David Concors
(Editor’s note: The September feature in ENX is “Diversification in the Supplies and Aftermarket Markets.” That’s the theme for this month too in ENX/The Week in Imaging. Throughout the month we’ll be presenting complimentary editorial that delves deeper into how various suppliers and wholesalers are broadening their product offerings. Our conversation with David Concors expands further into Supplies Network’s diversification strategy and includes material that was not included in the September feature because of space constraints.)
At Supplies Network, diversification encompasses products and services, including MPS and some traditional services. David Concors, vice president of sales, reports that in terms of products the company has diversified heavily into printers across all the major OEMs.
“The diversification has more to do with the amount of equipment we’re stocking and the resources we’re hiring, moving from traditional sales roles into more of a specialist role,” states Concors.
Supplies Network now has a team of printer advisors that’s an overlay to its sales force. They’re tasked with helping resellers source hardware by assessing needs, then aligning with the best possible manufacturer rebates and special offers. While predominantly focused on A4, the company has a similar strategy for A3 and has hired a rep with a copier background to help Supplies Network expand its presence in the MFP space.
“Having an A3 specialist is helping us to diversify and build an A3 multifunction presence. We have invested in both the stocking of inventory and hiring of incremental resources with relevant backgrounds to help accelerate that business,” reports Concors.
Another area of product diversification is wide format.
“We sell a significant amount already but have never formalized that business model,” states Concors. “We’re now aligning more closely with manufacturers to increase our inventory on wide format so that we attract a wider array of resellers who today may not look to us for traditional ink and toner, but may look to us for a depth and breadth of wide format products.”
Concors is also passionate about Supplies Network’s expansion into services.
“Services are helping us create more value beyond just simply a buy-sell relationship with our customers,” he says. “There are areas in MPS and the imaging category where there’s a great need to further support our resellers.”
Examples include a recently launched national printer installation service. The company dispatches its network of service technicians to end-user locations to do the onsite setup of printers and MFPs. Because of its distribution model, Supplies Network allows customers to take advantage of instant rebates, manufacturer specials, and buying in bulk when sourcing the equipment from Supplies Network.
“They can also look to Supplies Network to help store a large purchase and then leverage our installation service to coordinate the shipment of those devices to the right location to meet the technician at the right time and do the installation,” explains Concors. “It’s not just printer installation, we also have the capacity to manage the storage of those devices so they can take advantage of the economies of scale associated with making a large purchase. Many may not have space or capacity to store them in their own facilities.”
Another area of service diversification is local device management as it relates to MPS.
“We have a local device management solution that enables customers to include the local devices that today are typically difficult to manage,” states Concors. “We incorporate those into our MPS model and assume responsibility for managing the supplies replenishment and the servicing of those devices. This simplifies the resellers’ ability to secure all devices in an environment where historically they tend to take the network, but have a difficult time managing to the locals.”
In addition, Supplies Network has aligned itself with two leading finance companies to provide customers with expanded terms to satisfy large, high-volume purchases of both hardware and supplies.
“That’s us doing the things we need to do to be a formidable player in the hardware space,” emphasizes Concors.
The company is also looking to build out its national break-fix service component, a component unrelated to MPS.
“Anybody can call us at any time and ask us to fix it, and we would do that for anything not connected to our MPS program,” says Concors. “This adds more value to customers.”
Last but not least, Supplies Network is offering hardware configurations.
“Many printers we sell require software to be loaded or flashing to be done to certain devices, like in Lexmark’s BSD program to make them eligible for the BSD supplies to work properly in the devices,” observes Concors. “We are in the process of evaluating our ability to create a configuration center in our distribution centers to provide that expanded service and minimize the amount of vendors or solution providers our resellers have to rely on. We’d like to have the full hierarchy of being able to allow that reseller to source from us, configure from us and store and install from Supplies Network as part of our hardware program.”
