How to Choose Office Supplies Wholesale Distributors for your VAR Business?
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Are you a VAR business owner wanting to streamline your office supply costs or consolidate distributors? Or are you just looking for ways to save time procuring office supplies and partnering with distribution in ways that don’t overwhelm you
We at VARStreet Inc. have years of experience in the office supplies VAR industry and have worked with over 5000 VARs.We know how confusing and time-consuming it can be to choose office supplies for wholesale distributors whose business value and goals align with yours. Which is why we’ve compiled a quick guide to help you understand what you should look for in a supplier
Key Takeaways:
- Choosing wholesale distributors requires evaluating product breadth, pricing competitiveness, and fulfillment reliability.
- Distributor catalog quality impacts quote accuracy and eCommerce consistency for VARs.
- Credit terms and partnership programs influence cash flow and purchasing flexibility.
- Strategic distributor selection strengthens inventory availability and reduces stockouts.
- Long-term distributor relationships increase negotiation leverage for margins and service levels.
8 Questions to Ask a New Office Supplies Wholesale Distributor
1. How vast is their product catalog?
When you’re evaluating potential office supplies distributors to source products for your VAR business, product needs, the distributor must have a variety of products to offer. Some office supplies distributors specialize in one or two product categories like office furniture or ink and toner cartridges, but lack a wide product range.
While partnering with more than one distributor should be your ultimate goal, as prices for the same products do differ depending on the distribution channels, and you have a lot of play while sourcing your products.
But in the initial phase of your business, this may not be possible as many established distributors need assurance of sales volume before they partner with you. So if you are new to the VAR business, having one dependable distributor for as many office supply products as possible should be your goal.
Some products that should be included in the distributor catalog are:
- Office supplies
- Copy paper
- Ink and toner
- Breakroom supplies
- Facility and janitorial products
- Office furniture
- Technology products and IT services
- Managed print services
- Safety and PPE products
You’ll also need to ensure that your chosen distributor has all the popular office supply brands that are in demand, as well as products from OEMs, to help you reduce costs without sacrificing quality.
2. What differentiates them from other distributors?
When you look for an office supply wholesale distributor, you may want to consider someone that offers supplementary services and benefits like:
- Catalog integrations with real-time price and inventory updates
- Country-wide delivery options
- Next day delivery options
- A dedicated account manager and customer service team
- Free product content
- Office furniture assembly on customer site
- Technology services
- Toner recycling
- No minimum order requirement
- Dropshipping service
3. What is their pricing structure?
Profits are made by sourcing right. This old adage may sound like a cliche, but it is true!
Ask your potential wholesale distributor the following questions:
- How frequent are price changes?
- Do they offer a live product catalog with real-time price updates?
- Do they offer additional discounts, promotions or rebates if the order value is above a certain limit?
- Are there any cost-saving solutions like OEMs, private label brands, etc.?
- What are their delivery charges?
- How do they handle returns and refunds?
4. How user-friendly is their online ordering system?
In today’s age, online ordering is the norm even for B2B businesses. Wholesalers, though, lack in providing their B2B buyers with user-friendly interfaces and online order processing features.
Ensure that your office supply distributor provides you with the ability to:
- Send in electronic orders
- Automatically route customer orders for fulfilment
- Approve, adjust or reject orders in an approval workflow chain
- Change users
- Ship parts of the order to multiple addresses
Pro Tip:
- Prioritize distributors with strong data feeds to reduce manual catalog management work.
5. How is their onboarding process?
The paperwork required for partnering with a new office supplies distributor may be stressful and overwhelming. Established and reputable distributors want to vet you to ensure that you are a legitimate business. They may require state registration numbers, trade references, utility bills, banking references and flooring information, Federal Tax ID, etc.
Understand the onboarding process and enquire if they can provide you with a support system or a knowledgeable and helpful customer support team that can support you, every step of the way.
6. How does delivery work? Do they dropship orders?
Your office supplies wholesale distributor should make it easy for you to manage your customers’ delivery requirements.
If you serve country-wide or global locations, your distributor should be able to deliver within 2 days to all your locations.
People often forget about ordering office supplies and most standard office supplies orders are urgent. Your distributor must be able to offer next day deliveries on all products from the distributor catalog.
Also, ask if they can dropship orders directly to the customers without routing them through you.
Here’s everything you need to know about dropshipping.
Pro Tip:
- Build performance scorecards for each distributor to optimize sourcing decisions based on actual delivery and pricing metrics.
7. How is their customer support?
Stellar customer support differentiates successful businesses from mediocre ones. While mistakes in payments, pricing, deliveries, etc., are bound to happen, how they are handled, is the hallmark of a genuine distributor.
Aim to find an office supplies wholesale distributor with a knowledgeable customer support team with years of industry experience.
After all, no one wants to waste time on the phone tracking lost or missing packages.
8. How reputable and established are they?
The best way to learn about a potential distributor is by Googling them to find online reviews and seeing what others have to say about them.
You can even reach out to local VAR businesses that work with them to get a clearer picture of how convenient or difficult it is to do business with them.
A simple Google search will give you a wealth of information about them, from their financial health to the number of years they’ve been in business.
We hope you have a fair idea on how to get started in your search for the best office supplies wholesale distributors.
As a bonus, here are the top 5 office supplies wholesale distributors and IT hardware distributors in the United States.
The Top 5 Office Supplies Distributors
1. Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro Inc. is a Fortune 100 company and the world’s largest technology distributor. Based in Irvine, California, U.S., they have operations around the world.
Their products include storage servers, notebooks, routers and gateways, video consoles and many many more. VARStreet integrates with Ingram Micro’s catalog and has over 1.6 million SKUs from Ingram in their product catalog.
2. Essendant
Essendant has set the best-in-class standards for computer hardware, supplies and accessories wholesaling.
Their product portfolio includes traditional office products, office furniture, janitorial and breakroom supplies, technology products, industrial supplies and automotive aftermarket tools and equipment.
VARStreet’s business management application for office supplies VARs enable them to sell products from the Essendant catalog effortlessly.
3. International Toner Corp
ITC is one of the largest domestic manufactures of compatible copier, fax and laser-based printing supplies with operations exclusively in the United States.
Their products are manufactured for use in Brother, Canon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Konica, Minolta, Panasonic, Ricoh, Samsung, Toshiba and Xerox copiers, laser printers and MFC’s (fax), amongst many others.
Sell ITC products with VARstreet.
4. S.P. Richards Company
S.P. Richards Company is one of North America’s leading business products wholesalers and distributors of a broad range of office supplies, furniture and technology products, including but not limited to binders, file folders, sticky notes etc., and technology wholesale solutions from ink and toner supplies to the newest printer innovations. They also represent top technology brands like Hewlett-Packard, Sharp, Brother, Lexmark, Canon and many more.
Find out how you can leverage VARStreet to sell products from S.P. Richards.
5. Royal Imaging
Royal Imaging specializes in document imaging and document management. They
carry a full line of OEM, compatible and remanufactured supplies for all copiers, fax, laser, inkjet, duplicating, thermal and dot matrix ribbons.
All of their compatible products undergo extensive testing by their manufacturers to ensure their products strictly meet the OEM Specifications in yield, density and overall performance.
Click here for more information on VARStreet and Royal Imaging product catalog integration.
Conclusion
Choosing an office supply wholesale distributor is not just about finding a supplier with the cheapest paper or printer. You need to find a reliable and trustworthy distributor with technological advancements that make dealing with them convenient.
Once you have answers to all the eight questions above, you would have narrowed down your list of preferred distributors and be ready to choose an office supply distributor with whom you can have a long-lasting relationship.
