When one recaps the history of the compatibles market, someway, somehow, Bob Willmes’ name is likely to come up. After all, he’s been doing this for 30 years, and although he may not describe himself as an industry pioneer, he was one of the first selling compatible products, even if in the early days his primary focus was floppy disks.
Supplies Wholesalers, the company he founded in 2010, is on a mission to provide excellent value to an array of dealers and resellers scattered across all 50 states. Supplies Wholesalers’ inventory encompasses more than 3,000 different products, including laser toners, inkjet cartridges, fax cartridges, POS ribbons, maintenance kits, copier toners, laptop batteries, and chargers.
The products stocked by Supplies Wholesalers are known for their high quality and are warranted to be free from defects in material, workmanship, and performance for a period of one year from the date of purchase. Another plus is that its compatibles have an impressive overall defect rate of only one percent, and are ISO 9001/14001 certified with most toners STMC certified. For added customer confidence, life-cycle testing ensures page yields are at least equal to the OEM cartridge along with similar print quality.
It’s All about Greater Profitability
Bob Willmes
Supplies Wholesalers has a well-earned reputation, too, for helping its customers enjoy greater profitability. That’s achieved by providing them with a competitive price, the aforementioned low defect rates, which helps lower their costs and allows them to maintain customers as well as a one-stop shopping experience.
“We offer a full selection so they don’t have to place four PO’s and their customers receive three or four different packages from three or four different vendors,” states Willmes.
Customers can also rely on Supplies Wholesalers for a high order fill rate—at least 98+ percent on a first-time basis without counting back-order fulfillment. “That’s a high-value proposition!” exclaims Willmes. “We have enough volume to source right.”
The BTA channel, for one, relies on Supplies Wholesalers to meet their compatible needs as do e-com retailers and traditional office supplies dealers/contract stationers. The company also does business with smaller wholesalers and is seeing a huge uptick in business among MPS dealers. “Since the beginning of Supplies Wholesalers we’ve been focused on working with MPS dealers,” states Willmes. “We’ve really done well with them.”
That said, Supplies Wholesalers does not offer an MPS solution. “We just offer a good value proposition on the most important cost for a dealer when running and managing their MPS platform, which is the toner,” emphasizes Willmes.
If that’s the reason why MPS dealers choose Supplies Wholesalers, what about everybody else?
“It’s the value proposition,” responds Willmes. “We are a one-stop shop. Besides stocking more than 3,000 compatible aftermarket SKUs, we stock big volumes. We always have over 500,000 compatible cartridges in stock.”
Best of Breed Sourcing
With its volume, Supplies Wholesalers has the luxury to take advantage of best of breed sourcing. “And we do,” says Willmes. “That’s key because about 1,500 of the SKUs come from China, making up about 80 percent of our volume. The remaining 20 percent is domestically sourced.”
Whether it’s a US-based or China-based source for HP color toner, Ricoh, Xerox, or Lexmark as well as niche products, the emphasis is always on best of breed. Even though it’s a challenge finding those products, that’s a big reason why Supplies Wholesalers has been growing since its inception. “We hold our factory’s feet to the fire from a consistent quality standpoint,” states Willmes.
The company has a monthly defect report and analyzes every return. After verifying that it was their product, the cartridge is weighed to determine exactly what percentage was consumed. In addition, every cartridge has a code so Supplies Wholesalers can identify which factory supplied it.
“Then we want to know the reason for the defect,” says Willmes. “Every month we report a detailed list by cartridge to the factory so we can be fully credited and show any spikes. If we start buying HP color from a factory in China and see a spike, we determine why and what’s been done to fix it. We hold them accountable every month.”
In-House Tech Support
Customers also appreciate Supplies Wholesalers’ in-house tech support department, which has an extensive database for all products it markets. A special phone line is answered by the following greeting: “You have reached Tech Support, this is Monica, how can I help you?”
This is an added service Supplies Wholesalers extends to customers and their end-users. According to Willmes, in most cases there is a “fix” that can be provided in the field, preventing a costly return while preserving a client’s customer’s confidence in the product.
A Growing Force in the Compatibles Market
Asked to identify the biggest difference between Supplies Wholesalers today and when he started the company a few years ago, Willmes cites scale. “Importing is a volume proposition so it’s difficult in the beginning. You need to know where to go, who’s good, and who’s bad. And you need capital and have to invest in inventory and infrastructure, otherwise you’re just another one of these L.A. importers whose brother has a factory, and they come and go.”
Supplies Wholesalers has a strong internal infrastructure, which is another reason for the company’s consistent growth. Willmes has been there done that before, having founded and grown four different companies in this segment. “Each time you learn from your mistakes and you try to do it better the next time,” he notes. “With Supplies Wholesalers we’ve done that. We’ve gotten scale quickly and a good infrastructure—most of our managers have been with me for 10+ years, some 25 years; you need good people.”
Tracking the Trends
The office imaging industry has seen a lot of changes over the past 30 years, but one trend that Willmes currently sees having a serious effect on the business is end-user adoption of MPS. “MPS was coming on when I was exiting the business in 2005,” he recalls, “however, the adoption rate was slow. Now, in my opinion it’s reached a tipping point. You have the copier and printer OEMs offering programs to capture that loyalty and end-user. You have machine dealers and straight MPS dealers now that are getting scale and don’t even have to offer the machine and don’t have to offer local service. They’re learning how to connect with service providers so they can offer a national MPS solution.”
That’s good news for Supplies Wholesalers and its customers. “In the next year or two, MPS will gain adoption and for Supplies Wholesalers to grow, we have to align ourselves with that channel,” emphasizes Willmes.
Centers of Distribution
In an industry where customer service rules and speed is of the essence, Supplies Wholesalers’ customers know that when one of their clients need product quickly, they can count on Supplies Wholesalers to deliver, thanks to a business model centered around fast and economical ground shipping. “When we started in 2010 you could still air ship as a standard, but now with fuel prices continuing to increase air shipping has become cost prohibitive even if you’re on a hub like us,” states Willmes. “To be competitive we have to be able to ship more of our products ground in that one- to two-day sweet spot.”
It’s been a terrific year at Supplies Wholesalers thanks in large part to a new distribution center in Reno to complement its Memphis distribution center. “We have seen the business increase because we can deliver to 85 percent of the country in one to two days via FedEx Ground,” states Willmes.
FedEx ground shipping is free for orders over $200 while second-day air is a flat $13.50 rate. Overnight delivery costs are $19.50 flat. Economy ground is also available from $3.50.
Future Focus
To serve customers even better and hit that sweet spot of one- to two-day delivery even harder, the company is looking to add a Northeast Distribution Center in the first quarter of 2015.
While customer service is an area where Supplies Wholesalers excels, the company is focused on enhancing that even more going forward. This past year Supplies Wholesalers placed a big emphasis on interfacing its ERP system with its dealers’ ERP systems. Plans are underway to expand that in 2015. “Whether it’s the ECi platforms, which we integrate with most of those or whether it’s an ecommerce e-tailer who just wants to send us an XML file every day from his shopping cart system, or direct integration to the robust Power Ecommerce platform it’s seamless integration,” says Willmes. “That’s important to them because it eliminates errors and lowers costs.”
Clearly, Supplies Wholesalers is doing something right, achieving 50 percent year-over-year growth during the past year, something Willmes says was one of the company’s most notable achievements these past 12 months. He doesn’t overlook the ERP integrations, the Reno West Coast distribution center, and color laser adoption as key growth drivers either.
Willmes has learned a lot during his 30-year career, but there’s one thing he wishes he knew when he first started in the business all those years ago that is a valuable lesson for his customers and prospects alike. “I wish I’d known early on the value proposition of alternative supplies and that goes back to when I first sold 8-inch floppy disks back in 1984.”
Despite that, is he still having fun?
“I’ve had a couple of breaks along the way and I think I’m having more fun than ever,” he beams.
And Supplies Wholesalers’ clients are all the better for it.
Contact information:
Supplies Wholesalers
500 Damonte Ranch Parkway, #944
Reno, NV 98521
(866) 817-8795
Supplies Wholesalers’ Total Value Proposition
- Incredible breadth of product, offering 3,000+ compatible items
- Extremely competitive shipping rates, including Free FedEx ground shipping on orders over $200
- Same-day shipping and blind drop ship options available
- Private Label and Custom Label options available
- Distribution centers located in Memphis, TN and Reno, NV
- High quality products with an overall defect rate of only 1%
- Exemplary customer service
- In-house tech support
- EDI and ERP Integrations now available
- New Reno distribution center adding extra coverage for shipping times, now delivering to 85% of the U.S. population within 1-2 days by ground
