A sales channel is a route through which your product reaches a paying customer. Direct channels include your own website, shop, or sales team. Indirect channels use someone else: retailers, distributors, resellers, marketplaces, or agents. Each channel has its own cost, margin, and level of control over the customer relationship.
Compare channels by what you keep per unit, not by volume. A soap maker sells a bar for 12 euros on her own site and pays 2 euros shipping and 0.40 euros in payment fees, leaving 9.60 euros. Production costs 3 euros, so the direct margin is 6.60 euros. The same bar sold to a retailer goes out at 6 euros wholesale, so the wholesale margin is 3 euros. Direct looks better per bar. But the retailer orders 400 bars per month with no marketing spend from her, while the website sold 90 bars last month after 300 euros of ads. Per month, wholesale earns 1,200 euros of margin and direct earns 594 euros minus 300 euros of ads, so 294 euros.
Business plans list channels in the go-to-market section with an expected split of volume. Plans generated by Foundor include this split, so the revenue forecast can be traced back to a route rather than to a single total.
Founders usually misjudge two things. First, they treat a channel as free because no invoice arrives. A social media shop costs content time, a marketplace costs 8 to 20 percent in fees, and a reseller costs 30 to 50 percent of the retail price. Second, they open four channels at once. Each one needs different pricing, packaging, and support. Make one profitable, then add the next. Watch for channel conflict as well: if you undercut your own retailers on your website, they stop ordering.
