Being busy in a successful operation is quite different from being busy due to days of screw-ups and fire drills. There still seem to be some wholesalers who are surprised and feel the need to celebrate when they can ship a standard stock order — complete, without errors and delivered as promised.

As we enter 2020, we hope you will forgive a little walk down memory lane for us. As we write this, almost exactly 15 years ago, Rich and his dad (Grandpa Joe Schmitt) were writing their last column together.

In September, we mentioned a previous column that included a branch walkthrough list. Every once in a while, we seem to strike a chord and get a good number of requests for additional information.

This month we want to encourage readers to step back and take a “customer-eyes” look at their customer-facing facilities and customer friendliness.

As we come to the middle of the busy season for many wholesalers, our take is that 2019 is shaping up to be a pretty good year across the country.

We recently returned from this year’s Southern Wholesaler’s Association (SWA) meeting held on Amelia Island in Florida. As always, the SWA meeting was well-attended and included an excellent program with many opportunities for business, social and family activities.

Creating a good webstore is a complicated process. It’s not as messy as managing a top-notch salesforce, maintaining brick-and-mortar locations with fast, efficient product delivery, establishing customer relationships and building effective marketing programs that attract and retain profitable customers.

In April, Jen attended Epicor Software Corp.’s Insights user conference as the company’s guest at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Due to Epicor’s great hospitality, Jen is already campaigning with Rich to attend in his place again next year.

We all have heard some variation of the sentence, “I hear what you’re saying about how much you did for me yesterday, but what have you done for me today.” It’s been around for years. We think the future will be more like, “What have you done for me on this item on this order.” 

Rich and Jen talk about three decades of service to the PHC distribution industry.