A reseller is a

company A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of people, whether natural, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specific, declared ...

or individual (

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as indust ...

) that purchases

goods In economics, goods are items that satisfy human wants and provide utility, for example, to a consumer making a purchase of a satisfying product. A common distinction is made between goods which are transferable, and services, which are not ...

or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. This is usually done for profit (but can be done at a loss). One example can be found in the industry of

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...

s, where companies buy excess amounts of transmission capacity or call time from other carriers and resell it to smaller carriers. According to the Institute for Partner Education & Development, a reseller's product fulfillment–based business model includes a corporate reseller,

retail Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

seller, direct market reseller (DMR), and an internet retailer (eTailer); less than 10 percent of its revenue comes from services.

Internet

Resellers are known to conduct operations on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

through sites on the web. For example, this occurs where individuals or companies act as

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

s for

ICANN The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN ) is an American multistakeholder group and nonprofit organization responsible for coordinating the maintenance and procedures of several databases related to the namespaces ...

accredited

registrar A registrar is an official keeper of records made in a register. The term may refer to: Education * Registrar (education), an official in an academic institution who handles student records * Registrar of the University of Oxford, one of the se ...

s. They either sell on commission or for profit and in most cases, but not all, the purchase from the registrar and the sale to the ultimate buyer occurs in real time. These resellers are not to be confused with speculators, who purchase many domain names with the intention of holding them and selling them at some future time at a profit. Resellers, by the very nature of their business are retailers, not

wholesalers Wholesaling or distributing is the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers; to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional business users; or to other wholesalers (wholesale businesses) and related subordinated services. In ...

. It is not unheard of for online pawn shops like iPawn to also act as a reseller, and purchase rather than loan against valuables. Online auction and classifieds websites, such as those owned by eBay Inc. and

Craigslist Craigslist (stylized as craigslist) is an American classified advertisements website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Craig Newmark began the ...

provide services for resellers to sell their goods and services. However although resellers are indeed retailers it does not follow that retailers are resellers. Another common example of this is in the web hosting area, where a reseller will purchase bulk hosting from a supplier with the intention of reselling it to a number of consumers at a profit.

Software and ebooks

Software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

and

ebooks An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. Alt ...

are two products that are very easy to obtain by resellers. Their digital format makes them ideal for internet distribution. In many cases, such as brandable software, the reseller can obtain even the right to change the name of the software and claim it as one's own and resell it on an ebook shop hosting platform. A software reseller is a consultant who sells the software from large companies under a licence. They have no legal employment status with the parent company and generally operate on a freelance basis.

Business model

The companies visited to and pitched to by software resellers are often

small and medium enterprises Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are businesses whose personnel and revenue numbers fall below certain limits. The abbreviation "SME" is used by international organizations such as the World Bank ...

(SMEs), local businesses and niche operators. This benefits the software house as they may not hold the resources for the legwork needed to spread their network on a lower scale. While it benefits the reseller because he/she can build up networks of smaller clients and become a single point of contact for them for every aspect concerned with the software, be it advice, training or updating.

Web resellers

A subcategory of reseller is a web operative who will buy a large amount of hosting space from an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

(ISP) and then resell some of this space to clients. Their hosting is often managed through a virtual private server (VPS) which allows them, through a control panel, to administer bandwidth, databases, passwords etc, for the client. The popularity of this business model grew with the rise of freelance web designers as it enabled them to be the sole service provider for the client. After an initial consultation with the client they could subsequently design, develop and also host the site as a single operation.

References

External links