The Power of Multichannel Retailing

Key takeaways

• Multichannel retailing increases your audience and visibility across platforms.
• Multichannel targets diverse platforms, while omnichannel ensures a seamless experience.
• More channels lead to more sales opportunities, from impulse buys to repeat customers.
• Uniform branding and service across channels build trust and improve experience.
• “Innovate or die” — why you need to automate in a multichannel retailing world.

To thrive in e-commerce, businesses must adapt to the growing demand for shopping across multiple platforms. Multichannel retailing offers a solution by allowing businesses to sell on various channels such as websites, marketplaces, social media, and physical stores. This approach helps expand your audience, increase sales opportunities, and strengthen your brand presence. In this article, we’ll explore the advantages of multichannel retailing and provide actionable tips on how to optimize your strategy across different platforms.

What is multichannel retailing and why does it matter?

In today’s competitive e-commerce landscape, simply selling on one platform is no longer enough. Consumers now expect businesses to be present where they shop, whether it’s online, in-store, or on social media. This is where multichannel retailing comes into play.

Multichannel retailing is the strategy of selling products through multiple platforms, such as your own website, online marketplaces like Amazon or eBay, social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook, and brick-and-mortar stores that still dominate the marketplace — physical storefront accounted for for approximately 80.4% of global retail sales, totaling around $24.6 trillion in 2024. By leveraging multiple sales channels, businesses can connect with a broader audience and meet customers where they are, ultimately boosting sales and brand visibility.

As you now know what multichannel retailing is and why it matters, let’s dive into how it compares to omnichannel retailing. Both use multiple platforms, but the way they connect with customers is key. Curious about the differences? Let’s take a closer look!

Multichannel vs. omnichannel: Key differences you should know

So, do you know how multichannel retailing differs from omnichannel retailing? While both involve using multiple platforms, omnichannel retailing focuses on creating a seamless and interconnected customer experience across all channels. Multichannel retailing, on the other hand, emphasizes reaching customers through diverse channels without necessarily integrating them.

TikTok Shop: The future of omnichannel retailing

While there are many established channels available to sell your merch these days, TikTok Shop has quickly emerged as one of the hottest, particularly if you’re trying to target Gen Z and Millennial shoppers. Launched in 2023, TikTok Shop allows businesses to directly sell products through shoppable posts and videos, creating a new revenue stream and bridging the gap between brand discovery and purchase. It's an example of new ways to expand reach, increase brand awareness, and provide a more integrated customer experience.

Selling on TikTok Shop can be a worthwhile endeavor, particularly for businesses with visually appealing and trending products that can leverage the platform's massive user base and engaging content format. The in-app shopping experience and low referral fees can lead to increased sales and brand visibility with viral content that allows products to reach massive audiences organically, without the need for costly ads.

Why multichannel retailing is a game-changer for e-commerce businesses

Adopting a multichannel retailing strategy can transform the way your business grows and thrives. Here are the key benefits of this approach:

1. Expanding your customer reach

As we previously mentioned, by selling on multiple platforms—such as marketplaces, social media, and your own website — you can reach a broader audience. This ensures your products are visible wherever your customers prefer to shop.

2. Increasing sales opportunities across platforms

More channels mean more chances to sell. Whether it's impulse buys on Instagram or repeat customers on your website, each platform offers unique ways to drive revenue.

3. Improving resilience to market changes

Relying on a single channel is risky. Multichannel retailing diversifies your income streams, helping your business adapt to shifts in consumer behavior or disruptions like marketplace policy changes.

The impact on growth and profitability

Multichannel retailing doesn’t just boost visibility — it drives consistent growth and long-term profitability. By meeting your customers where they are, you build trust, increase sales, and secure a competitive edge.

Now that we’ve seen why multichannel retailing is essential, let’s dive into how to prioritize the right sales channels for your business.

The best sales channels to prioritize for multichannel success

Choosing the right sales channels is key to a successful multichannel strategy. Here’s a quick guide:

1. Your own website: Your website is the core of your business, offering full control over the customer experience and sales.
2. Marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy): Depending on your business, platforms like these provide a broad reach and access to a large audience, but with less control over branding.
3. Social media (Instagram, Facebook): Social commerce platforms are great for targeting mobile-savvy, younger consumers and enabling in-app purchases.
4. Temporary retail: Pop-up events offer an additional way to engage customers and facilitate in-person shopping.

Choose sales channels based on where your target customers are most active and how they prefer to shop. Prioritize platforms that align with your products and audience for optimal success.

Now that you know which sales channels to prioritize, the next step is ensuring a seamless and consistent brand experience across all of them. Maintaining uniformity in branding and customer service is key to building trust and delivering a smooth experience, no matter where your customers engage with your brand. Here’s how to achieve that consistency.

How to maintain consistent branding and customer experience across channels

Consistency in branding and customer experience is crucial for building trust and recognition. Here’s how to achieve it:

1. Align product information and pricing: Ensure that product descriptions, prices, and availability are uniform across all platforms to avoid confusion and customer dissatisfaction.
2. Offer consistent customer service policies: Provide the same level of support across all channels. This includes clear return policies, responsive customer service, and easy communication options.
3. Keep visual branding cohesive: Use the same logo, color scheme, and tone of voice across all touchpoints to create a seamless and recognizable brand experience.

By maintaining consistency, you build trust with customers and create a smoother journey, no matter where they interact with your brand.

When understanding the importance of maintaining consistency across all channels, it’s time to explore the tools that can help you streamline and optimize your multichannel strategy. With the right technologies in place, you can automate processes, track performance, and enhance the customer experience — making your multichannel retailing efforts even more effective.

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How online retails channels connect to your warehouse

Online storefronts like Amazon, TikTok Shop, eBay, and Etsy don’t directly “connect” to a warehouse on their own. Instead, they rely on digital integration layers — typically involving order management systems (OMS), warehouse management systems (WMS), and middleware platforms — to bridge the gap between customer orders and warehouse fulfillment.

How the Integration Works

API-Driven Communication: Each platform offers its own set of APIs or standardized data feeds for orders and inventory updates. For example, Amazon uses APIs such as Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS) (or its newer SP-API) to feed order information into systems that can then update your warehouse management platform. Similarly, eBay and Etsy provide APIs that allow sellers to export order data, update inventory, and report shipment statuses automatically. These APIs ensure that when an order is placed, the order data is passed reliably and in near real time from the platform to the warehousing system.

Middleware and Integration Platforms: Given that each online storefront might format order data differently, many businesses use third-party integration solutions or middleware (such as LitCommerce or multichannel synchronization tools like FairAPI) to centralize and normalize the data coming from channels like Amazon, TikTok Shop, eBay, and Etsy. These platforms act as a hub that gathers, processes, and then routes the information to your warehouse management system. This centralized approach not only simplifies the integration process but also helps maintain consistent inventory levels, prevents overselling, and automates order fulfillment across all channels.

Order and Inventory Management Systems: Once the middleware has aggregated the data, it typically passes the information to an OMS. The OMS is responsible for consolidating orders from different storefronts and then communicating with the Warehouse Management System (WMS). The WMS takes over the fulfillment process—directing picking, packing, and shipping. This back-end system also sends data back to the storefronts, updating order statuses and inventory levels in real time so that customers see accurate information. The continual data exchange between the OMS and WMS ensures that all channels remain in sync with the actual stock, reducing the risk of overselling or inventory discrepancies.
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Channel-Specific Considerations

Amazon: Beyond selling through your own systems, many sellers also use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) where the process is somewhat integrated, but even for non-FBA arrangements, Amazon’s APIs allow for order data to be directly pulled into your OMS/WMS. This facilitates rapid order processing and shipping feedback within your integrated system.

TikTok Shop: As a relatively new yet rapidly growing channel, TikTok Shop also provides integration options via its dedicated API. Sellers often route TikTok orders through multi-channel management software that consolidates data from all online storefronts, helping manage fulfillment in a modern warehouse environment.

eBay and Etsy: Both platforms have robust API infrastructures that let you automatically synchronize orders and inventory. Middleware solutions help streamline the diverse order formats and update your central warehouse system in real time, ensuring the accuracy of listings and quick fulfillment.

In summary, for businesses managing multiple online storefronts, it’s common to adopt a layered integration strategy: APIs connect individual storefronts to a central middleware/OMS, which in turn communicates with the WMS for order fulfillment.

This approach supports real-time updates and inventory management across all platforms, allowing for scalable and efficient operations that meet customers’ expectations in a competitive market.

How AutoStore can help your multichannel retailing business

The constant rise of new shopping platforms and trends is contributing to the explosive growth of e-commerce revenues, which some project to grow 8.02% annually over the next four years to reach $5.89 trillion and 3.6 billion users.

If you want to stay competitive, you need to understand and embrace the idea that people are shopping everywhere these days, 24/7/365. But to tap into that potential, you need to be able to keep up with higher volumes and customer demands for fast and flawless fulfillment. (And don't forget returns, which totaled about $890 million in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation).

AutoStore is proven to enhance you ability to keep pace across multiple retailing channels by optimizing inventory management, speeding up order fulfillment, and making it easy to scale when demands change. Here's how:

• Streamlined inventory management: AutoStore centralizes inventory, ensuring accuracy across all sales channels and enabling quick dispatch.
• Faster order fulfillment: With accelerated picking and packing, the solutions ensure faster processing, reducing delays and improving customer satisfaction.
• Scalable solutions: AutoStore adapts as your business grows, accommodating new channels or regions without compromising service quality.
• Cost efficiency: By minimizing errors and optimizing space, AutoStore reduces overhead costs, boosting profitability.
• Interoperability: AutoStore can be integrated with almost any e-commerce order fulfillment software, creating a seamless fulfillment process that reduces errors, improves product traceability, and eliminates stockouts.  

As PUMA discovered in North America, automation is the only way to survive in this environment. The AutoStore system revolutionized PUMA’s logistics by transforming how they handle growing e-commerce demand. Today, their order turnaround times in the United States are right up there with Amazon, strengthening PUMA's brand recognition and revenues for the world's third-largest sports retailer.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, adopting a multichannel retailing strategy can significantly enhance your business’s reach, sales, and resilience. By strategically utilizing various platforms, maintaining consistent branding, and leveraging the right tools, you can create a seamless and efficient experience for your customers. But you need to be ready. Without a fully automated fulfillment system and operations, you could be left in the dust. Ready to take your multichannel strategy to the next level? Start implementing these insights today and see how your business can thrive across multiple channels!

FAQ

What is multichannel retailing?

Multichannel retailing is the strategy of selling products through multiple platforms like websites, marketplaces, and social media to reach a wider audience.

What is an example of a multichannel retailer?

An example of a multichannel retailer is Nike, which sells through its website, physical stores, and platforms like Amazon.

What is the difference between omnichannel and multichannel retailing?

Multichannel focuses on using separate channels independently, while omnichannel integrates all channels for a seamless customer experience.

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