Month 10 – May 2013

There are three topics I want to cover for this month’s post: a distributor “school” that I attended, another inventory observation I did, and my experiences starting out with purchasing.

On the 7th and 8th, I had the privilege of attending Weil-McLain’s “Distributor School”, which was a two-day comprehensive training on not only Weil-McLain’s products, but boilers and hydronic heating systems in general. Much like my experience with Charlotte a few months ago, the presenters and trainers from Weil-McLain shared a lot of unbiased industry information and knowledge. Having the opportunity to socialize with other distributors during lunch an dinner was also fun. Sure, we compete against each other, but we are all in the same boat and can relate through similar work experiences. I find training opportunities to be a good chance to network with many people in the industry.

The following week, I served as an inventory observer at Weinstein Supply in Philadelphia. It was pretty much the same thing as what I did in Allentown; just different people and somewhat different inventory because they serve different markets. For instance, WS Philly stocks a large amount of cast iron soil pipe, because the City of Philadelphia mandates cast iron pipe (as opposed to plastic pipe) to be used for DWV systems in their building codes. They also require the use of lead and oakum instead of service gaskets, so there was a lot of that as well. More importantly though, the Philadelphia PC is where I will be moving to after I complete my MDP Phase I training in Lansdale. This is happening very soon (in August), so it was fantastic to have a chance to meet and familiarize myself with the people I would be working with in the near future.

Finally, I wrote my first few purchase orders this month. Using our Eclipse software system, I analyzed our stock levels, sales volume, average demand, and such to determine how much of each product to buy. Other considerations included minimum order quantities to waive freight charges, box quantities, etc. I reviewed my POs with Sam (Lansdale’s purchasing agent), and he was pretty pleased with my choices. There were a few tweaks that he suggested, but overall he left my POs as I had initially wrote them. It’s amazing that I have the power and responsibility to purchase thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars of items. It felt a bit daunting at first, but after doing some thorough research and analysis on my buys, I felt confident that I was doing the right thing.