"Pure" flippers and drop shippers who do none of the value adding work of buying large lots and retailing them, holding things over time, etc are both a worthless drag on the economy and a great argument against equivalent financial products.
Like grocery stores? Department stores? Costco? Buying in bulk and selling smaller lots to consumers over time is the definition of retail sales.
If you want to eliminate middlemen and buy only from manufacturers, you better first know/learn chinese, japanese, french, german and spanish. And get a forklift. Most only ship product by the pallet.
I think they're saying that is the value added work, which they don't do.