“Manufacturers of the future will be looking for distributors with digital buying,” Lisa Kleinhandler told a 2019 International Fastener Expo conference.

Young and Kleinhandler

After all, a growing percentage of B2B buyers are “digital natives” – or they grew up on cell phones, laptops and other digital devices, Kleinhandler pointed out.

As third generation in the Youngstown, OH-based Hudson Fasteners, Kleinhandler and Chris Young have led a distributorship through the digital transformation. They launched their first website in 1999: HudsonFasteners.com.

They developed Product Genius Technology as a patented sourcing B2B eCommerce platform and industrial network for searching, sorting and displaying fasteners and industrial supplies.

Young commented that despite the consolidating, the $200 billion U.S. industrial supply market is “still fragmented” and thus open to traditional distributors. She said 70% of the companies are “small to medium.”

The growth is in digital sales, Young emphasized.  Nearly two-thirds of Grainger’s sales are already online that number will continue to climb, Young said.

“Time is the new currency,” Kleinhandler declared of the speed of ordering online vs. traditional sales calls.

“Amazon understands everything about your buying,” Young said. Fastener distributors need digital transformation to compete, she said. It is about “optimizing the lifetime value of customer relations.”

Distributors can offer self-service and each customer can have their own price with the right software, Young said. It starts with knowing the customer.

The digital transformation includes distributors adding more product information online, using social media marketing and simplifying product searches.

“The user experience is the goal.” Web: ProductGeniusTechnology.com