E-tail has shrunk the acceptable delay between a consumer’s wish and its fulfilment to a span measured in hours. Those new expectations have transferred over to the business world, with ease of ordering and speed of delivery important factors. And there are many large-scale industrial distributors are able to cater for such custom.
That model makes one important assumption: that customers know exactly what they want. How do you buy what you don’t know you need?
“When they are starting up a process, engineers don’t just need adhesives; they need application equipment [pictured at right], curing equipment, surface preparation equipment and process knowledge. We do see this fairly regularly, when the manufacturer gives them a bill of materials and a drawing, says ‘Make this’, and they come to rely on people like us to help them set up and develop the process and make it robust and repeatable,” explains Peter Swanson, managing director of adhesive distributor Intertronics, which supplies adhesive brands Dymax, Born2Bond, adhere, Opti-tec, Araldite, Polytec PT and Wacker.
He says that the services of distributors like his fall into two stages: first is what he describes as the ‘hero stuff’ – solving a customer’s problem – through technical understanding, empathy and proof in the form of trials and tests.
Swanson continues: “The second stage is, now that you’re in production, you’re relying on us to provide material to you every day, and we have to make sure it gets there. We’re not about to stop a factory because it runs out of adhesive. So this is supply chain management. We are stocking product here, which if you order up until 4pm, it will be with you next day.”
It’s the same in the metal fastener world, says Richard Avery, MD of Zygology. On one hand, he says, stocks are so important that many of its customers are other distributors that rely on its next-day service to supply their own customers in two days. And, on the other hand, his company also offers other services. He explains: “In terms of applications engineering, we can offer advice, CAD models, or sit with a designer and show them how things go together. We spend an amazing amount of time with young CAD designers that have never seen a piece of metal in their lives. We go through tolerancing. We end up teaching engineering, quite often.”
He says that such services used to be offered by manufacturers’ own sales engineers, but they have mostly gone by the wayside. “Now most manufacturers rely on distributors to do this. Sadly most don’t do this effectively. There’s a skills gap between customer needs and what [sellers] are able to offer.”
Another issue is the tension in requirements (and procurement power) between the engineers and the procurement department, complains Avery, which sometimes “wants the easiest route and doesn’t want to get involved in fasteners.”
It’s an issue that is familiar to Intertronics. Swanson observes: “Industrial distributors can give benefit sometimes. There’s a purchasing tactic of reducing the vendor base by buying adhesives from the same supplier as they get other parts from, like screwdrivers. And when the engineering staff lose the intimacy and ability to talk to people, then they widen the supply chain again.”
Specialist product expertise on offer by definition can only go so far. Avery, for example, says: “We call ourselves a technical distributor, with a small portfolio of products which we understand fully.” Zygology only has agencies with Stanley Engineered Fastening, PennEngineering, Southco and Qonnect Fasteners; all for metalwork. “We always look for products that are complementary. It’s no good us going into products that are alien to us,” he reflects.
This approach chimes with that of adhesives distributor Techsil. MD Chris Dilley advises that customers avoid generalists. “A specialist will take them through the pros and cons of the various solutions. Specialists are experts, so they should listen to the advice of someone that has done it thousands of times and has run up against the problems.”
That depth of knowledge cannot, by definition, apply to every part available in the market. Even though Techsil has distributorships with 11 adhesives OEMs, including Momentive, it cannot match the sheer variety on offer from some internet retailers.
Having said that, the reality is more nuanced, for two reasons. First, Dilley points out that supermarkets have a short-term stocking strategy: “Everybody wants stock that moves, but adhesive products can be niche. We have had customers of RS Components that have found us because they are after scarce materials.” (He adds that another important reason why it’s a good thing that distributors hold product stocks is to smooth out the variation in supply of products that are usually made in large batches, to match customer demand, which is linear.)
Second, distributors like Techsil can offer support in specification. He continues: “Where we don’t have the range of a supermarket, our manufacturers can back us up. If we don’t have an item of stock, we have an understanding of what product is available, and then we can go back down the product supply chain and get samples to see if it is suitable. The first recommendation might fail, but we could look to find another with different characteristics, whether it’s cure time or strength or conductivity or viscosity or IP rating.”
Swanson at Intertronics takes the point even further. He says: “We think we’re a specialist store; we don’t think we can provide real technical advice about all the products we have access to, with real understanding and depth, if we were a supermarket. Therefore it’s not about the range, it’s about understanding the applications and the products and how to put them together. How you use them, how to specify things to put them together in a package. That is far more important than range for our kind of products.
“If a customer asks us for Loctite, we say no; we don’t offer it. We have a competing range. Also, we have only one type of UV-cure adhesive, and only a certain type of cyanoacrylate. We don’t have 6-7. If you go down the cereal aisle, you might find five or six types of corn flakes. We only want to have one, and we hope it’ll be Kellogg’s.”
He says that the company continues to strive for excellence in customer service, which depends on its own technical expertise. “What our customers value from us is quick response. I don’t think they often get that from large competitors who are direct suppliers. Also, there’s a lack of STEM [science, technology, engineering and medicine] education in this country, and we’re all worried in industry about where we are going to get the engineering and technical people for the future who want to work in this industry and are well-educated. That’s constraining us, and we worry a little about the experience and expertise held in the heads of older people, and how to pass all of that on.” As a result, Intertronics recently appointed a full-time learning and development manager, Kevin Brownsill (formerly Cook).
BOX: How to find an added-value distributor
How can customers find specialist distributors? Richard Avery at Zygology advises an old-fashioned approach: ring the manufacturer and ask for authorised distributors in your area. He explains: “Most manufacturers have two types of distributors: specialised distributors, and simple online reseller-type retailers, which they tend not to recommend for customers ringing up for advice.” He doesn’t recommend using the internet. “An internet search is hopeless. There are so many names, and who has the biggest pockets pays the most for the pay-per-click adverts that crowd out the first page of search. It’s impossible to get an independent result on internet search.”
