Most manufacturers appoint the wrong distributor, then spend three years finding out.
Most manufacturers appoint the wrong distributor, then spend three years finding out.
I help manufacturers get this decision right the first time - or fix it when it’s gone wrong. Nearly thirty years on every side of exactly this call: as the distributor being evaluated, as the retailer whose shelf space depended on the answer, and as the manufacturer doing the evaluating.
I help manufacturers get this decision right the first time - or fix it when it’s gone wrong. Nearly thirty years on every side of exactly this call: as the distributor being evaluated, as the retailer whose shelf space depended on the answer, and as the manufacturer doing the evaluating.
Every side of the relationship
DISTRIBUTION TURNOVER RUN
Manufacturer-side portfolio
I’ve spent my career on every side of this. Industrial distribution first - branch management running large B2B supply contracts, then state management of a $100m business with 200 people. Then national and wider roles across Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. Large-format retail after that, with $500m+ turnover responsibility, including running a trade division with a field force of 130.
I’ve spent my career on every side of this. Industrial distribution first - branch management running large B2B supply contracts, then state management of a $100m business with 200 people. Then national and wider roles across Australia, New Zealand and Oceania. Large-format retail after that, with $500m+ turnover responsibility, including running a trade division with a field force of 130.
Then the manufacturer side. I built a sales company from scratch in Australia after a twenty-year distributor agreement ended. I then moved to New Zealand to run a country business across dealer and retail channels. For the last nine years, I led a global portfolio that grew to sixty-five distributor markets - six owned subsidiaries, a €100m+ P&L, seventy countries.
It never stood still. I opened white spots in a dozen or so markets, replaced several partners, took on a whole region of others, and watched a few fail outright. South Africa was the most recent conversion - a second distributor relationship that wasn’t working, replaced six years ago with a wholly-owned sales company. It was the same move I’d first made in Australia.
Some were excellent. Some had been the right choice a decade earlier and no longer were. Working out which was which was the job - and it’s the same question you’re sitting on now.
