Industries — Distribution 03
You don't make anything and you don't run a press. Your product is speed, taste and coordination — the right idea, priced properly, decorated by the right partner, delivered on the date you promised. Almost none of that is helped by the admin around it.
Where the money goes
Every one is skilled, repetitive and invisible on a P&L. Each has an agent.
Vague enquiries and phone calls that take days to become a presentation.
02 / Work coming inHalf an hour to honestly compare three products across three suppliers.
03 / Winning itBuilt by hand, rebuilt when the client picks option two.
04 / Work you're missingAnnual programs never prompted, campaigns blasted to everyone.
05 / Work you're missingWaiting for the phone to ring is not a sales strategy.
06 / Work going outOne job, four suppliers, four purchase orders, four sets of numbers.
07 / Work going outWhich decorator gets this job, and where is it right now?
08 / Work going outThe job you thought made 38% made 21%. Nobody knows why.
09 / Every dayThe agent you talk to — about your data, your setup, or a job you need done.
01 — Customer consultations
"Something nice for the conference, 500 of them, around eight dollars." No decoration method, no firm date, no artwork beyond a logo pulled off their website. Someone reads it, works out what's missing, writes back, waits, gets half an answer, writes again. Meanwhile another distributor presented on Tuesday.
This is the part that usually only one or two people in the building can do. It stops being a bottleneck, and it stops leaving with them.
“Two quick things and I'll have options over today — do you have the logo as a vector, and is this a one-colour imprint or full colour?”
02 — Sourcing
Every supplier has a different catalogue, different decoration charges, different minimums and different lead times. Comparing three products properly means opening three tabs, adding freight and imprint by hand, and hoping the lead time on page four is current.
Only two of the three make the in-hands date without a rush charge. That's visible before you present, not after the client picks.
03 — Presentations
Pull product images, lay out options, add pricing, brand it, export a PDF, email it. Then the client picks option two with a different colourway and asks to see it again. Distributors win on the quality and speed of that document, and most of them build it by hand.
Follow-up fires automatically if it goes unopened for two days.
04 — The clients you have
The company that ordered conference kit every spring hasn't been contacted. The client who bought drinkware was never shown apparel. And the one campaign you sent went to the whole list, which is why almost nobody opened it.
Four campaigns to four audiences, instead of one email to everybody.
05 — The clients you don't
Distribution is a relationship business, which is often used as a reason not to prospect at all. Hiring a salesperson is a real salary before a single order lands, so growth stays tied to referrals and whoever happens to find you.
The point isn't volume. It's that prospecting happens every week without anyone having to be the person who does it.
Sequence stops automatically on reply. Every reply becomes a enquiry in the same queue as inbound.
06 — Purchasing
The order goes out to a drinkware supplier, a bag supplier and a decorator, each with its own portal, its own minimums and its own acknowledgement format. Then the same details get typed into your own system so anyone can answer where the job is.
07 — Outsource partners
One decorator does your embroidery, another your screen print, a third handles rush work when the first two are full. Choosing between them, sending the artwork, confirming the date and finding out where the job actually is happens over email and phone calls, per job, every time.
08 — Margin & analytics
Freight, a rush charge, a sample nobody billed for and a partner who costs more than the other one. By the time it's invoiced nobody recalculates, so the number you remember is the one on the presentation.
Which categories carry margin. Which suppliers cost you in freight and rush charges. Which partner is actually worth using. Most distributors have never been able to see any of it.
Tech products move volume and carry almost no margin once freight is in. Most distributors have never had a way to see that.
09 — Ask it anything
The other agents work in the background. Reggie sits in a panel beside whatever you're doing, knows how the software works and can query your live data — so the answer is about your business, not a help article. And it doesn't just answer: it does things.
It also writes the brief that lands in your inbox each morning — in plain English, in the format you asked for.
“Which outsource partner delivered on time most often last quarter, and what did each cost per piece?”
“Build a presentation of three drinkware options under $7 landed for Meridian Group.”
Nothing reaches a customer without a click. Every action it takes is written to the audit log.
The roster
Each owns a job that currently eats somebody's afternoon — and hands back finished work, not a summary of it.
Turns enquiries into complete requests, chases presentations, prompts reorders and runs outbound sequences.
Answers status questions, handles approvals and reminders, and keeps every thread filed against the job.
Sources across your suppliers, prices landed, and raises the purchase orders each job needs.
Routes decoration to the right partner, sends the artwork and specs, and tracks the job until it ships.
Opens every file, checks imprint feasibility, and builds the mockups your presentations are made of.
None of this replaces the taste and relationships that win the work. It removes the part of the day that never needed a human in it — and it means the knowledge about suppliers and partners that currently lives in one or two heads is finally written down somewhere.
Send us one real enquiry — the email, the purchase order, the artwork, the messy bits — and we'll run it through the agents in the first ten minutes of the call. That's a faster argument than anything we could write here.