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Evolving its offerings keeps the company relevant with dealers.
Who is Distribution Management, and why is this company important?
That’s probably not a question you’ve been pondering lately, but if you’re an office technology dealer looking to grow your business and revenue, the answer to that question may make a difference.
Becoming Distribution Management
Distribution Management’s roots stretch back more than 50 years, beginning as a wholesale print supplies distributor, drop-shipping ink and toner on behalf of its reseller clients. From there, it entered the third-party fulfillment space, providing omnichannel order fulfillment to clients on behalf of manufacturers and merchants.
The business was the dream of founder Tom Fleming who started his career selling typewriters for IBM in St. Louis, Missouri. He saw the need for replacement ribbons, and in 1972, launched All-state Business Machines (ABM) as a reseller of typewriter ribbons. Across its various incarnations, including the launch of Supplies Network in 1991, the company’s mission has remained pretty much the same since day one, taking care of clients and their customers.
In March of 2022, Supplies Network rebranded as its parent company, Distribution Management, to better align with how the business had evolved over the years. “If you think about Supplies Network, we started out as a supplies wholesaler for the wholesale business, and we’re a lot more than that now,” explained Monte White, senior vice president, merchandising. “We’re into a lot of different areas in the wholesale print and imaging business. A big portion of our portfolio is now hardware, parts, and barcode products—many things beyond what would fall under the Supplies Network branding. It was more appropriate to have a brand well-suited for our positioning into the future.”
Engaging with Dealers
Distribution Management has a long history of building strong relationships with dealers, and there are more opportunities than ever before to strengthen those relationships thanks to a growing product portfolio, particularly as it has expanded into A3 supplies and thermal and barcode products.
“It’s been exciting getting to know some new folks through that opportunity,” said Ted Gruener, vice president of sales, about what’s happened after branching out into A3 supplies. “Obviously, the opportunity to save on shipping costs by aggregating A3 and A4 products together rings true.”
Efficiency is the hallmark of the company’s operations, which results in the timely, accurate delivery of supplies. That’s one reason dealers keep coming back for more.
“That’s kind of our table stakes,” said Gruener. “Where we excel and draw folks in is our tremendously tenured team. Our business development managers have been in the business for 20 to 25 years. They spend time in the marketplace and at shows rubbing elbows and visiting our dealers. Our regional managers have been around for 15 years in multiple roles.”
Added Gruener, “Dealers understand that through those touchpoints, we are on their side. We put a lot into the BTA channel and work hard to be the wizard behind the curtain to supplement their business much more than just shipping a few packages here and there for them. We want to be an extension of their business and bring them new products and solutions.”
Distribution Management represents 60-plus brands, allowing dealers to leverage the company’s ability to aggregate products across multiple manufacturers. That means a dealer doesn’t have to stock inventory and can rely on Distribution Management to ship products to their customers. That’s a huge money saver.
Indeed, there is a huge benefit to dealers and their customers by aggregating orders. “It costs about the same amount to ship two toner cartridges as it does one,” said Gruener. “That’s why you see folks coming to us to talk about taking that headache off their plate so they can put that money to proactive use growing their businesses. I tell dealers all the time, I’d rather the money be in our pocket, the manufacturer’s pocket, or your pocket rather in UPS or FedEx’s pocket. There’s much more customer satisfaction receiving one package with two toner cartridges.”
Between COVID-19 causing a decline in page volumes and periodic maintenance calls, and supply chain shortages creating inconsistencies in demand, managing inventory has become even more important for dealers.
“We stock 6,000 to 7,000 SKUs with high fill rates across all brands,” said White. “We make it easy for dealers to pick and choose when they need those products delivered to their end-user faster than they could, even if they were optimizing inventory and doing it on their own. And candidly, they prefer to take that inventory off their floor because it costs them a lot of money on top of the labor and shipping costs.”
Diversifying with Thermal and Barcode Printers
The name of the game in the office technology dealer channel as of late is diversification. Distribution Management has been assisting dealers on that journey thanks to its partnerships with Zebra Technologies and TSC Printronix Auto ID to distribute their thermal barcode printers and supplies.
This technology is used in an array of industries, including healthcare, retail, hospitality, and industrial. An added benefit of partnering with Distribution Management for Zebra products is Barcode Select—an automated supplies replenishment program that also offers fleet visibility and provides preventative printhead alerts and replenishment.
Barcode printers represent a non-threatening way for any size dealer to diversify their product offering.
“Barcoding is a tremendous opportunity,” said Gruener. “It’s a growing market. It’s not that different of a model from selling copiers or printers. There should be a comfort level there. Dealers have a salesforce talking to IT folks, and thermal barcode printers reside on the network. There’s some work upfront to understand the media, and that’s where we feel we supplement our dealers and try to help them along with Zebra, TSC, and the other brands we promote.”
“The product is everywhere,” added White about thermal barcode printers. “It takes a little bit of effort upfront to get the knowledge to understand it, but the machines aren’t overly complex. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way in understanding the media. We’re seeing dealers big and small jump into it. And, the beauty of it is that we’re seeing six- and seven-figure deals for the printers, and the media is two to three times that.”
Looking Forward
Over the years, Distribution Management has shown that it is anything but complacent. It does a stellar job of planning ahead. There is always the potential to add more product categories like barcode and thermal. “We position Distribution Management as a specialized print distributor, and that means that we want to have the broadest, deepest offering of manufacturers under that parameter,” said Gruener. “So yes, we are looking for more lines and other technologies with print and imaging adjacencies.”
Don’t be surprised to see the company expand its A3 and thermal barcode offerings. “There is so much activity and positive momentum coming from that,” observed Gruener. “From the sales side, we’re hunkered down into A3 and the barcode space. Obviously, we’ve got our traditional business, and that’s been going strong for a long time. There is more thought being put into equipment services, helping dealers that maybe have fewer staff when they’re rolling things out nationally. What can we do to help them with the distribution of that product?”
White hinted at some new announcements in the second half of the year related to expanded partnerships. “We can’t be specific at this stage,” he said, “nothing’s a deal until it’s a deal.”
Stay tuned because if you’ve been partnering with or following Distribution Management for any length of time, it should be obvious that there’s always more to come.
