Wholesale & Distribution Business Valuation Benchmarks

Business owners and prospective buyers rely on a diverse set of financial benchmarks to assess the value of a business. We have compiled data from current BizBuySell listings and sold businesses to provide insight into the business-for-sale market and important benchmarks for pricing and evaluating wholesale and distribution businesses relative to industry standards.

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Highlights of Wholesale & Distribution Businesses Sold on BizBuySell

Wholesale and distribution businesses listed and sold on BizBuySell engage in the procurement, storage, and distribution of goods to retailers who then go on to sell to the final consumer. These businesses are a crucial part of the supply chain, importing goods from other countries or sourcing them domestically in large volumes, for distribution to brick-and-mortar storefronts or online retailers.

Wholesale & Distribution Business Transaction Trends

The median sale price of wholesale and distribution businesses listed and sold on BizBuySell had grown every year since 2020, until a drop in 2025. In 2023, the median sale price nearly doubled as many larger wholesalers and distributors entered the market. In 2025, median sale price fell 41%, indicating a shift in the market toward smaller niche wholesalers and distributors.

In the five years from 2021 through 2025, overall median sale price remains up 24%.

Wholesale & Distribution Business Valuation Multiples

Valuation, or pricing, multiples are financial tools that allow for comparisons between businesses that have different levels of revenue and earnings. They represent the sales price of a business relative to its financial performance, and given enough individual business sales data, they represent what the market is willing to pay for a business given its revenue and earnings.

Valuation Trends

Business values and associated multiples fluctuate over time, influenced by a variety of macroeconomic factors such as interest rates, inflation, consumer spending, and overall economic growth.

Valuation multiples of wholesale and distributor businesses were fairly consistent until 2024 when the average earnings multiple rose 10%. That figure came back down to expected levels in 2025.

Earnings Multiples

Earnings multiples represent the value of a business relative to its owner’s discretionary earnings or "cash flow". Arguably the most important valuation metric - as seller's discretionary earnings will often dictate how much a buyer is able to borrow to finance the business acquisition - business valuations tend to hinge on the earnings multiple.

Revenue Multiples

Revenue multiples represent the value of a business relative to its overall sales or revenue. In conjunction with an earnings analysis, revenue multiples are commonly used to value a business based on its overall sales.

How to Interpret These Multiples

Recent Listings vs. Sold Businesses

We calculate and provide valuation multiples from two sources: Current and recent listings of wholesale and distribution businesses for sale, and our database of comparable businesses sold on BizBuySell. Multiples based on listing data are generally higher due to owners setting asking prices above what their businesses might typically sell for. This occurs either intentionally as a negotiation strategy, or incidentally due to business owners’ common tendency to overvalue their own businesses.

Multiples based on comparable businesses - "comps" in business broker parlance - are much more useful as they represent the prices at which businesses ultimately get sold. Business brokers and valuation professionals will always turn to local comps when pricing businesses for sale or evaluating businesses for acquisition. We provide both sets of data at the national level to offer general context. Local business sale comps by sales class suitable for pricing and negotiations are available in BizBuySell's Business Valuation Report.

Quartiles, Median, and Average

No two businesses are identical, and as such, valuation multiples exist in a range. We have carved out four common values within this range: Lower quartile represents the value under which the lowest 25% of valuation multiples fell. Upper quartile represents the value above which the highest 25% of multiples fell. Median is the middle of the range, and average is the mean of the set. Mean is almost always higher than the median, driven by a minority of high volume, high value businesses sold at multiples above the upper quartile.

Businesses with consistent financial performance, above average revenue and earnings, demonstrable growth potential, low owner involvement, unique competitive advantages, and a seller willing to finance will command a multiple at or above the upper quartile. Lower volume businesses with thin profit margins, full-time owner involvement, and many direct competitors will trade at or below the lower quartile. Most businesses will fall somewhere in the middle.

Based on this data, half of wholesale and distribution businesses are valued between 2.00 and 3.44 times their annual seller discretionary earnings, with 25% of larger businesses trading above this range, and 25% of smaller, less desirable ones trading below.

Financial Benchmarks

To determine how a business compares in terms of revenue and earnings relative to industry peers, it’s necessary to have some insight into industry standards. "Benchmarking" describes the practice of comparing a business’s financial performance to typical industry standards to determine where a business falls relative to other businesses in the same industry. These benchmarks can help guide owners and investors towards appropriate valuation multiples from the range above.

To that end, we have aggregated financial ranges useful for comparing an individual wholesaler and distributor to its peers in the market.

Wholesale & Distribution Business Revenue and Earnings Trends

Both reported revenue and earnings of wholesale and distribution businesses listed and sold on BizBuySell has increased around 30% from 2021 through 2025, with a surge in 2023 and 2024 as larger businesses sold.

2025 saw a return to a more sustainable revenue growth trend, down 27% from 2024, but up 15% from 2022 and 32% from 2021.

Earnings Ranges

Discretionary earnings (used interchangeably with the terms "cash flow" and seller's discretionary earnings or SDE) is often the crux of business valuations, so it is important to benchmark it relative to other businesses traded on the market. Below you will find discretionary earnings ranges of wholesalers and distributors sold over the past five years, as well as recent for sale listings.

Revenue Ranges

Sales volume plays a large role in business valuation, as it measures the size of the potential income opportunity for new ownership. It's not uncommon for buyers to select an earnings multiple range based on overall revenue. The table below includes revenue ranges of wholesale and distribution businesses sold over the past five years, as well as recent for sale listings.

How Revenue and Earnings Level Affects Business Values

Clearly higher levels of earnings lead to higher valuations, even given the same multiple. However, valuation multiples also tend to rise with business sales volume. Successful, growing wholesale and distribution businesses that consistently generate higher revenue (and maintain reasonable profit margins) tend to sell for earnings multiples on the higher end. So, a wholesaler consistently generating annual sales of $3MM may sell for an earnings multiple around 3.4, while a smaller distributor with sales below $500k may sell for an earnings multiple closer to 2.

This tendency for higher sales volumes to fetch higher valuation multiples is largely driven by the economics of business acquisition financing. Higher volume businesses give buyers more cushion to cover debt service obligations and still have enough left over to pay the new owner a reasonable income.

Sector Comparisons

For a more complete understanding of the market and valuation standards, consider comparisons of wholesale and distribution categories with retail when benchmarking these businesses. The chart and table below include key metrics from sales of wholesale and distribution businesses as well as non-restaurant retail businesses on BizBuySell between 2021 and 2025.

The comparison of various wholesale and distribution categories and non-restaurant retail emphasizes the impact of revenue volume on valuation. In these broad categories, the main driver of value is size, and the bigger the better. All other things being equal, business owners who are able to scale up sales will enjoy a higher valuation multiple at the time of sale.

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