[tboxer]

1) Accounts (bars, restaurants, wedding halls, grocery stores, etc.) are either served by a sales rep or the orders have to be phoned in if you don't have a sales rep. If you have a sales rep, you place your order by calling, texting or emailing.

The problem is that all ordering and product info is then reactive to the rep. You can't login and see prices or products available, you have to reach out to your rep to answer questions.

The other side is that reps are busy and driving around all day, so they often don't respond by order cut off time. Our system helps take away these manual tasks and let hem do more selling.

2) Distributors spend $100k-$1mm each year paying employees to take orders for house accounts. Our system allows them to cut down on this labor cost. It also allows them to reach more accounts as each sales rep might only be able to service so many accounts. If we can automate part of it, they can do more selling to more accounts.

[davemel37]

Strange question - Is there a reason it is still done this way? Are there entrenched distributors and commissioned sales reps that are incentivized to keep things the same way?

Many wholesale & distributor businesses seem to operate this way, but the reason is rarely due to lack of available technology solutions... Just a thought worth thinking about.

[tboxer]

The sales reps could see it as a threat depending on how it works with them. We always say that there is a place for good sales reps, we just don't want them to be glorified order takers.

You do also have a lot of old school distributor owners that view sales reps as hand to hand combat and are afraid of losing that touch point.

[seivan]

Sounded like it's straight out of The Office.

[buss]

Wow, that's madness. You've definitely found a great market to modernize.

How big is this market?

[tboxer]

There are 5600 distributors in the country. Our software could also work though for self distributed beers, liquor and wine, as they have to take orders also.