What is Retail Distribution?

The process of getting manufacturer products across to consumers is known as retail distribution. Retail distributors, so to speak, convey the goods of the manufacturer to the consumer through offering them for sale to the consumer in outlets. The process of getting these goods to the outlets and of making them available to the consumers involves planning, execution and management. These steps, taken together, are the logistics of the distribution. The following activities belong to logistics: deciding when to collect the products from manufacturers, making time and financial budgets, transporting the products to outlets and keeping them safe and preserved. In thinking about the activities of distribution, you are simultaneously thinking of its logistics. The retail distribution operation has special advantages, disadvantages, and challenges.  Take a look at the information about retail distribution and logistics at BeltmannLogistics.com.

Retail Distribution & Logistics

Retail distribution offers the manufacturer the possibility to directly and physically interact with consumers. In cases where the outlets are not too distant from the manufacturing company, the manufacturer can regularly pay visits, in person or through a delegate, to see for himself how the customers like his products. The retailer, on the other hand, has at two or more things to gain from this fact. First, the retailer is free to fix the price of his product as he wishes. An informed retailer would probably not raise his prices at random, but he enjoys the liberty to decide how much he sells them. Two, because retail business is generally a cash business, the retailer does not have to worry about keeping records of money owed to him. This advantage simplifies and facilitates the logistics of retail distribution.

However, there are at least three things the retailer must learn to live with. One, the costs of engaging staff and maintaining outlets is generally high--but staffing and maintenance are unavoidable necessities of retail distribution business. Two, success in distribution business and an increase in amount of products on sale often means greater risks of theft. Three, the lease a retailer signs for his stores mandates him to make regular payments to the landlord whether or not he uses the stores or makes profits. This obligation of fixed payment is besides the recurring expenses of logistics. The best information about retail distribution and logistics is available at this website.

Retail distributors often face the challenge of maintaining the products at the quality level of the manufacturers. This is usually due to poor or ineffective quality-control practices. This neglect is a logistic one. For example, the retailer or his staff may carelessly handle some fragile products and break them. Also, it is not uncommon for retail outlet personnel to keep goods in unfavorable conditions of too high or too low temperatures. Besides, staff members ignorantly keep products in the same place which they ought to separate; for example, they sometimes keep goods which require high temperature for their preservation with goods which require low temperatures.