As an example of how a distributor can bird-dog sell-through to maximize sales, IPG President Mark Suchomel described at last year’s BISG “Making Information Pay” conference how IPG applies Mike Shatzkin’s vendor-managed inventory system (VMI) through Shatzkin’s firm, The Idea Logical Company. VMI shifts the responsibility for choosing what is shipped when and where from the buyer to the seller. It captures “long-tail data,” isolating in-store inventories by title, sales patterns, comparative year-to-year data and so on, and enables IPG to minimize returns and maximize its strategy of building sales and margins by emphasizing a reach to the largest number of accounts as against the largest quantities shipped per account.
Piecing Together the Distribution Puzzle
As an example of how a distributor can bird-dog sell-through to maximize sales, IPG President Mark Suchomel described at last year’s BISG “Making Information Pay” conference how IPG applies Mike Shatzkin’s vendor-managed inventory system (VMI) through Shatzkin’s firm, The Idea Logical Company. VMI shifts the responsibility for choosing what is shipped when and where from the buyer to the seller. It captures “long-tail data,” isolating in-store inventories by title, sales patterns, comparative year-to-year data and so on, and enables IPG to minimize returns and maximize its strategy of building sales and margins by emphasizing a reach to the largest number of accounts as against the largest quantities shipped per account.