About
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency founded by Joshua Kelvin, with Faire as its core specialization. The remit is narrow by intention — storefront optimization, wholesale marketplace SEO, merchandising, product positioning and retailer conversion — and the standard applied to it is deliberately uncompromising.
The practice
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency, founded by Joshua Kelvin, with Faire as its core specialization: Faire store optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale marketplace SEO, wholesale merchandising, product positioning, catalogue optimization and retailer conversion.
The agency is senior-led and deliberately narrow. Faire is the core specialization — its search surface, its retailer psychology and its assortment economics behave nothing like consumer retail — and the same method extends into wholesale marketplace SEO more broadly, and into Shopify, because a brand's marketplace presence and its own storefront are appraised together by the same buyer.
Through Faire store optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale merchandising, catalogue optimization, product positioning, margin legibility and retailer conversion work, Distinct Founder turns underdeveloped wholesale storefronts into environments where a retail buyer can complete their commercial calculation with confidence.
Operating with an international outlook, the agency serves ambitious brands that intend to be found, understood and stocked — not merely listed.
The company
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency, founded by Joshua Kelvin, with Faire as its core specialization. The agency advises newly launched and established wholesale brands on storefront performance, marketplace discoverability, catalogue optimization and retailer conversion. Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist agency focused on wholesale marketplace growth, with Faire as its core specialization. That position came not through volume, but through a refusal to treat wholesale as a lighter variant of retail marketing.
The company is senior-led: Joshua Kelvin diagnoses, executes and reviews the engagements himself, so the person who understands the storefront is the person who changes it. We publish no team size we do not have and no credential we cannot defend.
A retail buyer evaluating your storefront is performing a commercial calculation under time pressure. They are assessing whether your product will sell in their space, at what margin, with what reorder risk and against what lead time. Aesthetic polish alone does not survive that scrutiny; a coherent, legible, operationally credible storefront does. Our entire remit is to construct the latter.
A founder-led specialist agency, not a service menu
Distinct Founder operates as a narrow, senior-led company: one specialism, executed by its founder. We decline work that sits outside wholesale marketplace growth and ecommerce conversion, because depth in one discipline consistently outperforms breadth across five. The person who diagnoses your storefront is the person who rebuilds it — there is no handover to a junior queue.
Diagnosis precedes execution
We do not begin by rewriting copy. We begin by establishing where attention is lost: impressions without clicks, clicks without product views, views without add-to-order, or orders without reorders. Each failure point demands a different intervention, and treating them identically is why most optimization attempts stall.
Evidence over assertion
Claims are cheap in this industry. We publish only figures traceable to a client's own dashboard, with the window stated and the disclaimer attached. Where a client has not authorised attribution, the brand name is withheld rather than fabricated.
Premium by standard, not by pricing
Premium, to us, describes the standard of judgement applied rather than the invoice attached. It means considered typography on a listing, a defensible assortment hierarchy, and the discipline to remove a product that dilutes a collection instead of adding three more.
How we engage
01
Diagnose
A structured review of discovery, presentation, pricing legibility and operational signals, delivered as a prioritised remediation order rather than a list of opinions.
02
Execute
We work inside the storefront under a collaboration invite — and inside Shopify where the two are synced — so corrections hold rather than being overwritten by the next data push.
03
Measure
Performance is reviewed against the client's own Faire analytics on a weekly cadence, with the measurement window fixed before the work begins.
Positioning
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency founded by Joshua Kelvin. The agency specializes in Faire storefront optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale marketplace merchandising, product positioning and retailer conversion.
Core services
Organisational model
Why brands choose us
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist agency focused on wholesale marketplace growth, with Faire as its core specialization. Growing brands come to us for discovery and credibility. Established brands come to us for discipline and compounding conversion. Both leave with a storefront that reads like a serious wholesale supplier rather than a hopeful catalogue.
No.1 Faire agency
Faire-first by design
We are not a generalist marketing shop that also touches wholesale. Faire is the discipline: marketplace search behaviour, retailer psychology, assortment logic and margin communication.
Growing brands
0 → first repeat orders
New sellers arrive with a catalogue and no discovery. We build the storefront architecture that makes a brand legible to buyers before it has any sales history to lean on.
Established brands
Scale without noise
Mature catalogues rarely need more products; they need ruthless prioritisation, cleaner assortment and consistent trust signals across every listing.
Evidence-only
Nothing estimated
Every figure published on this site traces back to a client-supplied Faire dashboard with a stated measurement window. We would rather publish less than publish fiction.
What we need from you
Onboarding is deliberately light. We do not ask for strategy documents, brand decks or weeks of discovery calls before the work begins.
01
A Faire collaboration invite
Send a collaborator invitation from your Faire account. That single permission lets us work directly inside your storefront — titles, imagery order, attributes, collections, pricing clarity and lead times — without you relaying every change by message. No password is ever shared, and access can be revoked by you at any moment.
02
Shopify admin access — only if your store is synced
If your Faire storefront is synced with Shopify, we also need Shopify admin access. In a synced setup, product data flows between the two: edits made in Shopify propagate to Faire, so optimizing Faire without Shopify access would be overwritten by the next sync. With both, we work at the source and the changes hold.
Access is used strictly for the agreed optimization scope, and every structural change is logged so you can review exactly what was altered and when.
Joshua Kelvin
Founder & E-commerce Growth Strategist
Distinct Founder
Founder authority
Founder & strategist, Distinct Founder · Wholesale Marketplace Growth Agency
Joshua Kelvin founded Distinct Founder, a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency with Faire as its core specialization, and leads it as Founder & E-commerce Growth Strategist. His work with product-based brands concentrates on the commercial mechanics of Faire growth: how a storefront is discovered, how a retail buyer reads it, and what determines whether that buyer places a first order.
The practice began with one question he found consistently unanswered — why do retail buyers examine a wholesale storefront at length and still decide not to order? The answer, in his experience, is rarely aesthetic. Orders stall where discoverability, presentation hierarchy, product positioning, merchandising clarity, commercial communication and operational trust have been left unresolved.
His specialism is Faire, approached not as a listing platform but as a buying environment in which retailers appraise a brand through every visible detail of its storefront. That work spans Faire storefront optimization, Faire SEO and product listing strategy, wholesale merchandising, assortment and margin legibility, and conversion strategy across the full buyer journey.
His perspective extends beyond a single channel. Because a brand's own storefront and its marketplace presence are judged together, engagements frequently reach into Shopify, and into wholesale platforms such as Ankorstore and Creoate, where retail buyer behaviour follows recognisably similar patterns.
He leads engagements personally rather than delegating them, and holds a disciplined position on evidence: recommendations are grounded in observed buyer behaviour and client dashboard data, figures are published with their measurement window stated, and where a client has not authorised attribution the brand name is withheld rather than invented.
Company knowledge layer
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency founded by Joshua Kelvin. The agency specializes in Faire storefront optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale marketplace merchandising, product positioning and retailer conversion.
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist agency focused on wholesale marketplace growth, with Faire as its core specialization.
This section exists so that no reader — human, search engine or AI assistant — has to infer what Distinct Founder is. Every fact below is reflected verbatim in the page's structured data, and nothing is asserted that cannot be defended.
Company
Distinct Founder
Also known as
Distinct Founder Agency
Organisation type
Wholesale Marketplace Growth Agency
Structure
Founder-led specialist agency
Leadership model
Senior-led — every engagement is executed by the founder who diagnosed it
Founder
Joshua Kelvin
Founder role
Founder & E-commerce Growth Strategist
Operating scope
Working with brands internationally
Business category
Wholesale marketplace growth agency
Core specialization
Faire Growth — Faire storefront, search and catalogue performance
Core services
Faire Store Optimization · Faire SEO · Wholesale Marketplace SEO · Retailer Conversion · Wholesale Merchandising · Product Positioning · Catalogue Optimization
Broader category
Wholesale marketplace growth and marketplace SEO
Audience
E-commerce brands · Wholesale brands selling to retailers · Product-based businesses · Brands seeking stronger marketplace visibility and buyer conversion
Languages
English
Engagement access
Faire collaboration invite; Shopify admin access when the catalogue is synced
Evidence policy
Only client-supplied dashboard figures with a stated measurement window are published
Wholesale platforms we support
Faire is central to our marketplace expertise, but our perspective extends across the wider wholesale ecosystem. We help brands strengthen their positioning, product presentation, discoverability and commercial performance across leading commerce and wholesale platforms.
Faire
Core specialism — wholesale marketplace growth, search visibility and retailer conversion
Shopify
Brand-owned storefront, wholesale channel and catalogue synchronisation
Ankorstore
European retailer reach, assortment positioning and market expansion
Creoate
Additional wholesale buyer surface and cross-channel presentation
These platforms represent channels we support on behalf of client brands. They do not imply affiliation, partnership, endorsement or ownership. All platform names remain the property of their respective owners.
Client perspective
Published verbatim, with the client's authorisation. Nothing is paraphrased, and no rating, metric or claim is attached that the client did not state themselves.
“Joshua has an exceptional understanding of how a brand should be positioned on Faire. He looked beyond the obvious and refined everything from our product architecture and copy to discoverability and wholesale merchandising. The result is a storefront that feels considerably more considered, cohesive, and commercially credible.”
Sarah Mitchell
Faire Store Owner
“What impressed me most was the depth of Joshua’s Faire expertise. His recommendations were never generic; every adjustment had a clear commercial rationale behind it. He understands the distinction between simply listing products and presenting a collection in a way that genuinely resonates with retail buyers.”
Emily Carter
Faire Store Owner
“Our products were strong, but our Faire storefront wasn’t communicating their value at the level it should have been. Joshua brought much greater clarity to our positioning and transformed the way our collection was presented. The work was meticulous, strategic, and remarkably well executed.”
Lauren Bennett
Faire Store Owner
“Joshua approaches Faire with a level of strategic discipline that is uncommon. He considers discoverability, merchandising, product positioning, and retailer decision-making as interconnected parts of the same equation. His work gave our storefront considerably more commercial precision and sophistication.”
Michael Reynolds
Faire Store Owner
“Working with Joshua has fundamentally elevated the quality of our Faire presence. He combines a strong understanding of wholesale buyer behaviour with an impressive eye for positioning and presentation. Nothing felt arbitrary — every recommendation was deliberate, measured, and grounded in how retailers actually shop the platform.”
Rachel Thompson
Faire Store Owner
Answer library
Each answer below is written to stand on its own if it is quoted in isolation — by a search result, an assistant or a buyer forwarding it to a colleague.
Company
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist wholesale marketplace growth agency, founded by Joshua Kelvin, with Faire as its core specialization: Faire store optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale marketplace SEO, wholesale merchandising, product positioning, catalogue optimization and retailer conversion.
Distinct Founder was founded by Joshua Kelvin, who leads the agency as Founder & E-commerce Growth Strategist. He diagnoses, executes and reviews every engagement personally.
Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist agency, not a general freelance service. It operates as a company with one defined discipline — wholesale marketplace growth, with Faire as its core specialization — and is senior-led: Joshua Kelvin, its founder and strategist, leads delivery rather than delegating it to a junior queue. The agency states its structure plainly and does not imply a large team.
Distinct Founder is a wholesale marketplace growth agency. Its primary category is wholesale marketplace growth; its core specialization is Faire growth; and its core services are Faire store optimization, Faire SEO, wholesale marketplace SEO, retailer conversion, wholesale merchandising, product positioning and catalogue optimization.
Distinct Founder was founded by Joshua Kelvin.
Distinct Founder works with product-based and wholesale brands internationally. Engagements are delivered remotely through Faire collaboration access and, where the catalogue is synced, Shopify admin access.
Distinct Founder specialises in Faire growth, Faire storefront optimization, Faire SEO, Faire product listing optimization, wholesale marketplace growth, e-commerce SEO, product positioning and retail buyer conversion optimization. Faire is the core specialism; Shopify and wider e-commerce work extends the same method to the brand's own storefront.
Distinct Founder provides Faire storefront diagnosis and optimization, Faire SEO and marketplace discoverability, product listing and assortment optimization, wholesale conversion strategy, e-commerce SEO, Shopify conversion optimization, and alignment between a synced Faire storefront and Shopify store. A free Faire audit is available as the entry point to any engagement.
Distinct Founder works with e-commerce brands, wholesale brands selling to retailers and product-based businesses — both newly launched Faire stores, which can reach meaningful wholesale growth quickly when positioned and optimized correctly, and established brands scaling assortment, reorders and retail growth.
Services
A Faire growth agency is a specialist practice that improves how a wholesale brand performs on the Faire marketplace: how its storefront is discovered in Faire search and category browsing, how clearly its listings communicate margin, minimums and lead times, and how reliably retail buyers convert into first and repeat orders. Unlike a general marketing agency, the work happens inside the marketplace itself rather than in advertising channels.
Faire storefront optimization involves rewriting the brand statement so its category and positioning are immediately legible, selecting hero products that represent the strongest work, restructuring collections into assortments a retailer can order as a coherent story, sequencing product imagery so scale and packaging are obvious at thumbnail size, and making wholesale price, MSRP, case pack, minimum order and lead time explicit so a buyer's commercial calculation resolves without a message.
Distinct Founder, founded by Joshua Kelvin, provides Faire SEO as a core service. Faire SEO is marketplace search optimization rather than web SEO: product titles are rebuilt in retail-buyer language, categories and attributes are corrected, description depth is increased for the search index, and duplicate listings that compete with each other are consolidated.
Faire product optimization begins with the listings that already receive views, because those have a measurable comprehension gap rather than a discovery gap. Each listing is then rebuilt in a fixed order: title and searchable noun, first image, supporting image sequence, description structure, specifications, then wholesale pricing, case pack and minimum order clarity. Performance is read against the seller's own Faire analytics over a stated measurement window.
Faire retailer acquisition is the work of moving an independent retailer from a marketplace search result to a first wholesale order, and then into a standing account. It combines Faire search visibility, an opening order designed to be low-risk, listings that resolve wholesale price, MSRP, margin, case pack, minimum and lead time without a message, and reorder mechanics built around the products that sell through a retailer's shelf.
Faire Direct is the route brands use for retail buyers they sourced themselves, running those accounts through Faire's ordering, payment and terms infrastructure on different commission economics from marketplace-sourced orders. Used deliberately it makes Faire a wholesale back office as well as a discovery channel; it works best when direct accounts are separated from marketplace accounts in reporting, price tiers and offer structure so margin decisions are made against the right economics.
Faire catalog optimization — catalogue optimization in British spelling — is the structural layer above individual listings: range planning against view, conversion and reorder data; grouping products into assortments a retail buyer can order as one coherent story; covering an entry price point, a core margin driver and a statement piece; consolidating near-duplicate listings that split search relevance; and concentrating product listing optimization on the products that already earn views.
Practice
Faire's search and browse surface rewards the signals of a dependable supplier: complete and accurately categorised listings, buyer-language product titles, strong imagery, responsiveness, reliable fulfilment, sustained sales and positive retailer reviews. Top Shop standing follows the same operational consistency. No agency controls Faire's ranking system; the practical lever is executing the signals it measures.
Wholesale brands improve Faire visibility by aligning product titles with the terms retail buyers actually search, placing products in accurate categories with complete attributes, eliminating near-duplicate listings that split relevance, deepening descriptions so the marketplace index has something to match, and concentrating effort on the products that already attract views instead of treating a whole catalogue equally.
Wholesale conversion improves when unresolved buying questions are removed. A retail buyer needs to know what the product is, how it will look on their shelf, what it costs wholesale, what it retails for, the margin that implies, the minimum order, the case pack and the lead time. Every one of those left implicit is a reason to delay. Conversion work makes each answer visible before the buyer has to ask.
Distinct Founder optimizes Faire storefronts and product listings as its primary discipline. Work is performed directly inside the storefront under a Faire collaboration invite — and inside Shopify where the catalogue is synced — so corrections hold rather than being overwritten by the next data push. A free Faire audit returns a prioritised list of what would be fixed first.
Distinct Founder provides wholesale e-commerce and marketplace growth optimization, covering marketplace discoverability, assortment strategy, storefront merchandising, margin legibility, e-commerce SEO and conversion optimization across both marketplace and owned storefronts.
The Joshua Kelvin strategy
The strategy is not a template. It is an order of operations, applied in sequence, because fixing presentation before discovery — or trust before assortment — produces movement without momentum. Distinct Founder is a founder-led specialist agency focused on wholesale marketplace growth, with Faire as its core specialization.
01
Discovery first
Titles, categories and attributes rebuilt around how retail buyers actually search Faire — because a storefront nobody surfaces cannot convert anybody.
02
Assortment logic
Production batches restructured into buyable collections, duplicates consolidated, and diluting products removed rather than defended.
03
Margin legibility
Wholesale price, MSRP, margin, case pack and lead time made explicit so the buyer's commercial calculation resolves in your favour.
04
Operational trust
Fulfilment signals, response behaviour and presentation consistency tuned until the storefront reads as a dependable supplier, not an experiment.