PPB November 2019

O f course, it was Sting. In 1994, a used copy of The Police front man’s album, Ten Summoner’s Tales , featuring the hit single If I Ever Lose My Faith in You , became the first purchase fully transacted—from order to payment to shipping, through a website called NetMarket—on the internet. Or maybe that initial internet sale was for a large pie with extra pepperoni. According to Pizza Hut, the red- roofed chain restaurant started selling pizzas over the internet that same year. And another company, launched in 1994, can also make a credible claim to the first online sale: a small, garage-based bookseller called Amazon. Muddy as the early days of ecommerce may be now, the past 25 years have made clear that shopping is one of the primary uses of the internet. Cars, groceries, furniture, medication, plutonium, zombie survival guides, the latest Sting album (2019’s My Songs ) and anything else you can imagine can be purchased online from your phone or laptop. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, consumers in the United States spent $513.61 billion online in 2018, a 14.2-percent increase over the previous year, and those numbers show no sign of decline. As the internet has grown from text-based BBS messages to instantaneous live video and around- the-clock updates, the promotional products industry has evolved to embrace the changing technology. As customers have flocked to the internet, distributors have moved to meet them, combining traditional sales and marketing knowledge with cutting-edge ecommerce platforms to create a new model for the market: the online distributor. For those on the outside looking in, online distributors can seem simultaneously familiar and foreign. The products, the suppliers and the colleagues you see each year at The PPAI Expo are the same, but the business model can seem dramatically different from the face- to-face, road-warrior style that has traditionally defined the promotional marketplace. As distributors continue to adapt to an increasingly online world, they must learn what makes an online business tick—and why their current sales skills are more valuable than ever. RE: Business As Usual When discussing the online side of the industry, it’s important to first understand what the termmeans— and what it doesn’t. For any online distributor in the promotional products world, the operative word is “distributor.” “The term ‘online distributorship’ can mean different things,” says Steve Paradiso, president of ePromos Promotional Products in St. Cloud, Minnesota. “Some companies create storefronts and focus primarily on online optimization and conversion. Others may focus not only on the optimization piece, but also on the user experience, perception of the brand and the relationship that forms after the initial contact. This is historically the Online Distributor | FEATURE | NOVEMBER 2019 | 39