Combat in the safety zone

Two major marketing groups do combat over safety product sales

by Richard Vurva

The battle lines have been drawn in the fight to win customers of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other safety-related products.

In the past 12 months, the marketing and buying group Affiliated Distributors has quietly but decisively begun to map out a plan to help industrial distributors carve business away from safety specialist distributors. But its counterpart in the safety industry, the Safety Marketing Group, has unveiled new initiatives that it hopes will enable members to hold onto market share and become even stronger competitors in the national and global accounts business.

A-D’s safety market development program resulted from two years of study by a steering committee and communicating with industry experts about what it takes to be successful in the safety market.

“This is end-user driven,” says Stu Mechlin, vice president of the King of Prussia, Pa.-based industrial supply division. “This is a direct response to customers telling industrial distributors they want to reduce their supplier base, so they want industrial distributors to provide them with the safety products they need.”

Sales of safety products are one of the fastest-growing segments among industrial distributors, Mechlin says. It’s a reflection of the trend toward supplier consolidation.

“One of the great strengths of the industrial distributor in the safety area is they’re viewed by the end-user as the place to go as the end-user reduces its supply base,” he says.

One advantage of dealing with general-line industrial distributors is they offer expertise across a broader range of products, Mechlin says. For example, in addition to providing end-users with products and services traditionally thought to be the purview of safety distributors, industrial distributors add expertise about the safe applications of hand and power tools, chains, slings and hoists.

“Industrial distributors bring to the table wider expertise on many more products that increasingly are getting more safety director scrutiny,” Mechlin says.

Serious about safety
Mechlin insists A-D’s interest in the safety category is more than a case of distributors simply carrying a few gloves and safety glasses, hanging up a shingle and saying, “We’re a safety distributor.” A-D has added several safety vendors as preferred suppliers, welcomed specialist Vallen Safety Supply as an affiliate member, held a safety conference last fall and will add a safety track at its annual North American meeting in September. It is urging affiliates to hire people with safety and health training, enroll staff in safety training programs and join safety organizations.

“I still think the safety distribution channel and safety distributors are very important to the end-user. The resources, time and dollars that the industrial distributors in A-D are devoting to this area reflect the safety distributor’s strength and value in the marketplace,” he says. “But, A-D and our industrial affiliates are taking this market opportunity very seriously.”

For example, A-D affiliate W.P.&R.S. Mars Company in Bloomington, Minn., has been involved in safety since the 1920s, when it provided personal protective equipment to workers in iron ore mines in upper Minnesota. Today, about 15 percent of the company’s more than $20 million in annual sales is related to safety.

The company is an active member of the National Safety Council and regularly exhibits and leads workshops for the Minnesota Safety Council. It has a full-time safety specialist on staff who has helped train inside and outside salespeople.

“In this day of consolidation, when we work with our key accounts, one of their headaches is what to do with the safety category,” says Robert Mars. “They’re glad when they come across a general-line distributor that is strong in safety. It gives them a way of consolidating their supply base and including safety in that consolidation.”

Safety distributors fight back
Safety specialists aren’t sitting by idly while their industrial counterparts cherry-pick customers. The Safety Marketing Group, which has grown to 54 distributor members with 135 locations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, continues to emphasize the importance of the safety specialist.

“You don’t need a degree in safety or specialized training to sell a pair of work gloves. But where you have to be very careful is when customers require a respiratory program, instrumentation or a hearing conservation program,” says Rich Harper, president of the Ormond Beach, Fla., group. “When it gets into the areas that cause workers’ compensation problems or OSHA regulations, that’s when you run into problems. There’s no way the industrial distributor salesperson can be an expert in all of those things. That’s where you need to work with a safety specialist.”

If you’re a manufacturing customer and you line up an industrial supplier, a safety supplier and a welding supplier next to one another and had to choose one as your vendor of choice, who would you pick?  That’s the question Shawn Murray of Safety & Supply Company in Seattle wants asked. “The safety supplier obviously has much more opportunity to reduce costs than the other two,” he says.

“We’re trying to get the idea across that our value is more than just providing products. Our value comes from the knowledge we bring,” says Carolyn Johnson of Safety Equipment Company in Tampa, Fla.

Two preferred supplier members of SMG contacted for this story believe the organization has been effective. Greg Willis of protective clothing manufacturer Lakeland Industries, Decatur, Ala., says sales among distributor members of SMG have grown at twice the pace of safety specialist distributors that don’t belong to the group.

Adds Wayne Johnson of Accuform Manufacturing, Brooksville, Fla., another SMG preferred supplier: “SMG distributors are a lot more receptive to take on new products and take new products to market for us. Plus, SMG distributors generally have a much higher level of experience in the safety industry.”

Unwilling to rest on its laurels, SMG is working on new programs to increase its effectiveness. For example, three new multi-plant customers signed contracts as a result of a national accounts marketing campaign begun last year. In the past 12 months, SMG signed contracts with Willamette Industries, with 12 plant locations; American Standard Trane, which has 34 plants in the U.S. and Mexico; and Accuride, with six plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“We’re creating a presence for SMG and convincing the multi-plant customer that we are capable of providing them better service on a local level with the same transactional capabilities that the very large national distributors offer,” says Harper.

In addition to the national accounts program, SMG will soon finalize plans to develop a master safety product database that members can share to develop print catalogs and, ultimately, an e-commerce offering.

“Every one of our members understands the necessity and importance of having a print catalog in addition to a Web-based catalog. The biggest expense and the biggest headache anyone has developing a catalog is building a database,” Harper says.

The master database will enable SMG members to more cost-effectively develop print or online catalogs, custom catalogs and promotional fliers.

A delicate balancing act for suppliers
Some suppliers find themselves caught in the middle. They have long-standing relationships with safety specialists in general and SMG in particular, but want to expand their distribution channels. So, suppliers like Christian Dalloz, Sorbent Products Company and Lakeland Industries belong to both organizations.

“Joining A-D has opened up a whole different channel of distribution,” says Willis of Lakeland Industries.

He recognizes that some distributor members of SMG don’t appreciate his involvement in another marketing organization, but believes it’s a market opportunity he couldn’t overlook.

“It’s a channel of distribution we really haven’t tapped into yet. It’s an opportunity for us to pursue new business. In the last six months, I’ve had pretty good interest from people in A-D coming to us to buy our products,” he says.

Safety & Supply Company’s Murray understands the desire by manufacturers to explore new marketing opportunities, but believes some suppliers are being shortsighted.

“They’re trying to achieve sales growth with pull-through by grabbing market share and increasing their channels of distribution,” he says. “But by commoditizing their lines, what happens is they’ve turned the safety supplier into a transaction manager. Distributors are then forced to promote their own capabilities, instead of actively marketing suppliers.”

The result: a weakened channel relationship.

But Mechlin believes A-D’s success in signing safety manufacturers as preferred suppliers reflects their recognition of a changing marketplace.

“The market leaders realize the channel is shifting and they don’t want to be left behind. They recognize A-D as being the leading buying and marketing group,” he says.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2001 issue of Progressive Distributor magazine. Copyright 2001.

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