Monthly Archives: June 2017

67. Distributors, Retune Your Brand and Find Your Partners

Your brand statement encompasses your company’s beliefs about your competitive edge. It’s your company mantra. Many distributors proclaim something like, “Our good people deliver good service”. But, most companies don’t have measurable, customer-centric service excellence that could help them earn a dominant share of accounts, have the firmest prices, or become first-choice for supply chain partnerships. Why not retune your brand?

What’s your path to powering your brand with service excellence? So, if you have a big warehouse in a warehouse district and an outside sales force, your future has been here in other channels for some time.

Your Future in a New Service Promise

A promise should be an IF, THEN statement. Most of all, IF your customer buys all they can from you, THEN you will: Continue reading 67. Distributors, Retune Your Brand and Find Your Partners

66. It Might Be Time Distributors Consider Partnering with Amazon

Is it time Distributors consider partnering with Amazon? A Platform Business Model is a web service that facilitates exchanges between a self-sustaining mass of users (e.g., Facebook) or buyers and sellers (e.g., Uber). Platform winners typically become monopolies with increasing value and cost economies of scale. Don’t underestimate the power of Partnering with Amazon and their five, and soon to be six plus, compounding platforms in distribution.

Prime

The first challenge is how to get the most, and the best, customers and sellers to your marketplace platform. With Prime, Amazon bootstrapped itself to a critical mass of loyal, repeat, big spending customers that other potential co-sellers want to reach. Prime membership started in 2005 and has snowballed to its present 60 million+ members in North America (85 million+ worldwide). Continue reading 66. It Might Be Time Distributors Consider Partnering with Amazon

65. Amazon Business Series: Amazon v. Walmart, Part 4

The rollout of supercenters at Walmart (WMT) stores across the U.S. was ending in 2000 as Amazon (AMZ) was simultaneously starting to nibble on WMT’s consumer whole goods sales. WMT’s subsequent 17-year response has been a slow, poor, expensive imitation. Walmart supercenters and Amazon’s online inventory have competed for nearly two decades, but is that WMT’s best strategy?

WMT can’t catch up. But, they do show signs of shifting their online capabilities to possibly digitally improve their core customers’ in-store shopping experience.

WMT’s Profit Core

A WMT supercenter stocks roughly 100,000 of the most popular consumer items. The top 7,000 SKUs by sales account for 70% of all sales. These SKUs all pass through WMT’s cross-docking centers. The daily delivery of these items to stores enables 99% fill rates with no excess inventory at everyday low prices. Customers go to WMT to load up on these consumables and buy other things they need. The bottom 80% of U.S. households, by income, can’t afford not to shop at WMT. These items and these customers are WMT’s profit core (times 4,200 stores in the U.S.). Continue reading 65. Amazon Business Series: Amazon v. Walmart, Part 4

64. Amazon Business Series: Auto Parts Retailers v. Amazon, Part 3

Parts 1 and 2 of this blog series looked at Grainger’s profit woes and new ways to assess the Amazon Business challenge to all distributors. Now Amazon competes with auto parts retailers for business. Using part 2 guidelines, what would you advise auto parts retailers to do?

Amazon Competes With Auto Parts Retailers for Business

Do the Auto Parts Retailers Have a Problem? In January, Amazon (AMZ) signed more direct-buy agreements with aftermarket auto parts makers. The stock prices of the Big Four retailers (Genuine Parts, O’Reilly’s, AutoZone, and Advanced Auto) took a hit. But in April, stock analyst reports claimed that the fears were overblown, that Amazon couldn’t put a dent in the Big Four’s moats, and that the stocks were now a bargain.

Continue reading 64. Amazon Business Series: Auto Parts Retailers v. Amazon, Part 3