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Play to Your Strengths

Industry vets share ways that distributors can maintain a lead over direct-selling competition

By LaShell Stratton

With so many direct-selling, promotional product providers appearing online and promising low prices and fast turnaround to customers, how can a promo products distributor gain a competitive edge? A few industry veterans say the answer lies in the relationship the distributors establish with their customers and their vendors and playing to those strengths.

“From a customer’s perspective, it’s an issue of time,” says Ross Barker, CEO of e-Quantum Inc., Reno, Nev., and former president of DMIA. “There are hundreds of thousands of promotional products and product lines. It behooves clients to focus on their businesses. The distributor can offer professional expertise and help them narrow it down. We can offer a greater number of products and focus on what the client’s needs are. The client should think of the distributor as an outsource resource.”

Distributors should play up what resources they have that the customers may not have. “Thanks to ASI and SAGE, which allow you to grade suppliers on things like cost, product quality and problem resolution, distributors have the ability to see who offers the best quality and savings,” says Anne Marie Zinzer, president of Barker Business Systems, Reno, Nev. Zinzer also notes that “some manufacturers are second and third-hand distributors who get their products from overseas and then resell them. You have to know who is the receiving manufacturer,” she says. “Distributors can do the research and go directly to the source.”

There is another reality to the promo products business that end users may not realize. “There are a lot of manufacturers that won’t even sell to the public,” Zinzer says. “This is particularly important among the wearables.”

One of those companies is the promo products manufacturer Gill Studios Inc., Lenexa, Kan. The award-winning manufacturer sells only to distributors. “That’s basically a decision that our founder made back in 1934,” says Carl Gerlach, director of marketing at Gill Studios. “When you’re selling promo products it’s not just a product, but the implementation of a creative idea. You’re trying to think of the most creative way to get a company’s message across.” He says he likes working with distributors because they function as brainstorming partners. “They have that element of creativity,” Gerlach says.

Also, if you’re a distributor who sells more than promotional products, emphasize programs rather than the product itself to potential customers. “More and more distributors are looking at packaged sales,” Zinzer says.

And they are right to do so since statistics show that customers get better response rates to campaigns when they package their products, including promotional gifts with mailers. A 2004 study by Georgia Southern University for PPAI documented how several pharmaceutical and medical product supply companies that sent a postcard offering a magnet or a T-shirt prior to a trade show were more likely to see booth traffic. Of the 47.9 percent of attendees who stopped by booths after receiving the pre-show mailing, 41 percent responded to the postcard with an offer of a free T-shirt, 36 percent responded to the mailer with the magnet and only 23 percent responded to just a postcard.

“As a distributor, you can send a direct mail piece that offers a promo product, have it encased in a plastic bag with a logo and you can also handle the mailing and fulfillment of the entire campaign,” Zinzer says.

And when it comes to online, direct-selling promo products manufacturers, there is no reason why a distributor can’t challenge them at their own game.
“E-commerce is a great solution for selling promo products,” Barker says. “We found that with promo and office products that if you build it, they will come. They will look to see if you have enough arrows in your arsenal.”

LaShell Stratton is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to lstratton@PSDA.org.