for it |
| Systems | Two order types, one inventory pool | B2B and DTC running from the same catalogue without overselling |
That last row is the one that quietly sinks projects. If wholesale and direct hold separate inventory, you will oversell one of them. If they share, you need rules about who gets the last unit.
Why does the pricing decision come first?
Because every other decision inherits from it, and it is the one that cannot be quietly reversed. Undercut your retail partners and you damage the channel that pays the bills today. Match them exactly and your direct channel has no reason to exist for the shopper. Price above them and you look expensive on your own site.
The workable answers are usually structural rather than numerical: sell the full range direct while partners carry an edited selection, keep exclusives and previous seasons to yourself, or lead direct with service such as fit guidance and easy returns rather than with price. Pick one before anybody designs a homepage.
Does a brand need Shopify Plus for this?
Not always, and the answer has changed. Native B2B features reached merchants beyond Plus in 2026, which means a brand can run wholesale ordering and a consumer storefront from one admin without an enterprise contract. We covered what that includes in our guide to Shopify B2B without Plus.
Plus still earns its place at genuine scale, with checkout customisation, higher API limits and more complex market structures. For a wholesale brand testing direct for the first time, starting below Plus and upgrading on evidence is usually the better sequence than buying the largest plan and hoping the traffic arrives.
What makes it a flagship rather than a catalogue?
The announcement used the word flagship deliberately, and the distinction is real. A catalogue lists what you make. A flagship explains why it exists, who it is for and how to wear it, and it does that with editorial content, styling and curation that a retail partner's website will never provide for you.
For a brand with seven decades of archive, that is an advantage almost no digitally native competitor can copy. It is also the part most likely to be cut when the launch runs late, which is a mistake. Without it, a heritage brand's direct store is simply a more expensive version of the retailer's product page.
What should a wholesale brand do before committing?
- Write the pricing and assortment policy and show it to your three largest retail partners before you build anything
- Audit your product data against what a consumer needs to buy without a salesperson
- Cost single-unit fulfilment and returns honestly, including the fashion return rate rather than a hopeful one
- Decide who owns customer service, by name, before launch week
- Plan one inventory pool with rules, not two systems that disagree
- Start with a defined collection rather than the entire range, so the operational load is survivable
How long does a first direct launch actually take?
For a wholesale brand with a real catalogue, plan in phases rather than in weeks. The storefront build is rarely the constraint. The constraint is product data and the operational decisions nobody has had to make before.
| Phase | What it covers | Where brands underestimate |
|---|---|---|
| Decisions | Pricing position, assortment, who owns service | Needs senior sign-off, not a project manager |
| Product data | Consumer descriptions, measurements, imagery | The single largest task, and it scales with SKU count |
| Build | Storefront, checkout, markets, B2B separation | Fastest part, usually blamed for delays caused elsewhere |
| Operations | Single-unit picking, packing, returns flow | Warehouse processes written for pallets, not parcels |
| Launch | Partner communication, soft launch, then marketing | Telling retail partners late, which turns a launch into a conflict |
The sequencing rule we apply: nothing gets built until the pricing decision is signed, and nothing gets marketed until a real order has been picked, packed, delivered and returned by someone inside the business.
What about brands that already have a shop nobody visits?
Many wholesale businesses technically have a direct storefront already, built years ago, quietly taking a handful of orders a month. That is a different project from a launch, and usually an easier one.
The work there is diagnostic rather than constructive: find out whether the problem is traffic, product data, pricing that undercuts nothing and attracts nobody, or an internal ownership vacuum where nobody is accountable for the channel. In our experience the last one is the most common and the least discussed. A storefront with no owner does not fail loudly, it simply never grows, and it stays open for years as evidence that direct "does not work for us".
What this says about the rest of the market
When a brand that has been wholesale-only since 1957 builds a direct flagship, the interesting signal is not about that brand. It is that the barrier has dropped far enough that heritage manufacturers, not just startups, can run a credible consumer channel. If your competitors have been wholesale-only for decades, assume at least one of them is having this conversation right now.
For the wider market data behind this shift, see our analysis of US and Canada ecommerce in 2026, where Shopify's business to business volume grew 76% year on year.
Thinking about going direct
Free review. Email hello@exactwhy.com with subject "Wholesale to DTC" and tell us what you make, how you sell it today, and whether your retail partners know you are considering this. We will tell you what your first phase should include and what to leave until you have evidence. We respond within 4 hours.
Prefer a form? Send it through the contact page instead. It reaches the same inbox.
The brands that make this work do not launch a website. They decide what their direct channel is for, tell their partners before the press finds out, and build the unglamorous operational half first.
Company facts verified against josephribkoff.com on 20 September 2026. Launch details from Shopify president Harley Finkelstein's public announcement. We have no commercial relationship with Joseph Ribkoff.
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