Rob and Dori Blitzstein, co-owners of Roesel-Heck, attribute their success to doing the right thing by the customer and working with solid vendor partners.
In an age of ongoing industry consolidation where the big firms get bigger, the role of the independent distributor in the supply chain has taken on greater significance. While the large national/multi-regional flooring wholesalers boast access to a much broader geographical territory, the smaller, independent flooring wholesalers may hold the advantage when it comes to servicing customers more efficiently at the local level.
That’s certainly the edge that Baltimore, Md.-based Roesel-Heck, an independent flooring wholesaler that’s turning the corner on 71 years in business, has been able to maintain over the decades. What’s their secret to longevity and their formula for success? For Rob and Dori Blitzstein, president and vice president of the company, respectively, it’s all about cultivating relationships and effectively managing expectations with suppliers/vendors while going above and beyond to service clients.
“Communication is key, especially when we’re working with vendors who do not normally deal with smaller distributors,” Rob explained. (“Smaller” being a relative term, given Roesel-Heck operates across five states.) “The midsize, large guys—they might not realize firsthand how our needs are different. So we try to be straightforward regarding what works best for us and how we do things, and then we do our best to tie that together with the vendors’ expectations and programs. It’s important to remind them how the independent distributor operates, which might be a tad different than one of the larger guys.”
One of those key differences, Roesel-Heck noted, is the personal access customers often enjoy with independent distributors. As Dori explained: “Rob and I are owner-operators of our company, we’re really involved in every aspect of the company. So when the manufacturers have discussions with us, there are not a lot of layers between us and the frontline people; they know we’re the ones who are actively involved.”
A prime example is Roesel-Heck’s partnership with Congoleum, a company it has been doing business with for 30-plus years. “The relationship with Congoleum and Roesel-Heck is prolific throughout the organization,” said Kurt Denman, chief marketing officer and EVP of sales at Congoleum. “Everybody in our corporate offices knows Roesel-Heck. They know where they are geographically, they know the type of business they are, and that’s because these relationships are long. We care how they do because obviously it affects our own success in that region.”
While the day-to-day services Roesel-Heck provides are a key factor in its well-earned reputation, the relationships the company maintains with its vendor partners are not merely transactional. As Dori explained: “A lot of times our suppliers turn to us and say, ‘What do you think are the new trends? What do you think is going to work here?’ They ask for our involvement in helping them to make decisions as well, so that it’s a cooperative effort.”
Now, that’s not to say that managers, owners and principals who lead large distribution entities don’t have a personal stake in the partnership—it’s just different. “Managers who work for our larger counterparts do care about their business and they do want it to be successful and profitable, but it’s a different level when you’re dealing with the direct owners,” Rob explained. “It’s a different vested interest in the company’s success and mutual success.”
That philosophy was certainly tested during the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which wreaked all kinds of havoc on the global supply chain ecosystem. Not only did it cause delivery disruptions, but it also resulted in complications when it came to pricing product based on the age of particular inventories and shipments. Container shipments that typically cost $5,000 to move across the water more than quadrupled to upwards of “$20,000 a can” in many cases, so inventories had to be priced out accordingly. Resolving these complex issues required closer-than-normal communications with vendors and, of course, a degree of patience and trust.
A case in point was a situation where SPC product imported by Congoleum during a specific time period had a different freight cost structure compared to when products began flowing more freely through the ports. “Managing that inventory and pricing required a lot of coordination and coming up with programs to solve all of those issues,” Rob explained. “We, like every other distributor, owned the inventory at much higher prices—and then when the market started to stabilize, there was an expectation that pricing would come down. While that was true, we still owned the inventory at the higher price. The vendors were very integral and good partners in working with us to manage it properly, so we could all come out of this situation successfully.”
Succeed, they did. As Congoleum’s Denman recalled: “We put together a program that normalized the cost of their existing inventories so Roesel-Heck could be competitive again in the marketplace and not have to take the losses on their own.”
Congoleum is not the only Roesel-Heck vendor that works closely with the company to overcome challenges and achieve mutually beneficial objectives. Next Floor, a Canada-based supplier of hard and soft surface products with warehousing facilities on each U.S. Coast, leveraged its 12-year relationship with the distributor to not only provide rudimentary logistics services but also help build its brand in America.
“Independent wholesale flooring distributors are the mainstay of our business,” said Michael Eckhardt, president, Next Floor. “Distributors’ trucking and physical distribution make our product easy-to-work with for retailers. The work of Roesel-Heck and other distributors has had a huge impact on the development of our Next Floor brand in the trade, including with specifiers. In the beginning retailers hadn’t heard of Next Floor, but they had heard of Roesel-Heck. That recognition enabled them to start using our product. Over the 12 years of our company’s history, we’ve gained a lot of brand equity as a result.”
Other major vendors cite the positive impact Roesel-Heck has had on their brands. Taylor Adhesives, part of the Meridian Adhesives Group, counts the distributor as its longest-standing customer in the Northeast. “They’ve been a very loyal customer for us and we’ve been loyal to them for many, many years—several decades, in fact,” said Ralph Grogan, commercial president, flooring division, Meridian. “When we were all dealing with the supply chain crisis back during COVID-19, we did everything we could to support them. We treated them as an A-list customer because they were so loyal to us and we knew we were their only adhesive supplier. We made sure we kept their deliveries going and tried to repay the loyalty that they’ve paid to us.”
A sampling of Roesel Heck’s commercial portfolio.
That cooperative spirit is also the driving force behind Roesel-Heck’s partnership with Mannington Commercial, which supplies several specialty products for the contract market—a segment that represents roughly 70% of Roesel-Heck’s business. These types of products—and this key market segment in particular—require expertise and specialized services. For Mannington Commercial, Roesel-Heck delivers consistently.
“Some of the products we offer are difficult to move around or service and meet customer demand without the right partners,” said Whitney LeGate, SVP, commercial product, Mannington Commercial. “Roesel-Heck understands the market needs at the local level. They have their own relationships that we can leverage, which is fantastic. They’ve done a great job of investing in their sales team, so it’s just a multiplier effect for us.”
While distribution is a challenging business in many ways, at the end of the day you win because of your relationships. “We are competing with other distributors and manufacturers and we are competing on specifications with architects,” Roesel-Heck’s Dori noted. “It can be brutal. Rob and I work hard at that part of our business, recognizing what we need to grow our business and that cultivating our partnerships is always key. They are our friends, our supporters and our advisors. We all are in this together and that’s the beauty of the distributor-supplier relationship.”
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