The most useful price I built recently had no shipping line on it. None. Anywhere in Canada.
From my desk today
I've been working on a product offer for the drop ship program of one of Canada's large national retailers.
The product: an assortment of more than 100 SKUs.
The twist was in the price. We built it to include shipping to any address in Canada. One number, whether the customer lives down the street from a store or a long way from the nearest one.
That one decision does three things for that retailer: It makes them more competitive online. It makes buying simpler for their customer. No surprise at checkout. It lets them advertise one clear price, nationally.
Nobody at their checkout will ever know a distributor was involved. That's kind of the point.
The retailer reality
If you sell online, you know the moment.
The customer loves the product. Adds it to the cart. Then sees the shipping fee.
And leaves.
Now multiply that by every brand you carry. Each one with its own account, its own minimums, its own freight rules and its own idea of what "Canada-wide" means.
You can't advertise one price if shipping to Vancouver costs one thing and shipping to a rural postal code costs another. So you either eat the difference, pad the price, or skip the ad.
None of those grow sales.
Behind the scenes at Randmar: 5 things a distributor does that you never see
1. We turn freight into one price.
Shipping costs change with every postal code. Your customer shouldn't have to care. Thanks to our relationships with Canada's largest couriers, we can fold delivery into a single landed price, like we did for that national retailer. You get one number to put in your ad.
2. We open about 67 brands with one account.
Opening a direct account with a manufacturer can mean applications, credit checks and order minimums. Repeat that for every brand on your wish list.
Through Randmar, you get access to roughly 67 brands, led by flagship partners like Sharp, alongside Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, Xerox, TP-Link and Avery.
Take all of them, or curate only the ones that fit your store.
3. We protect your advertised price.
We apply a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy to every reseller on our platform, more than 2,000 of them.
That means the store across town, or the website across the country, isn't advertising the same product for less than you can.
4. We ship from Canada, not from a promise.
Our two distribution hubs, in Laval and Edmonton, hold the stock. When your customer orders, we pick, pack and ship. You never touch a box.
For drop ship, that's the whole game: sell the product without buying the inventory first.
5. We keep the data clean so your listings don't lie.
Product details, stock levels and prices change all the time. We keep them in sync.
If your business runs on EDI, Randmar syncs with it. Orders and order updates move between your system and ours automatically, with no retyping and no email chains.
If you sell on Shopify, Randmar Connect imports products, updates them automatically and brings orders in without retyping. MAP is built in.
Behind that, our Manufacturer Portal helps brands restock our hubs and pass along instant rebates and promotions. Some of those end up as better margins for you.
My real point
A good distributor is invisible to your customer.
What they see is a fair price, a simple checkout and a box at the door. Everything that makes that happen should be our problem, not yours.
Your quick win this week
Pull your 10 best-selling online products and check what the customer pays at checkout, shipping included. If that number is higher than the price in your ads, you've found sales you're losing.
Your turn
What's the one hidden cost in your supply chain you wish someone else would just take care of? Randmar. Helping Canadian retailers sell more, every day.
Philippe Jeanneau, Business Development, Randmar philippe@randmar.io | 403-616-1051 | randmar.io
P.S. Curious which of our roughly 67 brands would fit your shelves? Reply and I'll send you the full list. Curate it however you like.