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When grocery shopping with a supermarket app, we do our best to make it a one-stop experience. It’s prudent to find a supermarket with a comprehensive list of products—from potatoes to detergent.
The same applies to other shopping choices on larger scales. Buyers and purchasing agents for companies want choices, control, and convenience to be big players in their supply chain process.
And on every scale, these buyers and purchasing reps start with an engineer’s bill of materials (BOM), the list of products that complete projects. Next, they must locate someone who reliably provides these raw materials, either a distributor or a supplier.
Going back to the grocery shopping example, someone in charge of procurement doesn’t have the luxury of time to shop at dozens of suppliers—for the same reason they can’t go to a farmer’s market for potatoes or another store for detergent.
Distributors make more sense. On a business-to-business (B2B) scale, the advantages are numerous for buying from a distributor. Here’s how:
Distributors go beyond being mere proxies in the supply chain. Buyers and purchasing agents can streamline and customize the process to their advantage. It plays into the adage that less is more. Streamlining the process can make it all as simple as putting everything into a single order, packaged in a way that makes the receiving department’s job easier. Think of it like organizing and picking up that supermarket order—potatoes and detergent—in a single trip.
To learn more about the benefits of working with a distributor, read Mouser’s post on How a Distributor Makes Sense for Engineers.
Tommy Cummings is a freelance writer/editor based in Texas. He's had a journalism career that has spanned more than 40 years. He contributes to Texas Monthly and Oklahoma Today magazines. He's also worked at The Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, San Francisco Chronicle, and others. Tommy covered the dot-com boom in Silicon Valley and has been a digital content and audience engagement editor at news outlets. Tommy worked at Mouser Electronics from 2018 to 2021 as a technical content and product content specialist.