Joe Demharter

BY CAROLINE MILLER When Imaging Supplies & Equipment e-enabled their Website six months ago, they didn't see themselves as trailblazers. Instead, the $34 million Fuji dealer, based just outside of Los Angeles in Lindwood, CA, thought of it merely as a good business strategy, reports Imaging Supplies & Equipment President Chuck Bertoni. "We saw it as good business sense. We wanted to put a tool together for our current accounts and to make it easier for them to do business with us," he says. Even so, according to North American Graphic Arts Suppliers Association (NAGASA) President Greg DuRoss, companies like Imaging Supplies &

The role of today's graphic arts distributors is changing. They're selling products, providing the training and consulting printers on what's available. BY ERIK CAGLE The popular, traditional image of a distributor is an entity that acts as a link between the manufacturer and the customer—the "go-between" or "middle man" who finds a market for products and services. The commercial printing industry was no different. Just ask Joe Demharter, vice president of sales at Pitman Corp., one of the industry's largest dealers. "Historically, if you look back at the role that distributors played for the manufacturers, basically we were the warehouses and credit arms,"

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