Keeping the marketplace, moving the reorders home
Most operators worry that leaving a marketplace means losing orders. Affinity's experience suggests a different way to see it.
A marketplace is useful for discovery: putting a brand in front of buyers who don't know it yet. But Affinity's existing dispensary customers don't need to rediscover Affinity every time they reorder. For them, a direct storefront is simply a better place to buy: Affinity's catalogue only, their own pricing, batch details and lab results, and no competitors one click away.
For orders placed through its SellStack storefront, Affinity now owns the repeat-order experience: its brand, customer experience and ordering flow, with orders going straight into its ERP.
Results
“Overall, for us, the benefits we have seen are more efficiency internally in the back-office processes.”
Alicia Lincoln, Affinity Grow
95% of recreational orders are placed by buyers themselves
Between mid-September and 25 October, 95% of recreational orders were placed directly by dispensary buyers: they browse, choose batches, build the basket and check out. Affinity's team sees the order once it's already in Business Central.
Affinity puts the difference between the channels down to different buyers and buying habits, not the orderingexperience.
10+ hours a week back for selling
The 10+ hours a week a rep used to spend entering orders by hand now goes into growing existing accounts.
Two hours a day back from dispatching
SellStack's SmartRoutes integration has cut the time Affinity's team needs for dispatching
"That easily saves a good two hours a day.”
Alicia Lincoln, Affinity Grow
Over 99.9% of order lines are tied to a specific lot
In cannabis wholesale, the product isn't enough: the batch matters. Across more than 14,000 order lines, over 99.9% carry a specific lot; only three don't.
The lot is recorded at the moment of ordering (chosen by the buyer, or allocated by SellStack), not assigned later in the warehouse, and it follows the order into Business Central. The link between customer, order, product and batch is already recorded when that information is needed
Advice from Affinity to other operators
Alicia Lincoln drove the SellStack implementation at Affinity Grow. Her advice to other operators:
“Get your team to buy into it and know the system before launching, especially how the coupons and discounts can work to make it simpler for both them and the customer. If they don’t buy in, neither will their customers.”
Alicia Lincoln, Affinity Grow
The platform behind it
- SellStack: branded B2B wholesale storefront with batch-level ordering and admin order management.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: Affinity's system of record. Inventory and batch data flow into the storefront; orders flow back as sales orders.
- SmartRoutes: delivery routing.
BEFORE SELLSTACK
Marketplace order > Affinity Sales rep enters the order by hand
WITH SELLSTACK
Buyer > Affinity's branded SellStack storefront > Business Central sales order
No manual order entry in between.
Want the same for your wholesale business?
See it live: book a 30-minute demo built around your own catalogue.
Talk to Affinity: reference calls are available on request.
Figures from Affinity Grow's SellStack platform data to 25 October 2026.
