Emily Xu, senior vice president of ecommerce and marketing, Republic National Distribution Co.

Republic National Distribution Co. is closing in on $1 billion in annual ecommerce sales. But big digital sales totals are not the company’s main reason for investing heavily in ecommerce. Customers are, Republic National senior vice president of ecommerce and marketing Emily Xu told attendees during her keynote session at EnvisionB2B 2024 on Sept. 12 in Chicago.

RNDC is a large national alcohol distributor of premium wine and spirits — one of the nation’s biggest. It’s a family-owned distributor with wholly owned operations in 14 states and the District of Columbia. It also has partnerships in another six states.

Takeaways from Emily Xu’s keynote speech at EnvisionB2B 2024

In 2023, sales transacted through the company’s eRNDC ecommerce platform reached $800 million. A 32% year-over-year increase in the number of monthly active online customers spurred that growth, the company says.

Now, the company is closing in on generating $1 billion in annual ecommerce sales.

But the biggest reason for rethinking and redoing ecommerce is to better serve customers, she told attendees.

Emily Xu, senior vice president of ecommerce and marketing, Republic National Distribution Co., speaks about ecommerce growth and customer experience at EnvisionB2B 2024 in Chicago.

RNDC says its online customers in 21 states can shop among 6,700 brands. They use such features as AI-powered site search, product recommendations and product assortments curated for local markets.

“A lot of people spend a lot of money on things that doesn’t really necessarily have the right return because, you know, it’s pretty nuanced still in this industry and people don’t necessarily understand the unit economics,” says Xu told attendees, “So that’s why, from an RNDC standpoint, we started exploring this capability in 2023, and now we formulate it’s much more like turnkey solution.”

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