Appliances up, clothing down. The wholesaler still buys as if it were last July
On 25 August 2026 Statistics Poland reported that July retail sales rose 3.9 per cent year on year, slower than in June. Online took 8.9 per cent of turnover. A wholesaler and a local shop lose margin when stock, the B2B price list and the basket live in three files.
25 August 2026. Statistics Poland described the domestic market for July. Retail sales in constant prices were 3.9 per cent higher than a year earlier. In June the same indicator rose by 6.2 per cent; in July 2025 it rose by 4.8 per cent.
After seasonal adjustment, turnover fell by 0.3 per cent against June and rose by 4.3 per cent year on year. From January to July, sales were up 3.7 per cent.
Bankier.pl noted that the constant-price reading came in below the economists’ consensus (4.2 per cent). In July, 8.9 per cent of total retail sales went through the internet, 0.3 percentage points more than a year earlier. The value of e-commerce in current prices was 9 per cent higher than in July 2025.
For a wholesaler and a local shop with a warehouse, these releases do not end on a chart. Furniture, consumer electronics and household appliances rose; clothing and footwear fell; almost one in four zloty of textiles already leaves a basket, not a hanger. A firm that orders “as always in July” is holding last season’s mix on the rack.
What Statistics Poland counted by product group
The office split July into groups. In constant prices, against July 2025, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and orthopaedic equipment rose fastest (10.8 per cent), followed by the “other” category (9.2 per cent). Furniture, consumer electronics and appliances were up 8.8 per cent; vehicles, motorcycles and parts 8.1 per cent. Food, drinks and tobacco — the largest slice of retail — rose by only 1.5 per cent.
The falls are equally firm. Textiles, clothing and footwear: down 1.7 per cent. Newspapers, books and other sales in specialised shops: down 1.2 per cent. Solid, liquid and gaseous fuels: down 0.2 per cent. Statistics Poland noted that fuels recorded a decline for the first time in more than a year.
A year earlier, July looked different. In July 2025 clothing and footwear rose by 14.7 per cent, and furniture, consumer electronics and appliances by 15.3 per cent. Anyone who in 2026 placed the same purchase order as twelve months before received the mix from the previous wave, not from this one.
The online share in selected groups shows where that demand is fulfilled, not only whether it exists. In textiles, clothing and footwear, 24.8 per cent of sales went through the web (23.4 per cent a year earlier). In newspapers and books, 21.6 per cent (19.6). In furniture, consumer electronics and appliances, 19.9 per cent (17.5). In pharmaceuticals and cosmetics the online share rose from 6.4 to 8.0 per cent.
Wholesale behaved differently from retail. Wholesale sales in trading enterprises were 12.7 per cent higher in July than a year earlier; in wholesale enterprises themselves, 8.8 per cent. A year before, those rates were 1.8 and 2.4 per cent. Among groups with a large share, Statistics Poland singled out ICT tools, machinery and equipment: up 23.5 per cent after a 3.4 per cent fall the year before. Food in wholesale: up 5.1 per cent. Cosmetics and pharmaceutical products in wholesale: down 0.8 per cent, after a 13.5 per cent rise in July 2025.
From January to July, wholesale sales in trading enterprises rose by 11.0 per cent, and in wholesalers by 7.2 per cent. Retail over the same period: 3.7 per cent in constant prices. Wholesale is therefore pulling orders from shops and firms, while retail shows which shelves at the end customer actually move.
An example: a household-appliance wholesaler and several dozen shops
Imagine a regional wholesaler of small appliances and household goods. Several dozen regular B2B shops, its own online shop with click-and-collect and parcel delivery, one warehouse by the hall. A handful of people pick orders. The office is three or four people. That is a typical firm living off stock turns, not off a Statistics Poland chart.
July in this story looks like this. Partner shops ring for vacuum cleaners, kettles and small appliances, because those lines are moving for them too — in line with what the office later showed for furniture, electronics and appliances. At the same time the online shop collects baskets in the evening and overnight. In the morning the warehouse picks pallets for regular customers first, because “they pay on invoice and take volume”. Internet parcels wait until the afternoon.
By the afternoon it turns out that three web customers ordered a model that went on a pallet to a high-street shop in the morning. The shop panel still shows “in stock”, because nobody deducted it at issue. The office cancels shipments or promises “in a few days”. The regular B2B customer received the goods the e-shop no longer has. Basket margin is gone; the complaint remains.
In this specific situation one thing helps: a stock reservation at the moment of order, shared by the online shop and B2B issue. The warehouse sees what is free, what is reserved and for whom. The same figure sits on the floor and in the shop.
A supplier order copied from last July
In many wholesalers, summer replenishment is built from memory and from a “July 2025” spreadsheet. That July was strong in clothing and in appliances. This year’s July pulled those two groups apart. Anyone who holds both textiles and equipment saw in the 25 August figures what the rack had been saying for weeks: some cartons move, others become furniture.
The problem is not that the office “missed” a few tenths of a point. It is that the firm has no sales by SKU and channel in time to correct the next delivery. The goods-in sheet says how much arrived. The till or the accounts package says how much left in money. Nobody lines up which SKU went through B2B, which through the own shop, and which has sat since May.
With a few hundred lines, a spreadsheet still works if one person owns it and nobody sells off-book. With several thousand SKUs and two channels, the sheet starts lying the moment a warehouse worker moves a carton and the office does not know. Warehouse stock in a wholesaler has to be a document movement — receipt, reservation, issue, return — not a Friday typing session after a count.
What helps here is an issues register by SKU and order source. The report need not be pretty. After two weeks of July it should show that kettles leave the basket, while the bedding set that moved on pallets in 2025 is stuck on the top shelf in 2026. The next supplier order can then be cut or shifted before the purchase invoice freezes cash.
A basket at night, picking in the morning
Statistics Poland reported that in furniture, consumer electronics and appliances almost one in five zloty of sales already goes online. In clothing — almost one in four, even as volume fell. A local shop that “also has Allegro or its own site” is not adding a channel. It is adding a picking queue that competes with the B2B pallet for the same carton.
On the warehouse floor it looks like this. Web orders arrive after the hall closes. In the morning someone prints a list or copies it from email into a notebook. The picker walks the aisles with a sheet. If the same SKU is on two orders and on a shop pallet, the first person to the rack wins. The second customer gets “out of stock”, even though the shop still showed green at dawn.
An online shop with collection and delivery makes sense when the basket deducts stock at once and raises a pick job with a location. Not when the site is a calling card and someone corrects quantities by hand in the afternoon. The difference shows up in complaints: a customer who paid in the evening will not accept that a pallet left in the morning for someone else.
For a small e-shop with a few dozen products, a ready-made platform linked to the sales program is enough. The snag starts when the same SKU must go to a parcel locker, to click-and-collect and onto a wholesale pallet, and picking priority depends on a promised slot, not on who shouts louder on the floor.
Then an issue queue with priority and a reservation on the order saves a call to the customer. The picker gets a list: first what the courier takes at ten, then tomorrow’s pallet. The office does not assemble the day from memory.
A B2B price list that lives in the inbox
A wholesaler rarely has one price list. A regular shop has a turnover discount, a new customer pays closer to retail, someone received an “opening a point” exception two years ago and nobody has taken it off. Those figures live in email, in a salesperson’s note and in the owner’s head. The warehouse issues goods. The invoice is raised later, often by hand, at a different price from the one the customer heard.
With wholesale enterprises up 8.8 per cent, the office receives more orders, not more time to check whether the price from the call matches the list. An error of a few per cent on a line, repeated for a month, eats what Statistics Poland reports as growth. The partner shop feels it too: one invoice at one price, the next at another, and it starts ringing a competitor.
A B2B panel for a wholesaler with a customer-specific price list on the client’s account closes that gap in one place. The shop logs in, sees its prices and current stock, and places an order without a phone call. The office does not retype an email into an invoice. The salesperson does not promise a discount the system does not know.
If there are a dozen customers and they all buy from one list, a price file in the sales program and a PDF by email will do. A panel starts to pay when price groups, credit limits and order history appear — the history nobody wants to hunt through in threads. That account is what the shop orders from when the warehouse is busy with a pallet.
The shop still orders the old way, even as wholesale grows
July wholesale growth was clearly stronger than retail. Shops and firms added stock. In ICT tools, machinery and equipment, Statistics Poland counted plus 23.5 per cent. That means more lines on the invoice and more mistakes when they are retyped by hand.
A typical jam looks like this. The shop sends a list by email or a photo of a scrap of paper. The wholesaler’s office types it into the program. Some codes are old, some use the customer’s own labels. The warehouse picks “more or less that”. On site it turns out the wattage is wrong, the colour is wrong, or a case went out instead of a single unit. The return travels back. For two days the spreadsheet stock is a lie.
An order portal with SKU search, a minimum quantity and a block on lines that are not in stock cuts that chain. The customer cannot order what is not there. The wholesaler does not promise a delivery from memory. If the shop still prefers the phone, the order after the call should land in the same queue as the internet basket. Otherwise the warehouse has two truths.
Credit limits and overdue invoices belong to this thread as well. When wholesale turnover rises, so does the temptation to release goods “and sort the money later”. Without a payment status on the order, picking goes ahead and cash stays with the customer. The decision is taken on the floor — issue or wait — not when the month is being closed.
A return that never reaches the shelf
The larger the online share, the more parcels come back. In clothing, where the web already accounts for 24.8 per cent of sales, a return is part of the model, not an exception. In appliances, an opened box, the wrong model or a unit after a failed installation comes back. In wholesale, a shop returns a pallet because the order was wrong.
In many warehouses the return lands on a table or in a “to check” corner. The system still says the goods are gone — or the opposite: someone added them before the carton was opened. The next customer orders “what came back”. The picker cannot find the unit, or finds it with a blister already open. One complaint multiplies into another.
A goods-in return document with a decision — back to stock, to repair, to scrap — closes that loop. Until the carton is labelled, the number on the screen is a wish. With small appliances and a manufacturer’s warranty a serial number is added. Without it, the service desk and the customer bounce between the wholesaler and the shop.
The same applies to quality complaints. A warehouse photo, an issue-document number and an SKU on one card shorten the dispute. They do not replace a fault assessment. They record which unit left, when and to whom. As the number of wholesale issues rises, without that the office reconstructs the story from email.
Three programs and three different stock figures
A common set-up in such a firm is easy to describe and hard on a Monday. A sales program or Subiekt / Optima holds invoices. The online shop holds baskets. A spreadsheet or a notebook holds B2B orders and “quick” stock. The courier still has its own plug-in. None of these is lying in bad faith. Each knows only its slice of the day.
In the morning the shop shows twelve units. The warehouse issued eight on a pallet, but the invoice will go out in the afternoon. In the sheet someone yesterday typed a receipt that has not yet been unloaded. The B2B customer was quoted a price from a June email. Accounts raise a document from the master list. After month-end nobody can say which figure was true on Tuesday at ten.
Integration need not mean replacing everything. Often it is enough that an order — from the basket, from the B2B panel or typed after a call — enters one issue queue, and stock falls at that moment. The invoice is born from the same document, not from a separate retyping. KSeF and the accounts package stay where they are; the shop does not replace them.
As the hall gains issues, a simple split of work also helps. The warehouse sees the pack list. The office sees what has left and what is waiting for an invoice. The salesperson sees what a regular customer is short of. Without that, the Sunday shop-and-warehouse rota we described with the Sunday trading ban becomes a side issue: even on an ordinary Tuesday nobody knows who is supposed to pick which order.
A spreadsheet, a ready-made shop or a panel of your own
Not every wholesaler needs a new application. A few dozen SKUs, a handful of regular buyers and one sales channel can live in a spreadsheet if someone closes it every day and nothing is sold outside it. The cost of a mistake is then small, and putting in a program would cost more than the loss.
A ready-made SaaS shop and an order integrator (the sort of platform that ties together Allegro, an own site and a courier) are enough when the range is standard, there is one price list, and the warehouse does not split goods into B2B reservations. Then the firm pays a subscription and teaches people the tool’s process, not the other way round.
A panel of one’s own starts to make sense when individual prices, a credit limit, stock reservation between channels, returns with a decision and an accounts package nobody wants to touch all live at once. No off-the-shelf shop will arrange that around a particular wholesaler without add-ons and exceptions. The exceptions are then handled by the office by hand — and the firm is back where it started.
21 August 2026. A Statistics Poland business-tendency survey, summarised by Bankier.pl from PAP, showed that 64.6 per cent of wholesale firms plan to keep this year’s investment at the 2025 level. That was the highest “no change” share among the sectors quoted. In retail it was 63.0 per cent. The largest barrier remains high costs: 50.3 per cent of retail firms named it, and more than 40 per cent in the other sectors surveyed.
A vast hall and a full WMS often fall off the list when costs are the main barrier. A narrower step — shared stock, a price list on the customer’s account, an issue queue — has a better chance of adding up, because it touches a process that already eats margin rather than “growth just in case”.
The question of whether to take a ready-made product or have software written to order can be settled on the path of a single order. Where it arrives, who reserves stock, who picks, where the price comes from, when the invoice is born, what happens to a return. If that path has three manual retypings, a spreadsheet will not do. If it has one, what the firm already has may be enough.
GESOFT builds applications around a firm’s process, not around a brochure list of modules. In the subject of this article the usual job is to tie together three things that, in Statistics Poland’s July figures, pulled apart at the same time: stock, price and sales channel.
For a wholesaler that most often means a panel in which a partner shop sees its own price list and places an order, the warehouse receives an issue queue with a reservation, and the online shop deducts the same stock. The invoice comes from the issue document. A return comes back as a document, not as a carton on a table. The accounts package stays; it is connected to, rather than thrown out.
Not every conversation ends with a new system. Sometimes it is enough to integrate the shop with what already sits on the server, or to tidy price lists without touching the warehouse. Sometimes the process is tangled enough that it is cheaper to describe it and write a narrow panel than to bolt more plug-ins onto three programs.
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