broadline

Broadline is an adjective used to describe products, services, or providers that cover a wide range of categories within a single portfolio. In business and distribution, the term is most often used of broadline distributors—companies that stock and sell a large, diversified assortment of goods across multiple categories, rather than focusing on a single specialty.

Broadline distributors serve multiple industries, including office and facility supplies, janitorial and cleaning, packaging, food service, and industrial hardware. They enable one-stop procurement, centralized purchasing, and supplier consolidation. Typical features include a large SKU count, cross-category sales teams, and integration with customers' procurement platforms. Challenges include higher inventory carrying costs, complex supplier management, and the need to balance breadth with depth to avoid gaps in demand.

Beyond commerce, the term appears in astronomy as broad emission lines produced by rapidly moving gas in active galactic nuclei. The broadline region contains gas clouds moving at thousands of kilometers per second, which broadens spectral lines and enables estimates of black hole masses and dynamics. This astrophysical usage is distinct from the business sense but shares the underlying idea of a wide span, here in velocity space rather than product lines.