Online Vendor Managed Company Store Programs: Saving Your Time and Money:

Every medium to large sized business has employee promotional merchandise needs. Branded jackets, pens, pencils, coffee mugs, etc. are commonly used promotional items and are usually easy to find and purchase. However, when it comes to processing payments, managing inventories, and distributing these items to your employees and clientele, it can easily turn into a headache for the program administrators. Even worse, promotional items can, through inefficiency, turn into a significant cost center.

Fortunately, there are vendor managed online store models, that can help mitigate these costs while saving your team members money on the branded merchandise.

How it works:

Every business is different, which is why every vendor managed inventory program will have a slightly different structure. Powertex manages several larger merchandise distribution programs like these. Although they each have different specifics, there are a number of commonalities in each.

In a vendor managed program, a company that specializes in employee promotional items would assist the company to: build and maintain the online store, identify employee promotional item needs, source the correct branded items, warehouse, manage the inventory, merchandise and market the items via an online store, and distribute the merchandise. Employees would be able to visit a website, enter their order, pay via the approved payment methods, and get the merchandise delivered either to their distribution centers or the client's homes.

The Benefits:

1. Increased efficiency: The process of ordering items, merchandising the products, and managing the inventory is more automated and happens without any effort on the part of the organization. Administration needs to take no action other to help define what kind of merchandise is available as online reports continually update merchandise available and the built in Min/Max levels trigger automatic reorders as needed. This leads to a more easily managed order fulfillment process, resulting in decreased delivery times.
    
2. Decreased costs: Once the website is built and populated, order fulfillment goes smoothly within the framework of the provider. Companies like Powertex have the infrastructure to deal with cost-effectively managing the online order and fulfillment process. Plus, marketing costs can be reduced due to a diminished need for printed materials.
   
   Plus, the ability of a provider to coordinate spot-buys, leverage vendor relationships(domestic and abroad), and gain access to overseas production facilities can lead to decrease in the cost of the promotional items themselves.
    
3. More flexibility: The online platform offers a number of options to cost effectively utilize your program to its fullest extent. One example is the ability to set up electronic gift certificates for your employees. You can reward your employees or give a holiday gift as easily as entering a few online gift certificate codes and sending them out in an email. Your employees can then redeem the coupon online for their favorite branded merchandise with ease.
    
4. Increased support: From customer support to coordinated email campaigns, a company like Powertex can make sure you have all the resources you need to ensure a successful program. Since your vendor company has a vested interest in helping you sell your branded promotional items, you can rest assured that they will assist you in any way they can.
    
5. Total transparency: Powertex designs their programs so that their involvement is, as much as possible, invisible to the end user. The goal of this type of program is to build your program, not your vendor's. From the design of the promotional materials to the packaging, an effort is made to promote the program as YOUR program.

Online merchandising programs are designed to make corporate branded promotional item distribution as simple and efficient as possible. By utilizing an online store as the primary distribution interface, your company can reduce costs and have a more timely, up-to date catalog for its employees. By having one central order and distribution point, your company can drastically reduce its labor commitment to what otherwise may be a time-consuming and logistically complex program.

If you are interested in building an online employee merchandise distribution program, call Powertex. We can help you build, implement, and maintain your online promotional program. Give us a call today at (800) 588-7111, or email us at: customerservice@powertexgroup.com. Click here to learn more, and here to see some of the other online stores we manage.

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