Can you imagine our industry Facebook and social media groups opening up to political postings? Based upon the nearly equal division of members of the two parties, all hell would break loose with partisan rancor. The operative word for today is “tribalism”. This is nothing new. We set foot on the continent with over 700 tribes of native Americans, not at peace with each other. Still, they ultimately settled most of their differences as they faced a common enemy, the Europeans. Dare I position direct sellers and direct sourcing as our common enemy?
Back to Facebook and social media. The platforms, for the good and the bad, have given voice to even the smallest grievance or complaint. I implore my wife to stay off the Nextdoor App because, if the waiter puts the fork on the wrong side, someone will bitch about the restaurant with full knowledge that their trite grievance will harm the establishment’s business. For what end? Why does a person who has a negative experience need to go public with an incident that may be an aberration, an exception, an anomaly? Has anyone else had their fork placed on the wrong side of the plate? "Just asking", reads the posting. Sad to say this is a social disease facilitated by social media. It is spreading faster than Covid-19 and can close the doors on a business faster than the virus.
I learned when doing an educational session in Seattle a few years ago how one local rural silk screener was put out of business by a negative review on Yelp that she was desperate to remove but could not. It was a post by a member of the school’s parents’ association who was not happy with the tee shirts nor the offer made by the screener to correct the situation. It also happened that the plaintiff on Yelp was a cousin of a vendor that lost the bid.
I am a participant in several industry groups on Facebook, LinkedIn and other portals. Over and over, I see the postings by distributors lambasting a given supplier and requesting others to pile on. For what end? Is the goal of the poster to punish the offending supplier by tarnishing their business? Is it their goal to let all buyers beware of an endemic issue within the given supplier company?
Social media has given every single practitioner in our industry a platform to speak out and be heard by an inordinate number of people. The smallest of the small has the power. This is about growing tribalism within our industry.
Attention distributors ... suppliers are not your enemy. Attention suppliers ... distributors are not your enemies. Each side of the aisle lives on the fruits of the other. It is called synergy.
It is time to close the open warfare by social media. Screw-ups will never be eliminated. Margins are not to be questioned. Overruns are historical necessities. Shipping costs and fees are required for basic survival. Breakage happens. A bespoke industry cannot be measured by the Amazon standard. It is a false equivalency to compare a custom order to a 24 hour delivery of an imprinted shirt.
If you look at your relationships as "us against them", you will lose. If you look at your relationships as how much you squeeze the other side for margin, you lose. No marriage is always harmonious (except mine, in case Elyse reads this) and no spat deserves public disclosure. If your goal is divorce, then go public. Suppliers have powerful tools for “vengeance”. Credit information is king and notes within a credit report are persuasive. Word of mouth from distributor to distributor is a powerful tool but what good does it actually do? Is it altruism that makes a person want to warn his competition away from a source of supply as opposed to letting them learn for themselves? What is the intent of bitching on social media if you want to continue as a partner in this industry? Build relationships. Remember, NOTHING can be deleted.
With internet innovation, the question became will the SDE model continue? Despite my personal pessimism that our business model was in jeopardy, it has thrived. Loyalty is the cornerstone of our ability to deliver suppliers through distributors. Viva loyalty and viva SDE.
Joel D. Schaffer, MAS is CEO and Founder of Soundline, LLC, the pioneering supplier to the promotional products industry of audio products. Joel has 48 years of promotional product industry experience and proudly heralds “I was a distributor.” He has been on the advisory panel of the business and marketing department of St. John’s University in New York and is a frequent speaker at Rutgers Graduate School of Business. He is an industry Advocate and has appeared before the American Bankers Association, American Marketing Association, National Premium Sales Executives, American Booksellers Association and several other major groups. He has been a management consultant to organizations such as The College Board and helped many suppliers enter this industry. He is a frequent contributor to PPB and Counselor magazines. He has facilitated over 200 classes sharing his industry knowledge nationwide. He is known for his cutting humor and enthusiasm in presenting provocative and motivating programs. He is the only person to have received both the Marvin Spike Industry Lifetime Achievement Award (2002) and PPAI’s Distinguished Service Award (2011). He is a past director of PPAI and has chaired several PPAI committees and task forces. He is a past Chair of the SAAGNY Foundation, Past President of SAAGNY and a SAAGNY Hall of Fame member. He was cited by ASI as one of the 50 most influential people in the industry.