Customer Trap

Companies of all sizes continue to follow the mistaken notion that their products and services do best in the hands distributors with the ability to reach huge numbers of customers. Far too many business leaders fail to realize - until it is too late - that the pursuit of ever-expanding volume is not the key to long-term sustainability. As The Distribution Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business shows, by giving up control of their businesses to Mega-distributors and customers, producers of goods and services set themselves up for ruin. §§Marketing experts Andrew R. Thomas and Timothy Wilkinson made a splash with the first edition of this book in 2009. That book, The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities - won the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize as the best marketing book of the year. Now they take their original idea, that cracking the Big Box channel is not necessarily the Holy Grail that many marketers assume it is, to the next level. All product marketers, they argue, should control their sales channels. When they do, they may forgo some volume. Yet that is more than offset by higher margins and stronger brand equity. Best of all, the authors show through numerous case studies - including outdoor equipment maker Stihl, electronics firm Bose, and others - that it can be done. And they show how.§§The alternative is frightening. When presented with the option to push sales through large-scale distributors like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot, or Dick's Sporting Goods, or large catalogers like LL Bean, most decision-makers jump at the chance. As a result, marketing has come to resemble a relentless quest for efficiency and scale more than anything else. Demands from Mega-customers in the form of discounts, deals, and incentives erode the integrity of the brand and what it originally stood for. Lower margins become the norm and cost-saving compromises on quality take over. Over time, the brand suffers and, In some cases, fails outright.§§This book shows in detail how to thrive outside of the Big Box marketplace: You build the innovative products you know the market desires or demands, and you build and maintain your own sales channels to get them into the hands of customers. You control the price, the discount, and the marketing methods. Result: business is fun again, and margins improve to the point where the idea of giving up volume isn't a concern.§§The Distribution Trap shows how to make this business dream come true.§