NAICS 413310Canadian industry · 6-digitregional market

Cigarette and tobacco product merchant wholesalers

This Canadian industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling cured tobacco and tobacco products. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 195
Under 10 employeesA: 69%

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–48041%

5–95428%

10–192111%

20–49158%

50–99147%

100–199105%

200–49911%

500+0—

Of 195 Canadian establishments with employees, 69% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec7036%

Ontario6533%

British Columbia3417%

Alberta179%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Wholesale Trade, US · opened 2020

82.8%

1 year

64.3%

3 years

51.2%

5 years

34.4%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 413, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

regional competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 413 Food, beverage and tobacco merchant wholesalers

Broadline is consolidated. Specialty and ethnic food distribution stays fragmented and regional, run on relationships and cold-chain reliability.

Who sets the price: Large distributors and the grocers they serve.
The software it runs on: Distribution ERP, route accounting, warehouse and lot traceability.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 4133 Cigarette and tobacco product merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4133

Convenience & Tobacco DistributorOne thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

The survey figure for this group is a trap worth naming. Canadian tobacco wholesalers report an apparent 36.4% gross margin and 12.0% operating profit on $8.6B of revenue [A] — far above anything a distributor earns. The likely explanation, which this screen could not confirm, is that the group includes the sales arms of the cigarette makers themselves, which import and book the manufacturer's margin as wholesalers. The business an entrant could actually start is the independent distributor supplying convenience stores, and its economics are on the public record. Core-Mark, one of the two largest convenience distributors in North America and the largest in Canada before Performance Food Group bought it, reported cigarettes as 66.7% of net sales but only 25.2% of gross profit, on a total gross margin of 5.24% [A]. Tobacco is the volume that fills the truck and the manufacturers set its price and the wholesaler's incentive; the living is made on the candy, snacks and food riding along. The cut is that the volume is going away on a schedule. The same filing cites Canadian consumption falling from 32 billion cigarettes in 2010 to 25 billion in 2019, about 2.4% a year, with makers raising prices to compensate [A] — which holds dollar revenue up while the cartons per stop, the thing that pays for the route, decline. Excise stamping, provincial wholesale permits and tax-paid inventory add working capital and compliance on top, but they are survivable. A core product in permanent decline, priced by its maker, is not. Only 195 establishments remain in Canada and eleven of them have a hundred or more employees.

NAICS 41335 vendors named14 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Distribution ERP, route accounting, warehouse and lot traceability.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Wholesale trade, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Retail and wholesale trade managers One industry 16.6%

Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives Mostly one sector 9.2%

Labourers in processing, manufacturing and utilities Mostly one sector 8.7%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 8.5%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 6.8%

Supervisors, processing and manufacturing occupations Mostly one sector 6.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.8%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 5.5%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 5.3%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 10.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 7.9%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 6.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 6.2%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 6%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 5.1%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.8%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.5%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →