The whole point is that retailers are now refusing to buy from manufacturers and are preferring to go directly through Reliance because Reliance will bring products from different manufacturers and across categories.
Retailers will still not buy directly from manufacturers because they can buy things from multiple manufacturers in a single shipment from Reliance instead of dealing with individual manufacturers and incurring transportation costs per manufacturer.
That apart, Reliance will extend offers to retailers based on the overall value of the order - rather than per manufacturer.
This is the same reason people buy a range of items from sites like Amazon while they could buy individual items directly from some sites which deals with only specific product categories.
So Reliance is providing a valuable service or product? I am failing to see the problem. If the concern is Reliance is the only one, then they might need to be broken up into multiple logistics operations.
But overall, increased in efficiency and communications should result in fewer and fewer middlemen.
