Safety Kick

When any one item accounts for half of a distributor’s total sales, there’s a substantial demand for it; when that product happens to be gloves — from oven mitts to the chemical-resistant nitrile variety — that distributor is making sure a lot of hands are getting the TLC they need. HP Products is one such company, but it wasn’t always that way.

“We were looking to diversify ourselves from the rest of the jan/san industry,” says Bridget Shuel-Walker, president of the company, a jan/san and safety products distributor headquartered in Indianapolis. “We were looking at other products we could sell, and we thought safety would be an easier one to add on, then we could do packaging later,” she says of her company’s 1987 decision to pursue the safety supplies market.

The company’s safety-supply focus doesn’t stop with gloves. Safety products come in all shapes and sizes: eye protection, hearing protection, hard hats, coveralls, boots, respirators, back support, caution tape, cones, barrier tape, fall protection, signs, and even beard guards are just a few of the many products that fall under the safety-products umbrella. Many distributors find them valuable additions to current lines, whether they’re add-on products or large chunks of business. With SARS and other communicable diseases in the headlines each day, certain safety supplies have experienced a recent surge in demand.

For instance, during the height of the SARS scare, Shuel-Walker says her company couldn’t keep so-called dust-mist masks in stock at all.

“Our suppliers were sending them overseas and into Canada. The demand was so high and supply was not as great. The back orders just piled up,” she says.

Growth In Gloves
John Irwin, vice president of product development for Impact Products, headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, is one of those manufacturers specializing primarily in personal protective equipment, including gloves.

Irwin says his company, like Shuel-Walker’s, has seen substantial growth in the gloves sector. Of Impact’s 4,500 distributors, 50 to 60 percent are buying some type of glove while 30 to 40 percent carry a wide variety.

“Our significant growth has been in gloves and safety. I think people are seeing an opportunity here.”

Some distributors, however, are hesitant about venturing into uncharted waters, he notes. Reaching a certain comfort level in selling these products is one obstacle jan/san distributors must overcome. The rest, he adds, is simple.

“They’ve got an inside track with the chemicals,” he explains. “If they can get into the janitor’s closet by offering them MSDS sheets, among other things, they can say, ‘By the way, I’ve got a right-to-know center.’ They can see what issues that customer has — are they wearing gloves, for example. They’ve got the natural lead-in with the chemicals and maintenance programs.”

Distributors can add onto their chemical sales with eye protection, hand protection, dust masks, safety shoes, and any number of other safety-related products.

Irwin recommends that distributors looking to enter the safety-supply arena overcome the initial discomfort by dedicating one or two people to the product category, who can later train the rest of the staff.

“What they need to do is choose someone in their sales force to become the expert that can go out and make the calls and find out what [customers] need.”

That’s exactly what HP Products did. After an unsuccessful search to buy a company with already-established markets, HP Products instead hand-picked two specialists in the field — one dedicated to buying, one to selling — who paved the way for the rest of the salespeople. Most of the company’s safety supply business came from further penetration of HP’s current accounts, 42 percent of which are industrial.

Selling both janitorial and safety supplies gives her company a leg up on the safety-supply competition, Shuel-Walker says. As customers attempt to minimize the number of distributors they work with, HP Products can come in with an expanded product bundle. Other doors open as well.

“If we run into a road block with an account, a lot of times with the safety supplies you can go in and approach the nurses or the environmental safety directors and get your foot in the door,” she says.

Cool Move
Shirley Parker’s company has taken a slightly different approach to safety supplies, and with favorable results.

Parker says her foray into safety supplies was born of necessity. When Parker’s husband died in 1999, she took over the Coral Spring, Fla. business, which at that time was based solely on chemicals. Parker says the company struggled, and “just fell into” the safety supply arena.

“We were able to build more business with current customers and open new doors,” she says. Now the company sells jan/san supplies and equipment as well as safety products.

Safety glasses and gloves are the hottest sellers, according to Parker, who says her company is successful because her sales team spends time determining the best “fit” in the way of gloves and glasses. Her company had one customer whose employees were in and out of hot and cold rooms. Their glasses were constantly steaming up.

“They weren’t wearing them, so we got them anti-fogging glasses — and they’re stylish,” she adds.

But the product area with the most growth is Parker’s most recent venture: cooling supplies. One of the company’s two websites is dedicated strictly to cooling bandanas for the head and neck, vests and other items that help laborers work under extremely hot conditions.

It all started when Parker ran into a friend who, on a hot day in Florida, stepped out of a manhole he was working in.

“I thought he was going to die,” she says. She asked him if his company did anything to help with heat relief; he said workers were given water.

Parker thought there had to be something else available to help people like her friend. She began reading and researching everywhere she could, and discovered there were products available that offered heat relief. Now her company sells them to industrial companies, medical organizations and other businesses where people work in hot environments.

Parker sells to consumers through her website as well, and has seen a spike in interest from the families of soldiers stationed in Iraq.

“We have wives and families contacting us about sending products over there,” she says. “We’ve been getting orders and they’ve been sending them over.”

Where’s the Business?
Irwin agrees that the opportunities abound for jan/san distributors to branch into safety supplies. It’s important that distributors recognize some of the trends in the market, though. Plus, they must also feel comfortable discussing the products with potential customers.

A few trends Irwin says to watch: more demand for powder-free latex gloves and nitrile (chemical-resistant) gloves, more attractive eyewear styles, more ergonomically designed products and greater innovation in the fight to prevent cross-contamination in food service.

For distributors ready to explore whether their customers would buy safety supplies, Shuel-Walker recommends surveying current customers to gauge their interest in moving business away from their current supplier.

Irwin offers more advice: “The suggestion we give them is to go into that account that’s 50 to 75 employees or less. That’s the kind of places they can pick the business up.” The challenge is greater the bigger the potential account is, but, he adds, the potential is still there for hungry jan/san distributors.

Parker takes the hands-on approach, and tests out every product before she decides to sell it. That way, she can better fit the product to the customers’ needs.

“To me, you need to have a variety because not any one product is going to fit any one person,” she says.

“We try to do everything we can for the customer to get them the right product. The competitors might be a little cheaper with some products, but I don’t worry about competitors. We don’t just write an order.”