Primary sales: company to distributor
Primary sales is the movement of goods from the manufacturer or brand to its distributors and wholesalers — the invoice the company itself raises. It is easy to measure, because it is the company's own billing.
Secondary sales: distributor to retailer
Secondary sales is the next hop: distributor to retailer or outlet. It is the number that tells you whether product is actually reaching the shelf — and it is harder to see, because it happens in someone else's ledger.
Why the gap matters
Strong primary sales with weak secondary sales means stock is sitting in distributor godowns, not selling through. A team that watches only primary sales can miss that until the reorders stop coming.
What the field tells you
The clearest read on secondary sales comes from the outlet itself: is the product on the shelf, is the display up, did the retailer reorder. A rep visiting outlets sees this first-hand.
Hemmiles records the visit, not the invoice — the visit notes and shelf photos that show what is happening in the market. Your distribution or ERP system still owns the sales numbers; the field layer gives them context.