A person or company that buys goods in very large quantities — usually straight from the factory or the farm — and sells them on in bulk to shops, restaurants, and other businesses, rather than to ordinary shoppers. The wholesaler is the middle step in the chain: maker → wholesaler → shop → you. Because they move so much at once, their price per item is lower, but they normally will not sell you one of anything; you buy a case, a box, a hundred. It is a plain business word, neutral in feeling, used in trade, logistics, and any conversation about where a shop gets its stock. In Taiwan, the wholesale markets for fish, flowers, and fruit are the everyday face of this. Some wholesalers now also sell to the public, which blurs the line, and warehouse clubs like Costco sit somewhere in between — which is why people argue about whether Costco is 批發 or not.