There’s never been a better time to start a distribution business because of the nature of the global supply chain.
You can find a high-quality outsourced manufacturer anywhere in the world, and leverage their skills and your knowledge of the local environment to grow a successful business in distribution. The value you create as a result can really serve to fill the needs in your community.
Here are some of the principles you should keep in mind if you want to become a top distributor in your country:
Find a reliable supplier and build a long-term relationship with them.
The first piece that you have to get right is to find a supplier that can buy into your vision and give you the necessary support you need to execute over the long term.
It may be tempting to just go with the lowest price, but that’s a mistake because your long-term success depends on consistent quality, rather than short-term transactional decisions.
Find a partner that can grow with you so that you are well-positioned to service your market in rain or shine.
Focus on relationships.
It’s almost cliché at this point, but relationships are everything in business.
People work with people they like and so you should be spending a lot of time and effort nurturing relationships with all your stakeholders, but specifically your customers.
Show them that you want them to succeed and you want to support their mission – and you’ll find that they reward you with the orders that you need.
Take your time here, there’s no need to sell aggressively on the first chance. Play the long game and you’ll have much better success.
Negotiate wherever possible.
The margins in distribution can be tight so every small cost saving that you can eke out will make a big difference to the overall performance.
Get creative with payment terms, bulk orders, repeat business, trade deals, and the like – to try and maximize your potential as a distributor.
Become a thought leader.
If you want to be the best distributor in your country, you need to be seen as the expert within the circles that you work in.
This means that you should be looking to become a thought leader so that your name is synonymous with the niche that you’re serving.
You can do this by publishing your thoughts and opinions in written form, speaking at conferences, or just doing what you can to add tangible value to the community.
Optimize your workflow.
The more organized you are as a distributor, the better.
So, leverage the latest technology to create highly efficient workflows where friction is removed as much as possible, and you can get to a highly optimized process from start to finish.
Every improvement you make here will compound and that makes for sustained growth that scales.
Conclusion
We hope that these principles have been helpful, but none of this works unless you take action. If you want to become the top distributor in your country, you need to put these into practice.
Here at Nastah, we manufacture gloves of all kinds and we work with numerous distributors across the world. If you would like to explore a partnership, then please do get in touch and we can start the conversation.
Good luck on your path to distribution success!
