Facilis Group, St. Louis, Mo., recently announced a new business model designed specifically for distributors in the $1- to $5-million revenue range. The Internet-based business model consists of a front-end Web-site offering more than 2,000 products with a back-end contact management and order processing tool.
“The tool revolutionizes the industry,” said Chuck Fandos, president of Facilis Group. “We believe a very important aspect of our industry today is speed to market. The tool allows distributor sales people to generate quotes within minutes. These quotes offer color images, detailed product descriptions and all the information the customer requires to make a decision.”
Of equal interest to distributor principals will be the built-in marketing functions, sales person activity-tracking tools and contact data base management system. “With our business model, the distributor-owner controls the sales process as opposed to the sales person,” Fandos said. “We’ve found this to be very attractive to distributor principals.”
The business model was developed over the course of six years in Canada at the expense of $6 million. It has been tested at 10 distributorships of varying size. Since it is Internet-based, the system is available worldwide on a 24-hour basis.
Fandos plans to offer the system on a fee-based structure to fewer than 250 distributors nationwide. The offering includes initial training on-site at the distributor’s office.
“Distributors are free to keep their existing name, commission structure, local screen printer and/or embroiderer,” explained Fandos. “This is not a franchise system.”
Facilis Group is owned by Dan Rochette, president and Martin Weber, vice president of PromoMedia, a Canadian-based promotional products company. Other owners are Chuck Fandos, president and Conrad Franey, vice president of GatewayCDI, an American-based distributorship.
“We couldn’t be more excited about this new business model,” said Fandos. “We use it ourselves and have experienced increased sales and margins within the first sixty days. We believe the system is best-suited for the $1 to $5 million distributor eager to embrace technology and a new way of operating in the promotional products field.”
Fandos noted that Facilis is a Latin word that translates as ‘easily’ or ‘without difficulty.’ “With the system, we’ve had sales people who had no experience in the industry land their first sale within five days,” he said.
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