Featured Industry: Wholesale Distribution Industry
Top 8 Wholesale Distribution Categories
The top eight most common categories in wholesale distribution typically cover a wide range of industries and products. These categories are:
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Food and Beverage: This category includes the distribution of perishable goods like fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy, as well as packaged foods and beverages.
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Electronics and Appliances: This includes consumer electronics, home appliances, and other electronic goods, often encompassing both household and commercial products.
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Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare Products: This category focuses on the distribution of prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines, medical equipment, and healthcare-related products.
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Building Materials and Construction Supplies: This includes the distribution of lumber, plumbing supplies, electrical supplies, HVAC equipment, and other materials used in construction and building maintenance.
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Automotive Parts and Accessories: This encompasses the distribution of vehicle parts, tools, and accessories used in the repair and maintenance of automobiles, trucks, and other vehicles.
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Chemicals and Plastics: This category includes the distribution of industrial chemicals, resins, plastics, and related products, often catering to manufacturing and industrial clients.
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Clothing and Textiles: This includes the distribution of apparel, footwear, fabrics, and related accessories, covering a range of consumer fashion and workwear.
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Industrial Machinery and Equipment: This category covers the distribution of heavy machinery, industrial equipment, and tools used in various industries, including manufacturing, agriculture, and construction.
Key Features
SERIAL AND LOT NUMBERS
In wholesale and distribution, precise lot and serial number tracking is essential, particularly for time-sensitive goods. Order Time's seamless synchronization of inventory operations streamlines tracking from purchase to shipment, including managing components within items. With an end-to-end automated full lot tracking system, it ensures efficient updates, supports FDA, ISO, or CFIA compliance, and minimizes recall risks. The system allows tracking based on expiry dates and automatic generation of tracking numbers, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing costs for wholesale businesses and distributors. Embracing Order Time's advanced traceability features is key to optimizing performance, ensuring compliance, and mitigating risks in the competitive wholesale landscape.
Barcode Scanning
For wholesale businesses and distributors, efficient inventory tracking is paramount but often deemed tedious by business owners. Customizable systems are crucial due to diverse workflows, especially for manufacturing where work orders and Bills of Materials maintain production sequences. Finished products necessitate barcode tagging for precise tracking. Retail channel sellers benefit from tagging SKUs with barcodes for price changes and proper shelving using a planogram. Barcode systems streamline inventory tracking across multiple locations, ensuring traceability from shipping to receiving. Real-time data provided by certain software platforms enhances business operations, emphasizing the importance of a versatile barcode inventory system accessible on desktops, tablets, or mobile devices in the competitive wholesale landscape.
B2B PORTAL
The Order Time B2B portal gives you faster delivery, broader selection, and increased product selection. Through a customizable online portal, you can give your staff, sales representatives, customers, and vendors and improve customer retention by giving visibility into stock availability, creating orders, and checking order statuses. Without sacrificing security and control of your business, you can let your customers see inventory levels and create sales orders or purchase orders. To learn more about Order Time B2B, click here.
BIN/Shelf MANAGEMENT
In the wholesale distribution realm, the frustration of delayed customer orders and the consequential waste of time and resources due to misplaced inventory is all too familiar. For distributors, ensuring seamless operations is paramount, and this challenge finds a solution in efficient bin management systems.
Irrespective of the scale of your inventory warehouse or the number of facilities, implementing bin management brings order to the chaos. This system ensures that inventory is received in an organized manner, strategically placed into designated bins within the warehouse's rack system. This not only prevents delays but also facilitates swift location during the order fulfillment process.
Warehouse management, facilitated by systems like Order Time, becomes a game-changer. It streamlines inventory counts and adjustments with a simple click, providing instant access to essential data for maintaining optimal inventory levels. The systematic approach extends to controlling inventory receipts, ensuring a fast turnaround from the warehouse to customers. In the competitive landscape of wholesale, embracing such tools is essential for distributors aiming for precision, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.
MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
In the wholesale business and distribution arena, mitigating financial losses stemming from inventory mismanagement is crucial. Often, businesses grapple with mindless mistakes, leading to misplaced inventory and operational disarray. The remedy lies in the adoption of an automated system, exemplified by Order Time's warehousing toolkit. This robust solution empowers businesses to effortlessly track inventory in real-time, avoiding costly errors with just a click. Irrespective of the number of warehouses, Order Time facilitates centralized control for efficient order processing and substantial cost savings.
The warehousing toolkit includes features like the warehouse overview, allowing seamless tracking, adjustment, and scanning of inventory. Order Time's intelligent system utilizes bins and locations to categorize storage spaces, encompassing physical and virtual areas. The transfer location function enhances flexibility, enabling effortless movement of inventory between warehouses and bins. In the competitive landscape of wholesale, embracing such automated tools positions businesses at the forefront of operational excellence, ensuring precision, efficiency, and well-organized inventory management.
KITTING and Bundling
In wholesale business and distribution, leveraging a kitting tool proves pivotal for efficiency. When customers order multiple items, this tool combines them into a single package, reducing packaging costs. Order Time's features enhance customer choices by allowing customization during purchase, with fixed, variable, and Yes/No components. This not only streamlines logistics but also aligns with sustainability goals. Businesses can enforce rules and control connected items, optimizing the kitting process. Embracing such innovations positions wholesale enterprises as agile and customer-centric, ensuring a seamless and personalized experience that meets modern expectations while increasing operational effectiveness.
Stay up to date on all the latest inventory control trends with Order Time’s customizable management tools and features
