Faire
Twenty years of retail tech skipped the wholesale leg. Faire was built for it and still leads with a slogan.
The buried story
Before Faire, Max Rhodes was a product manager at Square. On the side, he was the US distributor for a New Zealand umbrella company.
That side business put him on the selling end of wholesale. He sent cold emails to shop owners who never replied. He paid for trade shows that produced a handful of contacts. He watched independent retailers carry all the inventory risk on anything new.
His founding insight came straight out of that: retail has three legs. Brands make products, retailers sell them, consumers buy them. Twenty years of innovation went to the consumer leg. "People basically just ignored the third leg, the wholesale leg."
That line is the most precise argument in B2B wholesale. Faire's brand doesn't lead with it.
Where Faire stands
Rhodes and three Square colleagues founded Faire in 2017. When it added net 60 terms and free returns that year, monthly sales jumped from $100,000 to $1 million in three months.
By 2025 it expected about $3 billion in sales through the platform and $500 million in annualized revenue. Its valuation peaked at $12.4 billion in 2022 and was later reset to $5.2 billion.
The brand line: "The future is local."
Why the line falls short
"The future is local" points the right way. It's a slogan, though, and it doesn't say what Faire built or why nobody built it before.
The three-leg argument does both. It names a twenty-year gap in where the money went, and it explains why a shop in Memphis still buys the way shops bought in the 1980s.
Friction (8.0). Three clear layers: finding products, carrying inventory risk, and paying up front. Net 60 and free returns answered all three, and the sales jump proved the point.
Lived Stake (7.5). Rhodes lived wholesale as a small brand and knew small-business credit from Square Capital. It was a side business, though, so his livelihood didn't depend on it.
Distinctive Qualification (8.5). Eight years of sell-through data from hundreds of thousands of retailers, plus credit models that underwrite their inventory. The valuation reset still needs a story.
Real Aspiration (7.0). Rhodes has described the local retail comeback in interviews. The brand hasn't turned that picture into its main promise.
The story Faire should tell
Twenty years of commerce technology went to the consumer and to direct-to-consumer brands. The stores that sell to communities got almost nothing. We built Faire so an independent retailer buys with the same data and the same terms as any chain buyer.
Three moves to raise the score
1. Make the three-leg argument the brand's front door. Rhodes should publish one conviction piece that traces where retail tech money went and lands on the wholesale gap. Friction: 8.0 to 8.5.
2. Lead with the data. Tell retailers they buy with the sell-through record of every store like theirs. No trade show can offer that. An annual State of Independent Retail report from Faire's own data would prove it. Distinctive Qualification: 8.5 to 9.0.
3. Finish the aspiration. Describe what local retail looks like in 2035 if Faire wins, with shop owners holding the same tools as a Nordstrom buyer. Real Aspiration: 7.0 to 8.5.
If all three land, Faire moves from 7.8 to about 8.4.
