Vision - September/October 2008 - (Page 8)

viSiOnary CE’s Cutting-EdgE LEadErs ] • [ by Cindy LoffLEr stEvEns ers. But they don’t see the mass retailers as competitors—they see the Internet as competition. They are starting to leverage it. That’s why the fulfillment business is growing. DBL Distributing: I Ramping up foR the holidays t was not the typical interview. I sat down with DBL’s President Henry Chiarelli in the Gaslight Club at the Chicago O’Hare Hilton between flights. Billed as a gentleman’s club, it was a throwback to the roaring 20s with deep leather booths and dark red flocked wallpaper, not to mention the Vegas-style waitresses. But it was interesting to talk with one of retailing’s royalty. Chiarelli, a 37-year CE veteran, has worked alongside some of the most innovative retailers in the industry including Charles Tandy, John Roach and Bernie Appel (Roach and Appel are both in the CE Hall of Fame). He lived in the same neighborhood in Fort Worth with many top CE executives during his 32 years at RadioShack and RadioShack. com. He also has held executive positions at Gibson Audio (a subsidiary of Gibson Guitar), Computer City, CompUSA, Incredible Universe, McDuff Electronics, VideoConcepts and Scott Appliance. Chiarelli had been at DBL for just a year when the company was acquired by Ingram Micro, a global Fortune 100 distributor of information technology products and accessories in June 2007. He was named president of DBL Distributing LLC and now leads the company’s marketing, merchandising, purchasing and sales functions. Originally from Boston, he earned his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Information Sciences and his Masters of Business Administration from Texas Christian University, home of the horned frog. Chiarelli is a member of CEA’s Board of Industry Leaders and was recently elected to the Executive Board of CEA. DBL aims to be the best distributor of CE accessories in the U.S. through a combination of low wholesale pricing and more than 21,000 CE accessories and related products, ranging from connectors to high-definition plasma televisions. The items represent more than 450 brand name manufacturers in 60 CE categories with most in stock for same-day shipping. Although he has experiSeptember/October 2008 DBL Distributing LLC Stats Founded: 1989 Public: incorporated in arizona Parent Co.: ingram micro inc. (nyse: im) Headquarters: scottsdale, aZ Business: distributor of Ce accessories Employees: 375 Retail Customers: 32,000 Warehouses: scottsdale, aZ; Jonestown, pa; and mira loma, Ca Website: www.dbldistributing.com DBL has a strong focus on education. Can you explain how you work? We recently held a vendor expo and golf charity event at the Four Seasons Resort in Scottsdale. There were more than 500 people and we had new products from 111 manufacturers. Once a year we combine the expo with a charity event. This year we raised $135,000 that was split between The Jewish Family and Children Services of Greater Phoenix, The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale, The United Way and The Magic Johnson Foundation, a division of the Samsung Four Seasons of Hope. Vendor expos are a great way to increase product education because our customers can interface directly with vendors. We also have a full day of training. We hold the expos three times a year—January, April and October when we release our catalogs. mented with many retailing concepts during his career, he says selling accessories is what he does best and is the most profitable. How has the Internet impacted your business? Our business has evolved. Today we sell to Amazon.com, Buy.com, Radioshack.com, CircuitCity.com, Costco.com and many other dotcoms. We expand their assortment of products and ship the same day to their customers. We act as a fulfillment house for the growing number of Internet retailers and act as the warehouse and the ship point. Typically they buy what they don’t already stock. We also deliver to large retail chains that use their Internet sites to sell additional products. Most major retailers don’t stock every item a manufacturer produces, especially accessories. We are the king of accessories. We have 21,000 SKUs—15,000 are priced under $50 and 12,000 cost less than $20. This is a very accessory-driven business. How do you market to retailers? We are one of the few folks that produce a catalog for dealers. Our summer catalog is 1,344 pages and is the largest in the CE industry. We also are the 50th largest publisher in the U.S. by default and produce 325 million pages a year. With three catalogs a year, we print 90,000 copies each for retailers and e-tailers. We also print flyers for vendors that don’t have their own publications or want something special. We publish between six and 12 flyers a month that range from 16 to 48-pages each. The vendor flyers announce new products and closeout items. One thing that makes us different is we have an army of people dedicated to publishing. We also do e-mail electronic dispatches to the dealer community. We have a 22 to 23 percent open rate which is phenomenal. We think it is because dealers find the EDMs educational with up-to-date information. We cut across 19 categories and have very sophisticated direct marketing to 32,000 independent retailers that have different core competencies. We are able to segment by purchase behavior so they find the information valuable and relevant to them. It is very www.ce.org Do you offer a flat rate? Yes, we do have a flat rate. It does not matter if you are a large or small customer or whether you buy one or 100 products—it’s the same price. Most distributors use column pricing. We think that our customers appreciate that we don’t. We sell to a lot of Mom and Pops on Main Street America. These stores specialize in assisted selling dealers. They know their products inside and out and are very knowledgeable. It is becoming a lost art. The independent dealers are the last bastion and our pricing lets them compete with large retail- 8 http://www.dbldistributing.com http://amazon.com http://buy.com http://radioshack.com http://circuitcity.com http://Costco.com http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - September/October 2008

Vision - September/October 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In this Issue The Economist Visionary C4 Trends Coming to a Neighborhood Near You IPv6: Connecting People and Things Israelis Spend Big on the Latest CE Devices Tech Speak Tech Policy CEA Newsline Going Global Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - September/October 2008

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