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Distributors Grow Sales Despite Stormy Conditions

Creative approaches and product diversification brings double-digit growth

The Top Distributors have outdone themselves once again, selling a total of more than $1.76 billion in print over the past year. Proforma, a distributorship franchise based in Cleveland, has once again topped our list. In the past few years, they've waved good-bye to a few firms that have gone out of business or have been acquired, and they've waved hello to sellers strong in commercial printing, promotional products and marketing/promotions. This year's all-star list grew an average of 13 percent, a positive stride from last year's 9 percent average growth rate—proving how nimble and creative the distributor channel can be, no matter the economic forecast.

Of course, sales volume doesn't tell the whole story. That's why we've expanded the list and broken out smaller distributors, who we know are up-and-coming. (See page 62.) The sales per employee metric for a few of these distributors can compete dollar-for-dollar with their bigger competitors—and landed them on the "big leagues" list at Nos. 4 and 9.

Digging deeper, we found that environmental issues have risen to top-of-mind for many distributors. Although only a few are FSC-certified themselves, the lion's share of top sellers say they consider the qualification when choosing a vendor. About 30 percent of the top 50 listed office supplies and/or office furniture as an important product offering for their companies.

Survey Methodology
Information in the distributors' rankings comes exclusively from the companies themselves. A survey form is sent to known contacts listed in our database. We follow up with reminders and solicitations to companies that haven't responded by the deadline. This year, the deadline to return surveys was April 25, 2008.

Participants are asked to report their FY 2006 and FY 2007 sales figures. The difference between those numbers is used to calculate a company's growth percentage. The fastest-growing companies are noted on page 40. The survey also asks for the number of employees. The FY 2007 sales figure is divided by the number of employees to determine the highest sales per employee rankings (page 42).

Additionally, participants are asked to give sales figures for the following categories: commercial printing, cut sheets, envelopes, labels and tags, paper-based products, plastic products and promotional products. These figures are used to rank the largest distributors by product subsets. When distributors decline to break down their sales figures by category, they are not included in the product sales lists.

Top Distributors by Sales

This list includes North American companies that reported fiscal 2007 sales to Print Solutions. To compute annual percentage change in sales for firms that didn't report fiscal 2006 sales, the magazine used previously published sales figures from the June 2006 issue (the Top 100 Distributors issue last year). All sales figures are in U.S. dollars.
A • indicates membership in the Print Services and Distribution Association (PSDA).

* Fiscal year does not correspond with calendar year.