The Changing Role of Distribution
DOW Electronics attends retailer events, such as this one at Sound Pro in Conyers, Ga. The distributor will often bring a demo vehicle along to help support the event.
its beginning stages of rolling out services for retailers. In the near future, dealers will be able to log on to the Velocity Distributing website and look up any products they’ve purchased that have serial numbers. “If their shop gets broken into, for example, and the product that was stolen is tracked by serial number, they’ll always have access to it and they can log in and look it up,” Greenfield explained. “You can see the things you’ve ordered, you can reorder and you can see what other people have ordered.” The website is a continued work in progress, something Greenfield himself is working on. Velocity will also handle factory returns. “On some stuff, if you have a problem, you can return it to us and we handle the return,” he said. “Our Houston marketplace is really big. We have a lot of dealers who will call in the morning or afternoon and do an in-store pickup.” At their location, Velocity has also set up a “hand-picked area” to showcase available products. “We have multiple displays, the majority of what we have
in stock. A lot of dealers might not know we have a particular new dash kit, or new lights from Heise, but it’s available in our handpicked area.” Davis Distribution offers a lot of training opportunities for retailers, according to Nate Taliani, the company’s vice president of sales. “We also offer webinars several times a month. We’re very active on social media, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. We encourage our dealers to get active on social media. It’s very obvious that the dealers who are active on social media are successful,” he said. “We try to hit it from all angles. We use social media as a sales and marketing tool, and we also use social media to give tech updates and we encourage them. A lot of our dealers will take the stuff we post on social media and repost it also.” Since its inception, DOW Electronics has supported the independent dealer, according to Elkin. “It doesn’t necessarily matter what we’re selling, you just have to know how to sell to them and understand their needs,” he explained, adding that a lot of the businesses the company deals with are mom-and-pop stores. “We tell our salespeople to recognize that their time is very, very important, so let’s make sure we’re cognizant of that
and bringing value to them at every step of the transaction and every step of the customer experience,” Elkin said. “We’ve really focused on being a value-add. We’ve focused on that customer experience.” DOW has several graphic artists and a marketing department that assists dealers in ad and content creation. “We do a lot of logo redesigns, shop redesigns and car and truck wraps,” Elkin added. “If dealers want to do any television, radio or billboard promotion, we have resources and contacts.” For DOW, Davis and Velocity, training is paramount. Velocity Distributing intends to offer additional training in the future, according to Greenfield. The company also plans to offer training sessions in Spanish. “We have a training facility here in Houston in our main location where we can seat between 20 and 25 people,” he said. “We are also considering different creative ways of helping shops to better brand themselves. We’re leveraging better pricing for our clients, and that can be done multiple ways.”
On the Road—Supporting Retailers at Industry Events Davis Distribution gets the most interaction with its dealer base at KnowledgeFest Indy, according to Taliani. “We also do Jeep events and events at marinas. If it’s an anniversary sale a dealer’s having, we’ll participate in that.” The company offers in-house remote start facebook.com/MobileElectronics
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