Tens of thousands of independent retailers in more than 15,000 cities, towns, and villages are now using Faire to stock their shops, five years after the online wholesale marketplace first launched in the UK.
Faire has also helped 1,600 shops open as part of its ‘Open with Faire’ initiative, and more than 70 brands in the UK alone have made more than $1M in wholesale revenue on the platform.
The UK has since become Faire’s largest market outside North America, with British retailers and brands connected to the platform’s community of more than 100,000 retailers and 50,000 brands outside of the US. Available across 32 countries worldwide, Faire is now Europe’s leading marketplace and is set to reach the same scale across Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
A quarter of all brands on the platform also use Faire to sell internationally, to an average of five countries each.
Faire has also launched ‘promoted listings’ in Europe this month, giving brands a new way to increase their visibility, reach more retailers, and grow their sales even further. This follows a successful rollout across the US and Canada last year where it is already used by 12,000 businesses.
Charlotte Broadbent, UK general manager of Faire, said: “Five years on from launching in the UK, we’re incredibly proud of the role Faire has played in supporting independent businesses to grow.
“The UK is now our largest market outside of the US, with shopkeepers from Shetland to the Isles of Scilly using Faire to build distinctive, successful retail offerings, while British brands are now exporting to retailers in the US, Canada and across Europe via our platform.
“As Faire has continued to expand internationally, so too have the retailers and brands we work with as they become more confident and global in how they buy and sell. We’re continuing to expand access to businesses around the world, to support shopkeepers to do what they love and to strengthen the unique character of their local communities.”
Over 800,000 new connections between brands and retailers have been forged and more than 20 million products purchased on Faire since it started expanding to the UK and Europe in 2021.
Retailers have also been using Faire to buy more frequently, spend more, and build longer-term relationships with their suppliers, with average annual spend per retailer up more than 150% since 2022. Meanwhile, the number of orders each brand receives has grown by more than 120%.
One company seeing this benefit is British drinks brand Living Things, which joined the platform in 2024.
Max Adorian, chief operating officer at Living Things, said: “As a drinks brand, summer is always a busy period for us, but last year Faire exceeded all expectations. It quickly became one of our top five wholesale channels, helping us reach independent retailers across the UK and internationally that we simply wouldn’t have accessed otherwise. We’ve seen that momentum continue.
“Through Faire, we’ve sold into the US and a number of European countries where we now have major retail distributors and national grocery listings.
“Faire has played an important role in building awareness of Living Things through influential independent stores. That support has been crucial in helping us succeed with national retailers. Without that foundation, you risk arriving on supermarket shelves as an unknown alien brand, with consumers far less willing to take a chance on a new product.”
Laura Collier is among the hundreds of new UK shopkeepers to have taken advantage of Faire’s Open with Faire scheme to launch her first shop, Fond in Lymm, Cheshire, in 2024. It helps new retailers get off the ground by providing access to upfront credit that reduces the financial risk of stocking a shop for the first time.
Laura said: “Committing to a five year lease on my first retail space was scary, especially at a time when so many high-street shops were closing around us.
“Open with Faire’s 60-day payment terms meant I could start buying products before I’d received other business funding and managing cashflow without this would have forced a difficult choice. Delay opening until just before Christmas and miss out on a lot of the crucial November and December trading period, or open quickly but with half-empty shelves and a bland decor which would have sent completely the wrong message.
“I only had one shot at launching Fond the way I’d always imagined it and this meant I didn’t have to compromise my vision. Faire has also connected me with independent brands I wouldn’t have found otherwise, and that have become a really important part of what Fond is.
“This includes Studio Boketto, whose joyful, modern greeting card and wrapping paper designs align perfectly with our style, and Happy Knits, which I found by searching specifically for UK-made socks.
“I started with a small selection of Happy Knits’ cashmere blend socks but they became my top selling individual item in the run up to Christmas last year and probably have the highest rate of repeat buyers of anything I stock.”
