NAICS 41413Industry · 5-digitnational market

Piece goods, notions and other dry goods merchant wholesalers

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in wholesaling piece goods, notions and other dry goods. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 341
Under 10 employeesA: 73%

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

1–418053%

5–97021%

10–195817%

20–49237%

50–9993%

100–19910%

200–4990—

500+0—

Of 341 Canadian establishments with employees, 73% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Ontario14242%

Quebec12436%

British Columbia4313%

Alberta175%

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 414, 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.

national competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 414 Personal and household goods merchant wholesalers

The distributor's margin is squeezed from both sides as brands sell direct. Exclusive lines are the defensible position.

Who sets the price: Brands above, retailers below; the wholesaler holds neither.
The software it runs on: Distribution ERP, EDI and marketplace integrations.

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 4141 Textile, clothing and footwear merchant wholesalers covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 4141

Apparel & Footwear Brand DistributorExecution decides

binding constraint: defensibility

This is a large, open and apparently healthy trade. Canada has 1,999 clothing, footwear and textile wholesalers, 71% of them under ten people, split almost evenly between Ontario and Quebec, and together they earned a 37.5% gross margin and 7.6% operating profit on $19.9B of revenue in 2024 [A]. The enterable form is the distributor or agency that takes a foreign or emerging label into Canadian retail: it needs a showroom, a line of credit for a season's inventory, and a rep who knows the buyers. Nothing about entry is hard. The cut is what the distributor owns once it has succeeded, which is nothing. The label belongs to the brand, the shelf belongs to the retailer, and the distribution agreement has a term. A brand that proves itself in a market takes the market back — first with its own e-commerce site, then with its own stores. Canada Goose is the domestic illustration of where the margin went: in fiscal 2026 its direct-to-consumer revenue was $1,157.4M, up 15.9%, against wholesale revenue of $291.2M [A] — wholesale is under a fifth of a $1,528.2M business that held a 69.7% gross margin. Brands build that mix on purpose, and each point of it is volume that once passed through an intermediary. The group's revenue shows the result: $19.7B in 2022, $19.8B in 2023, $19.9B in 2024 [A], flat through three years of inflation. A full study would have to test the one defensible position — a long exclusive on a line the owner cannot or will not run direct — and price how often those are renewed. Piece goods and notions were not examined.

NAICS 41415 vendors named11 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, EDI and marketplace integrations.

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. But note the shape of this industry: 73% of establishments have fewer than ten employees, and at that size most of these roles are one person wearing several hats, or bought in from outside.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 41413. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
414130	Piece goods, notions and other dry goods merchant wholesalers	341	screened at 4141

Alongside it, under 4141 Textile, clothing and footwear merchant wholesalers

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
41411	Clothing and clothing accessories merchant wholesalers	1,483	screened at 4141
41412	Footwear merchant wholesalers	175	screened at 4141