By Joel Lefkowitz President, Allstate Flooring Distributors
The current economy has retailers struggling to maintain profitability and manufacturers making cuts across the board to reflect the decreased demand for products. It is this landscape that has made distributor partnerships more critical than ever given their array of products, logistics solutions, training programs, financial services and more.

For retailers, distributors have always offered a low-cost and efficient conduit for products. By acting as retailers’ warehouse and providing fast delivery, they save stores the expense of carrying large inventories while still ensuring that products are on the shelves when they are needed.

That cost savings is clearly more important than ever in today’s economy, but so are the many other services distributors provide. For example:

• Distributors have ramped up their educational and training programs in new products and technology. Most wholesalers have experienced salespeople. They can walk into any store and teach a retailer or retail salesperson everything about wood—how it is installed, types of constructions, species, etc.

• Distributors help the retail salespeople sell a profitable mix of wood flooring so as not to compete with the big box. People go to a specialty retailer for expertise and selection more so than price. We had to teach retailers they could sell exotics, they could up-sell the customer, that the customer is often looking for more than the Chevrolet she would find in the big box.

• Distributors’ extension of credit to retail customers can be a lifeline for cash flow, particularly given the banks’ current tight grip on credit. The average small retailer is paying their distributor in 30, 45, 60 days. Distribution offers an alternative credit line to a full-line manufacturer’s line, which can be tapped.

• If a retailer needs to get merchandise to a jobsite, he has to arrange his own transportation. A distributor has the trucks to deliver to the jobsite. This saves time and money. Speaking of which, a manufacturer’s tractor-trailer cannot go to job sites. We have straight 24-foot curtain trucks.

• Distributors carry all the accessories from the tools to the nails to the glues to the moldings to the underlayment—whatever a retailer or contractor may need to install the floor correct way.

• Next-day delivery. You can call here up to 5 p.m. and in most areas we will deliver the next day. That’s our survival. Call up a manufacturer and it could take two or three days.

• When there are claims, we usually handle everything from the inspection to resolution. That’s because our volume commands the full attention of the manufacturer. On the other hand, most manufacturers use an outside agency to process claims.