Vision
Canada's only National Network providing suppliers with innovative and measurable distribution, marketing, selling and information solutions to Retail and Foodservice
Profile
The Canadian Market Place with respect to the Retail Food Industry is dominated by the large vertically integrated retail/wholesale grocery combinations. Similarly, the Foodservice Industry has become increasingly concentrated by large corporate foodservice distributors focused on the high volume, chain end-users.
ITWAL Limited, with its national network of independent, diversified retail and foodservice wholesale distributors, provides a competitive distributor alternative. ITWAL’s member distributors from coast to coast, provide a full range of products to support business operators of all sizes, whether they be retail convenience stores, drug stores, gas bars, independent grocers or foodservice restaurants, institutions and other end-users.
ITWAL Limited as a company was founded in 1966 by a small group of independent wholesale distributors in Southern Ontario. They formed ITWAL to combine their collective buying power thereby enabling them to compete effectively for the benefit of their customers.
Since those early days, ITWAL has evolved into a national distribution network of wholesale distributor members operating 149 warehouses covering all of Canada from Victoria, BC to St. John’s, NF in both urban and rural and large and small markets.
It is this national distribution network which gives ITWAL its strength and importance with suppliers.
Notwithstanding the large buying power of the group, the organization is positioned as a “selling group” that is as an extension of the suppliers’ selling and distribution investment. This functional partnership with suppliers is based on ITWAL distributors getting sales and distribution of their products more efficiently and effectively than suppliers could do so on their own.
With the support of suppliers, ITWAL distributors are able to offer competitive, valued-added services and pricing which their Retail and Foodservice customers require in order to survive in today’s ever-increasingly competitive market place.
Originally the ITWAL Group was made up of Tobacco and Confectionery distributors and to this day, they still represent the largest distributor base in Canada for these products. However, evolving with the changing dynamics of the market place, new members joined the group who specialized in either retail grocery or in foodservice products.
The expanded member base along with the diversification of existing members, enables the group to offer a wide product mix supported by a combined sales force exceeding 1,000 sales persons nationally
ITWAL provides buying and inventory support to its member distributors through a large 250,000 square foot consolidation center in Toronto and a similar facility of 300,000 square feet in Montreal operated by its Quebec members under the Groupe Colabor. ITWAL’s corporate headquarters are in Brampton, Ontario.
The corporate office represents the group with suppliers and provides marketing, sales and other corporate resources for the benefit of cost efficiencies at the member level.
ITWAL’s mission will continue to be that of reinforcing the profitability of our members and at the same time, delivering the sales and distribution objectives of our suppliers
UNITED WE ARE STRONG!