The title of Jim Pancero’s recent ISSA seminar, “Successful Selling In Today’s Economic Environment,” would be a great backdrop for this month’s cover story.

The economy doesn’t make it easy to be sanitary supply distributors these days. That’s why the room was jam-packed. And the economy’s effects — stiffer competition and price wars, to name a couple — contribute to one overriding trend: squeezed profit margins.

In “Eroding Profits”, we discuss the forces chipping away at distributor profit margins, as well as ways to keep margins from affecting overall profitability (sales less your operating expenses).

In this issue, we also discuss a margin killer — reverse online auctions (“How Low Can You Go?”). Distributors are struggling to decide how best to handle them, and we’ve come up with some practical information about what they mean to you and your customers. If you haven’t already been involved in an online reverse auction, take it from the distributors we interviewed: know your rock-bottom price and stick to it.




POSTED ON: 11/1/2002