Ways of distributing carpets in Poland
I have been observing the carpet market for more than 18 years. It is a market for so-called contract sales, i.e. for specific investments, regardless of the volume of orders. Occasionally, some companies stock carpets, but this is quite rare. The point is that during this time the market has changed and gone through different phases of how carpets are sold. I will briefly describe this process by detailing three ways of selling products.
The first concerns regionalisation, i.e. the exclusivity of a particular brand of carpet for a region, sometimes for the whole country. The factory agrees with the distributor in question that the distributor will have exclusivity in return for actively selling only its products in a given product shelf. In this case, the distributor usually bears the burden of promotion, with a certain contractually defined share from the manufacturer. In this case, the retailer has a strong relationship with the product and is keen to promote it. Challenges, for both parties, include the right choice of long-term partner.
The second system is that the manufacturer sells products to several or a dozen customers. He gives each a specific price, differentiated according to the potential of the company, and does not get deeply involved in product promotions. The advantage is that carpet prices are relatively low in the market, but the distributor's loyalty to the product is not very high because he has to compete with other companies, so margins are quite low.
The third system is based on project booking. A given manufacturer offers a product to a large number of distributors and guarantees a certain low price only if a given customer submits a project, i.e. provides the manufacturer with the details of the final customer, builder or architect. The advantage of this for the intermediary is that he does not have to compete with other distributors of the product, as only he is guaranteed low prices. The downside is the conflicts and the need to share the data of his customers with the manufacturer, as well as the low brand loyalty of the distributor for a given manufacturer.
There is no ideal way. It all depends on the strategy of the respective manufacturer in the market and the willingness of distributors to act in a certain way.
