The Founder of D-Rep was a sales leader at a global consumer goods brand selling through distribution in the US.  During a sales reorg, the prospect of effectively calling on the long tail of smaller distributors became a conversation due to its inherent inefficiencies.  Smaller independent distribution also faces a difficult future with the consolidation of commercial construction and industrial supply distribution.  PE backed distributors were, and still are, expanding their footprint at a rapid rate.  The decision was made to focus the direct headcount sales team on the consolidating distributors and focus less VSG&A on the smaller independents.  

What started as a backstop for the bottom 20% of the business evolved into an innovative approach, solving a challenge that faced most medium to large sized manufacturers.  How could we get our message out to distributors where we are not a significant portion of their business?  How could we get them to support our innovation?  How could we make them aware of complimentary sku assortments and trigger them with marketing campaigns when they’d missed order cycles? 

Then COVID hit and the in-person meetings shut down.  People learned how to consume information in new ways.  The email and B2B campaigns we were running started to get increased engagement.  Our distribution lists started growing rapidly with people opting into our regular communications.  The transactional buying opportunities started to transition into stocking sku’s and increased strategic importance of our brand to our distributors.  

The backstop became an incubator, a business development engine. And now D-Rep brings that solution to manufacturers facing similar challenges.