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E-commerce can enhance role of packaging distributor!

That’s the conclusion of Dr. Barry Lawrence of Texas A&M, a distribution systems specialist, who sees a changing role for packaging distributors.

Dr. Barry Lawrence
Dr. Barry Lawrence

Many individuals in packaging in the United States say that direct sales and e-commerce will eventually replace the packaging distributor. In general, they don’t believe that packaging distributors will have a significant role in the movement of packaging products from manufacturer to the manufacturing end user.

Dr. F. Barry Lawrence, a distribution specialist at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, disagrees with that assessment, and talked exclusively to Packaging World about the new role he sees for distributors.

“Replacing the distributor with e-commerce has not materialized because the assumption is grounded on the fact that, if you can eliminate inventory, you can eliminate the distributor,” he tells PW. “That understates the many other roles that distributors play that are equally important.” Lawrence is a 3M Fellow and director of the Information Systems Consortium and serves as an assistant professor in Texas A&M’s Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution. Last year, Lawrence brought his message to the annual meeting of the National Assn. of Container Distributors (Philadelphia, PA).

The contention that packaging distributors are an endangered species also downplays the significance of information management. “This process,” he adds, “is much more complex than anyone has even begun to imagine. The distributor is in possession of a tremendous amount of information that it now uses through people-based systems like sales forces.

“To remove the distributor from the chain would require packaging manufacturers to develop much more complex sales organizations, which they’re typically not equipped to do because of cost,” Lawrence says. “But also because they don’t have the distributors’ capability to sell across multiple categories or markets.”

However, he cautions that his optimism about packaging distributors is tempered by understanding that even distributors will fight some of the changes he feels will be necessary. “While the most valuable thing a distributor has is its customer information, what do they often do with it? Too many hide it from the packaging manufacturer! That’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

Issue of control

One of many conundrums in predicting the future of the supply chain is that though the packaging manufacturers crave more customer information, they’re often not anxious to see distributors become better at information management. Lawrence says that despite the fact that better information will make manufacturers more successful, it’ll also make the distributors more powerful. Because of long-time distribution channel conflicts, manufacturers are in no hurry to see distributors become more entrenched in the chain.

He relates a story about an electrical products manufacturer that had an arrangement with its distributors to get point-of-sale information. The manufacturer took this data and was able to profile many of the customers. The manufacturer shared the sales profile data with distributors to help them anticipate product mix orders.

However, Lawrence points out that the only data the manufacturer really has is its own sales. It doesn’t see its competitors’ sales data, sales of like products, all the unique factors that affect a region’s or customer’s sales profile. Who can add all of this other information? The distributor who knows that market, according to Lawrence. “Their analysis can be many orders of magnitude better than the pure sales information,” he stresses.

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