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For manufacturers of consumer durable goods, independent distributors make selling easier, more rewarding, and more economical. Their in-depth knowledge of geographical regions, in combination with their close ties to dealers, enable them to streamline the selling processes and gather hard-to-get market information.

 

Salespeople for independent distributors are uniquely positioned to establish and maintain strong relationships with dealers and can negotiate better deals with dealers than salespeople for manufacturers. This is because they generally have lived and worked in the dealer’s area for many years, they might also sell other products to them, and also because they know the dealer’s competition rather well – whereas salespeople for manufacturers usually must start from square one.

 

Choosing to sell to their end users by way of independent distributors (and subsequently independent dealers) makes sense for most manufacturers from a logistics point of view, since by doing so they reduce the overall amount of stress that gets placed on their operations and warehouse staff and systems. After all, fewer orders leads to fewer invoices and fewer shipments leads to increased warehouse efficiency.

 

 

Sales channels, i.e. a distributor network, are also by their very nature channels for information. Tracking useful pieces of data, such as which demographics buy their products the most and which sales strategies yield the best results, requires that manufacturers track every product they make that gets sold. Unless they sell their products directly to end users, however, it is extremely difficult for them to make sure that enough data gets accurately collected. Distributors can facilitate more precise data collection for manufacturers, through their close relationships with dealers.

 

To a consumer durable goods industry outsider, an independent distributor might appear to be nothing more than a ‘middle-man’ – but that would be a woefully jejune assessment, since independent distributors offer selling and information-gathering services that are, in most cases, superior to those of manufacturers. For these reasons, they will always have a place in the consumer durable goods industry.