Ted Gruener has some really fond memories of 2019. The vice president of sales for Supplies Network proudly noted the company enjoyed a record year with explosive numbers that touched upon all its core offerings—supplies, equipment and services. The company opened three new distribution centers within a nine-month timeframe, capped with the recently christened St. Louis facility, loaded with robotics and other automated technologies. That helped double capacity and accommodate the brisk growth.
If 2019 was any indication of things to come, its foray into barcoding supplies added limitless potential.
“Barcoding supplies gained significant momentum, and now with our expansion into Zebra hardware we’re well positioned for continued growth,” Gruener noted. “Overall, we were just thrilled with the tremendous performance we had in 2019.”
Not surprisingly, Supplies Network continued to perform exceedingly well as 2020 garnered steam, and the pace set during the first quarter held promise for another record-breaking campaign. Then came March and the pandemic, which carved a huge swath into profits for most companies, including in the BTA channel, which represents a lion’s share of Supplies Network’s clientele.
As good as the first quarter was for many businesses, the second quarter was proportionally damaging. The distributor managed to emerge from the first half of 2020 flat in comparison to its predecessor (though the Distribution Management parent company benefitted from an uptick in activity by DM Fulfillment Services, which shipped a tremendous amount of product through ecommerce).
Prime Opportunity
Thus, in an era when BTA dealers and other resellers to the channel are looking for an edge to supplement income lost to the pandemic, the timing to launch barcodeSELECT is extremely fortuitous. The new program is designed to offer an automated approach to replenishing barcoding supplies. It provides a new element for resellers to augment their managed print services (MPS) menu, particularly for high-need verticals such as health care, retail, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and hospitality.
Supplies Network is leveraging its four-year relationship with Zebra Technologies, an established leader in the thermal barcoding imaging space that boasts 65% of the printer market, but less than 10% share of the supplies market. Zebra, which had not added a distributor in years, felt Supplies Network and its MPS focus (and of course, supplies) made for an ideal pairing.
The initial entry provided some challenges for Supplies Network, as barcoding supplies had stark contrasts to the more straightforward toner cartridge. Two years into the relationship, Supplies Network hired Jay Schofield, a veteran of the barcode identification space, to help the company better navigate its quest to proliferate barcoding supplies.
“We realize today that our BTA and MPS dealers are literally walking past millions in sales opportunities, and they have no easy way to monetize it,” Gruener pointed out. “If you think about labels and health care wrist bands, they’re manually ordered, much in the same way toner was 10 years ago. It’s a manual process because there was no automation. Dealers see the printing devices and recognize the Zebra name, but they don’t want to add resources or a website to take a manual order. Even to the extent that the managed print dealers are turning on Zebra devices in the BTA, they really had no way to monetize.”
All that has changed. Zebra printers equipped with the LINK-OS printer operating system yield the data points necessary to produce actionable data for supplies replenishment. With toner replenishment in Supplies Network’s mpsSELECT program, the cartridges have the benefit of a smart chip. While thermal labels are not “intelligent” media, Link-OS-enabled devices provide a high level of usage data, and Supplies Network was able to utilize a lot of the same features of mpsSELECT in terms of data collection.
Automating Process
“We’ve been working over the past year to tweak some of those algorithms and determine when to ship product when we don’t have a chip-embedded device,” Gruener added. “Today, barcodeSELECT allows us to automate single-use barcode supplies replenishment, using the same tools as the mpsSELECT platform. Dealers can simply add barcodeSELECT to an existing MPS deal. We had one dealer literally add it within a two-day period. It was quick and easy.”
Gruener sees a huge opportunity for dealers to upgrade the Zebra equipment to include the Link-OS technology, but that opportunity pales in comparison to the lucrative supplies nut. On its website, Supplies Network points out that customers annually spend three to 10 times the cost of their Zebra printer on supplies.
Using mpsSELECT as a template, Supplies Network wrapped its barcodeSELECT value proposition around four key aspects:
- Data collection service for monitoring devices.
- A supply management system to trigger orders and notifications for monitored devices in need of consumables.
- Supply routing labels included on each supply box to simplify routing within the end-user environment.
- Local device management for non-networked devices, eliminating rogue orders and simplifying supplies fulfillment.
In addition to rogue purchasing, barcodeSELECT addresses common challenges such as stock outs, production downtime, limited fleet visibility, expedited orders/fees and excessive inventory. In fact, both the dealer and end-user can monitor all aspects of the print environment through MyPrinterManager.com.
With so many of the aforementioned verticals already in the portfolios of dealers, Gruener feels it’s a matter of decision makers taking a hard look at the opportunities for adjacencies they can build right into their MPS programs. Supplies Network can offer MPS advisors and equipment advisors to work alongside business development managers, with webinars in the works to help dealers better understand the opportunities barcodeSELECT affords. In addition to Schofield providing guidance, Zebra also has some beneficial programs dealers can leverage based on their commitment level. In short, barcodeSELECT can speak to dealers who have a wide range of expertise on the offering, including beginners.
“A little bit of work is needed up front to identify what kind of media is needed, and we can help provide them with a roadmap,” he said. “There will be some training associated with it, and they have to teach themselves how to look and ask for these opportunities. We can help them understand which printers are Link-OS printers and which ones are prime for an upgrade.
“Our response has been tremendous so far. We’ve been talking about barcodeSELECT and there’s just a huge amount of interest. It’s something that can happen quickly, and it’s a much closer match to what dealers have been selling, as opposed to other offerings they have tried to get into.”
Just how lucrative is the opportunity? Bill Erpelding, director of marketing, cited a market report by analyst organization Smithers that projects the global market for thermal barcode printing will reach $45 billion by 2023.
“We feel there’s a lot of market share to be picked up because it is a very large industry that is growing,” Erpelding said. “We’ve spent a lot of time working out barcodeSELECT to ensure we have the program baked well enough. It’s quite revolutionary in the sense that managed practices have not been applied to the industry whatsoever, until now.”
Gruener added that Supplies Network has worked closely with Zebra to help refine the offering and garner even more actionable data from Link-OS. As the program continues to evolve, he envisions it one day being able to develop a cost-per-label format, as opposed to carton-level replenishment.
“Zebra has been a fantastic partner in terms of reacting to what needs to be shared,” Gruener noted. “As the data becomes available, we’re going to continue making the program better.”
In an age of such uncertainty, Supplies Network will continue to evaluate its product and service offering and find new resources to enable the BTA channel—which represents more than half of its business—to forge a better path forward. From barcodeSELECT to work-from-home solutions, pivoting will be essential to replacing revenue that is, at least temporarily, off the table.
The company is definitely all-in on its quest to help clients execute their business goals and expand within the print category. “Our recent expansion was a huge investment and was driven by our growth, and it enables greater flexibility to support our customers, whether it be inventory or helping them manage large equipment orders,” Gruener said. “The use of robotics has helped our ability to drive costs out of the distribution model. We’re all trying to do more with less these days.”
