Buying well is only half the job. Once you have got a container or a pallet of fast-moving FMCG landed in the UK, the next question is where you actually sell it on. For years the answer was simple: a shop counter, a car boot pitch, maybe an eBay listing if you had time to photograph everything. In 2026 the choice is much wider, and much more confusing, with half a dozen credible routes to market each carrying its own fees, rules and buyer expectations.

This guide walks through the main channels UK wholesale buyers and resellers are using this year: Amazon, eBay, OnBuy, TikTok Shop, and a few others worth knowing about. For each one we cover roughly what it costs to sell there, who tends to do well on it, and how it fits alongside a physical shop or a trade account with a wholesaler. The right answer for most retailers is not "pick one" but "build a sensible mix", and we will explain why.

Whichever channels you choose, the products underneath them matter more than the platform. A well-ranged, fast-turning selection will outperform a scattergun approach on any marketplace, so treat this as a companion piece to good buying, not a replacement for it.

Amazon: reach and complexity in equal measure

Amazon remains the default starting point for many resellers because of sheer buyer volume, but it is also the channel with the most moving parts. Sellers choose between Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), where Amazon stores, picks, packs and ships your stock from its own warehouses, and Fulfilment by Merchant (FBM), where you handle logistics yourself. FBA tends to suit lines with steady, predictable demand and decent margin headroom, since referral fees, storage charges and fulfilment fees all come off the top before you see a penny.

Referral fees vary by category, typically landing somewhere between 5% and 15% of the sale price depending on what you are selling, with further changes to both referral and fulfilment fee schedules taking effect through 2026. Low-price FBA tiers have been extended to cover more items at the lower end of the price scale, which is good news for smaller-ticket FMCG such as toiletries and household basics, but a fuel and logistics surcharge on fulfilment fees has also been introduced this year, so it pays to run the numbers on a specific SKU before committing volume to it. Amazon's own fee calculator in Seller Central is worth using product by product rather than relying on rough percentages.

Where Amazon works well for wholesale buyers is on branded, recognisable stock, health and beauty, household names, anything a shopper might search for by name. Own-label and less well-known lines can struggle to get found without paid advertising, which adds another cost layer. If you are stocking branded ranges such as Yankee or Febreze alongside our own best-selling lines, Amazon can be a genuinely strong channel; for more niche or own-brand stock, it is worth testing carefully before scaling up.

eBay: still relevant, and cheaper for private sellers

eBay has changed shape considerably. Private sellers in the UK (excluding motors) currently pay no final value fees at all, which has brought a wave of casual resellers back to the platform. Business sellers still pay a final value fee that varies by category, generally in the 6.9% to 14.9% range, plus a small per-order fee and a regulatory operating fee, and these rates have been adjusted upwards in several categories through 2026, so it is worth checking the current rate card for your specific product type rather than assuming last year's numbers still apply.

eBay's strength for FMCG resellers is its searchability for specific items and its established buyer trust for multipacks, job lots and bulk listings, formats that suit wholesale-sourced stock particularly well. It is also a sensible place to move clearance or short-dated stock that would not justify Amazon's fee structure. Many of our trade customers use eBay as a secondary channel alongside a shop or another marketplace, rather than as their main outlet, and that is generally the right instinct: it is a good testing ground for new lines before you commit real shelf space or ad spend to them.

OnBuy: a lower-cost, UK-based alternative

OnBuy is smaller than Amazon or eBay but has built a loyal following among UK sellers precisely because it does not compete with them. Unlike Amazon, which also sells its own and third-party stock in the same categories as its marketplace sellers, OnBuy does not sell products directly, so there is no risk of the platform undercutting your listing.

Fees are generally lower too, with category commissions typically sitting in the 5% to 9% range, below Amazon's comparable rates, and account packages run on simple monthly subscriptions with no long-term tie-in. There is no separate listing fee, and sellers can list across multiple international storefronts at no extra cost. Volumes on OnBuy are lower than on the two giants, so it rarely makes sense as a sole channel, but as a low-cost addition to an existing Amazon or eBay presence, particularly for household, toiletries and gifting lines from our range, it is worth setting up and testing.

TikTok Shop: fast growth, but read the fee structure carefully

TikTok Shop has moved from novelty to genuine sales channel remarkably quickly, particularly for beauty, fragrance and impulse-purchase FMCG that suits short-form video and live selling. UK sellers currently pay a flat platform commission of around 9% on most categories, with beauty, personal care and electronics benefiting from a reduced rate. On top of that headline figure sit optional layers: fulfilment costs if you use TikTok's own logistics, a promotional fee on TikTok's automated advertising tools, creator or affiliate commissions if influencers are driving sales for you, and a refund administration charge on returns. None of that makes TikTok Shop a bad channel, but it does mean the commission you see quoted is rarely the whole story, and it is easy to underestimate total costs if you only budget for the headline percentage.

What TikTok Shop does well is turn scent, colour and packaging into sales in a way static listings cannot. Fragrance and home fragrance lines, gift sets and anything visually appealing tend to perform strongly, so it is a natural fit for stock drawn from our new arrivals, where the novelty factor helps content get attention. It suits sellers who are willing to invest time in content creation or who can work with affiliates, rather than those simply wanting a passive listing.

Other routes worth knowing about

Beyond the four headline platforms, a few other routes are worth a mention depending on your business model.

• Cash and carry style trade counters and your own shopfront remain the backbone for many independent retailers, and nothing about online growth changes that; physical footfall still converts at higher margins than most online channels once fees are accounted for.
• Your own Shopify or similar website gives you full control of margin, with no marketplace commission at all, though you carry the cost and effort of driving traffic yourself.
• B2B platforms and trade marketplaces suit buyers who want to resell in bulk to other businesses rather than to end consumers, and can be a useful outlet for job lots or overstock.
• Facebook Marketplace and local selling groups remain a low-cost, low-friction option for small-volume or local resale, particularly for bulky household items.

Matching stock to channel

Not every product suits every platform, and matching the two well is where the real margin gets made. Branded, well-known lines with strong search demand tend to do best on Amazon, where shoppers are actively looking for them by name. Bulk lots, multipacks and clearance stock suit eBay's bidding and job-lot culture. Lower-fee, steady-turning household and toiletries lines are a natural fit for OnBuy as a supplementary channel. Visually appealing, impulse-driven categories such as fragrance, candles and gift sets tend to shine on TikTok Shop, where video content can do the selling for you.

Getting this matching right also affects how you should be buying. If you are building a channel strategy around social commerce, prioritise scent, packaging and gifting appeal when you review our new arrivals. If Amazon or eBay volume is your main goal, lean on proven, repeat-purchase lines from our best sellers, where demand is already established and margin is easier to forecast.

Working out true margin per channel

It is easy to look at a marketplace's headline commission and assume that is the cost of selling there, but the real figure is almost always higher once you add payment processing, packaging, returns handling and, on some platforms, advertising just to get seen. A product that looks profitable on paper at a 9% commission can turn marginal once you factor in a promotional fee, a per-order charge and the cost of the box it ships in.

The sensible approach is to work out a landed cost per unit from your wholesale invoice, then build a simple spreadsheet for each channel showing commission, payment fees, average postage cost and an allowance for returns or damages. Only once that full cost is subtracted from your selling price do you have a true margin figure, and it is common to find that a line which sells brilliantly on one platform is barely worth listing on another once fees are accounted for properly. This is also why case size and pack format matter: buying in efficient case quantities from a wholesaler keeps your per-unit cost down, which gives you more room to absorb whichever channel's fee structure you are selling into.

Currency and VAT treatment add another layer if you sell into other UK nations or start testing EU or wider international storefronts through Amazon or OnBuy. Keep pricing simple where you can, and get your accountant or bookkeeping software set up to split out marketplace fees clearly, rather than lumping them in as a single expense line, so you can see which channel is actually earning its keep.

Common mistakes to avoid

A handful of mistakes come up repeatedly among retailers moving into multichannel selling for the first time.

• Listing the same narrow range everywhere rather than tailoring stock to what actually sells on each platform, which wastes the strengths of channels like TikTok Shop that reward visually distinctive products.
• Underestimating total fees by focusing on the headline commission alone, particularly on platforms with several optional fee layers stacked on top of the base rate.
• Spreading too thin across five or six channels at once rather than proving a smaller mix works before scaling up, which stretches stock, admin and customer service beyond what a small team can manage well.
• Neglecting stock accuracy across multiple listings, leading to overselling or listings going live with no inventory behind them, which damages seller ratings and can lead to account restrictions.
  • This is particularly costly on Amazon and eBay, where poor performance metrics can suppress visibility or trigger account reviews.

Most of these are avoidable with a bit of planning: start with one or two channels, get your fee maths right, and expand once you have a process that works rather than trying to be everywhere at once.

Choosing a wholesale supplier that supports multichannel selling

Whichever mix of channels you settle on, the supplier behind your stock needs to keep pace. That means competitive trade pricing that leaves room for marketplace fees on top, reliable availability so you are not left with live listings and no stock to fulfil them, and a range broad enough to let you build genuinely different offers across different platforms rather than duplicating the same handful of lines everywhere.

It is also worth working with a supplier who understands multichannel selling rather than just bulk despatch. Product imagery, barcodes, case sizes and accurate descriptions all matter more when you are listing across three or four platforms simultaneously, and getting that foundational data right once saves hours of rework later. A wholesaler who can advise on which lines tend to perform where, based on real trade customer feedback, is worth more than the cheapest unit price alone.

Selling across Amazon, eBay, OnBuy or TikTok Shop and want stock that is ready to list from day one? Talk to the NMS team about setting up a wholesale trade account and building a range that works across your channels.