Page 68 - The Inside Scoop Archive

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Why Virtual Suppliers are a Good Choice

Get Ready

Here Comes A Brick

Through Your Window

While most stretch film users buy their film from local brick and mortar distributors, buying your stretch
film from a virtual national distributor such as National Packaging Specialists may be a good choice for you.

Brick & Mortar distributors typically have a lot of overhead to cover. They maintain a warehouse, delivery
trucks, inventory etc. Then they have to pay people to man the warehouses to unload and load trucks, to
drive the delivery trucks, buy fuel for the trucks, etc. All of these costs have to be reflected in your price
at some point. Virtual distributors have inventory that is maintained at the manufacturing plant, and is
available to ship to any of your locations nationally. As the manufacturer maintains the inventory and ships
the product to your location, the virtual distributor does not have to maintain a warehouse or pay for
delivery trucks, people, etc. This eliminates a lot of overhead and allows for lower pricing to national
customers.

A word should also be said about the inventory. Brick and Mortar distributors buy inventory and sit on it
until they have a sale. Sometimes they buy the wrong inventory and it sits and sits until they can find
someone to take it. A virtual distributor's inventory at the plant is always fresh as it is constantly turning
to supply a national customer base. You get film that has just recently been produced instead of film that
has been sitting for who knows how long. One of the things that I have noticed about Brick & Mortar
distributors is that they sometimes have a habit of substituting one stretch film item for another without
bothering to tell the user. They will send 70 gauge instead of 75 gauge, or 5,000' instead of 6,000' etc. It
just depends on what they have in the warehouse at the time you order. A virtual distributor like NPS
always ships what the customer orders as he has multiple inventories in multiple manufacturing plants to pull
from to make sure you get what you order.

The one thing that Brick & Mortar distributors emphasize is "better service", and while they can provide
same day delivery in a limited number of cases; the rule is that they make deliveries in your area a couple of
times a week. While a Virtual Distributor, like NPS, is able to ship direct from the factory within 48 hours,
and even same day when the customer is running out of stretch film. We have had several cases lately
where the customer called in an order in the morning saying that they were about out of film, and we had it
shipped the same day to be delivered the next day. We are able to provide same day shipment to many of
our customers whether it is two pallets or a truckload. We have it in stock and ready to ship.

file://C:\Documents and Settings\William Jackson\My Documents\Northwoods Software\M... 7/9/2007