I just went to their site.
Does not look like they put a lot of money into their site. A sign that they don’t believe it drives their business model.
It is very expensive to have website designers adding products to a site especially if you represent a lot of vendors. I personally use a service for my site. The service I use has a bunch of templates that are design specifically for distributors like myself. I can chose from over two hundred different designs where I can upload my own company graphics and info too. So it looks like my own site and nobody knows the difference and it looks like I spend a lot of money on it, but don’t.
The site is pre populated with product from 1000's of vendors in a blind format and they pay to use this service as well and get their products on my website. If I were to try and duplicate this on my own I wouldn't be able to afford it. I have some choice as which vendors products show up on my site so if I don't like a vendor I can go into my site and click a button and none of that vendors stuff will show up on my site.
Before websites got cheaper to build a lot of us distributors would have a site just like this BIT and then rely on paper catalogs and flyers from our vendors to go out to the clients and show the products that might meet their needs. This was back in the day when I was considered more of a promotional product consultant. But the ease of the internet has changed all that and I am now more of a store. In truth most of my business comes from clients that value me more as a consultant and not so much of a store. So I really don’t see my own website as a big asset.
This BIT company looks as if is still operating under the consultant model. They probably get referred a lot and go in to new clients as a consultant and assess their needs and then only show them the products that meet their needs. So a real fancy website in their opinion may not be needed. They see their knowledge as a value to the client and not the products that they might sell. Smart business model IMO.
They would likely do an assessment of the client’s needs and if they think the Magshoe is a good fit then they would show that client info on the magshoe likely in paper form.
The drawback for Magshoe is that it reduces the exposure of their product, but at the same time if a consultant recommends the Magshoe I think that is bigger than just seeing it in an online catalog.
So I think this is a non-issue wit BIT and their website.
I think the bigger issue is why the Magshoe is not selling.
In my field, I can access a data base that I pay for that lists something like 95% of the vendors worldwide that want to sell their products through me. Something like 75% of the distributors like myself use this same data base. In this system (database) I can rate the vendors I use by its product quality, customer service, production times, and problem resolution ability, etc, etc. A well as all the other distributors that use the service. All these ratings that we the distributors submit are collecting and displayed on that vendors profile in the database. So when I use a vendor for the first time I can look at this section on their data sheet and see how my competition view these vendors performance. Each category is rate A thru F. I don’t us anybody who does not have an overall rating of C+ or better. It just saves me a lot of headaches. Also I belong to several Associations specific to my industry and in those I can log into a similar things as I-Hub and bring up a specific vendor and see what other distributors are saying about a vendor and their experiences good or bad about the vendor in more detail. For Example I went to one and several other distributors were saying that this Vendor was caught by them calling on their clients, essentially trying to steal the client and sell to that distributors client directly. Usually failing vendors will pull this kind of move and us distributors even thought we compete against each will tell each about this as it protects the overall business model. It’s in some way is like a Cabal.
I tell you this because IDO is working with distributors, but they are also I think selling direct. Whenever a vendor does both they run the risk of actually calling on their own distributors clients. When we find out and we usually do, we will never do business with that vendor again and we will go to another vendor and represent their product and undersell just to get back into that account and push that betraying vendor out. Especially if that account is valuable to us.
So with that said, I think the focus should be on IDO and how they are working with the distributor and how they are representing the product. It should be on why these distributors are not selling the product. Is it because they did an install and the products didn’t work and IDO did not refund the money or fix the problem. Do they lack the knowledge to do an install and IDO does not have a team that goes out and does the install once the distributor has sold the product. Has IDO burned distributors in the past and word has gotten around like it would in my world. There could be many reasons. That’s why I think it would be important to focus your questions to Mr. G more on this distributor model and how it works. I think you will find more answers there than anywhere else. And, I am surprise that IDO does not do more to enlighten us on how it works with distributor more on their own. Such as what % of sales came through distributors vs. Direct. What they do to protect their distributors, Etc, etc.
Here is an example of a company in my world that has a great way of doing both selling through distributor channels and retail. BIC makes all kinds of stuff and they sell through retail and promotional products distributors only. Go to the website at www.bicgraphics.com and try to buy direct as an end user customer. You won’t because they protect their sales channels. Notice on the website that you need a username and password to place orders or view wholesale pricing online. Notice that IDO has none of that. If I was an end user looking for a Magshoe devise and went to their site, there is nothing in place to stop me from ordering direct. Distributors don’t like this.
Anyhow food for thought.
PS. Only one post left for the day.
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