Monte White
Distribution Management is a new IRgA Vendor Member with a long history as a distributor of imaging supplies and equipment. Until very recently, however, the company has not been a major player in large-format. That is changing. In this interview with IRgA Managing Director Ed Avis, Monte White, the company’s President, Wholesale Division, explains their expanded direction.
Avis: Tell me briefly the history of Distribution Management.
White: Distribution Management has over 50 years of experience as a wholesale distributor and has worked with many leading brands including HP, Xerox, Lexmark, Brother and others. It all began with our founder, Tom Fleming, who recognized the need for typewriter replacement ribbons, and in 1972, started the company that is now Distribution Management. Today we’re a billion-dollar-plus wholesale entity that specializes in print and imaging products, services and solutions. One of our core strategic initiatives for this year is branching into the wide-format market by adding industry veteran, Kevin Howes, to our Business Development team and expanding with HP.
You started on the office imaging side; why are you expanding into large-format?
We’ve always felt that to be a comprehensive provider of printing and imaging, we need to sell all things printing and imaging that are sold through dealer channels, and that includes wide-format. We’ve had considerable success in office print largely because of the way we serve the market, and we feel like some of those things are very applicable to the large-format market.
Until a year and a half ago, the manufacturers in that space were satisfied with their distribution coverage and weren’t really open to having another distributor. But there have been some changes in the distribution landscape that opened some opportunities for us. In October of last year, HP expanded our partnership to include part of their large-format supply offering, including DesignJet XL and PageWide XL inks, and that was the first big step. Last week we launched transactional DesignJet hardware with HP which was a major announcement we are excited about.
What segments of the large-format market do you envision serving?
Well, the particular segments of the market we can serve are primarily dictated by the products that the manufacturers allow us to support. As I said, last week we launched HP’s transactional DesignJet portfolio, which is more heavily focused on the repro side of the market but with a few SKUs that address the graphics market. HP certainly has a broader set of products on the graphics side, but we don’t have access to all of those products today. We have some of the inks and output media that support the graphics part of the market, but with hardware, we’ve started with the portfolio HP has enabled us with.
Why should a reprographics dealer consider working with you?
We don’t want to be just a “me too” player in this market. I think many things that have made us a leader in office print will translate to the reprographic channel.
First of all, our specialization in printing sets us apart. We live and breathe print. Our wholesale business is focused on print, our sales team is focused on print. And now, we’re learning this new part of the market, with Kevin’s help. I don't think I’d ever heard the term “ammonia sniffer” in my 35 years in print distribution, but we now know what that is!
The second thing is the way we manage coverage of resellers. In many cases, we have multiple layers of coverage for resellers that are sizable in this space. That is often quite different than the way our competitors address coverage. I've worked for big IT distribution companies, and in many cases, if you don't do millions of dollars with a business, you might not have a dedicated account manager. You might be dealing primarily with vendor-funded resources that have a bias for the particular manufacturer they represent. We tend to take a slightly different approach that is very partner-centric and is very much invested in coverage and support of those resellers.
On the office print side, we often get accolades from our customers stating that we’re clearly different in the way that our team understands print and how our team is approachable and has clear points of escalation and coverage.
In the distribution business, physical logistics and operations are considered table stakes. We know we have to address those needs in order to support our partners’ operations. We have over 1.1 million square feet of distribution space in our DCs. We process orders and ship very efficiently. When partners are buying from us, they know those orders are going to ship without fail the same day for parcel orders and usually the next day for LTL and truckload orders, dependent on carriers. They know the orders will be delivered to their locations or to the end users efficiently and without issue. We’ve done that since 1991 for supplies for almost every manufacturer in the space, and we expect that we’ll do the same thing with large format.
Will you compete on price with the other distributors?
We recognize the importance of staying competitive in the market to secure business, but as a privately held company, our focus isn't solely on pursuing revenue to satisfy outside expectations. Pricing among distributors will vary from time to time and being the lowest price isn’t usually a formula for long-term success. With that said, we will often be similarly priced, sometimes lower, sometime slightly higher. We believe we win partner loyalty with the other value-adds we bring to the table but pricing and freight have to be competitive in order to demonstrate that value.
If an IRgA member is interested in working with you to sell HP products, what’s the first step?
If they are not already an authorized HP dealer, we are happy to connect them with the appropriate people within HP to start that process and consideration. If they meet HP’s requirements, they can become a qualified reseller, and we can sell them the products.
If they are already an authorized HP dealer, we will get their account set up, give them logins to our portal for ordering, and get them going if they don’t already have those things in place.
We’ve probably already worked with some of your members that sell small-format products, but now we have a large-format portfolio that is more applicable to their business.
Anything else you’d like to add?
We realize that the members of your organization won’t really see much reason to change distributors unless they’re unhappy with the distributor they’re currently buying from, so we’re entering this market with the understanding that we need to demonstrate unique value to earn their business. We’re still figuring out what all of those elements will be in this market, but we have our eyes on a few. We think this is the first chapter of a book that hopefully will have many successful chapters.
For more information, call Kevin Howes at 302-559-7171