Case Study: Welding Products
Product/service area: Welding Products
Sales turnover: £18 million/year
This company sells welding products to the UK engineering industry, mainly through a network of independent distributors. The company's management wanted to establish how to improve the efficiency of its relationship with this distributor network and its end market, with regard to both the pricing of its product range and the service levels expected by clients. In a series of three studies, Ditton carried out interviews with around 40 of the company's distributors, by telephone and face to face. This enabled the client to design a pricing system that gave an effective and acceptable incentive to the distributors. It was then also able to modify its stock-holding and transport policies to reduce costs, while maintaining acceptable levels of service.