Case Study
"epaCube has allowed us to have a more consistent, unified pricing structure. We've made more positive price changes (increases) than negative. And it's made my job a lot easier."
— Larry Croom, Branch Manager, Johnstone Supply, Wilmington Group
Johnstone Supply is a nationwide chain of wholesale distributors serving professional HVACR contractors. The Wilmington Branch operates in Wilmington, NC.
Johnstone Supply, a wholesale distributor serving professional HVACR contractors, stocks the largest selection of equipment and genuine OEM parts in the industry. After previous unfinished attempts to standardize pricing, the Wilmington, North Carolina, affiliate sought to create a unified pricing structure to get everyone on the same playing field.
With salespeople setting prices, customers calling Wilmington might get different prices on the same item. "Whatever salesperson at the time felt like that customer's pricing should be, it was," explained Larry Croom, Branch Manager. "We have had a few people call one counter person to get a price and turn around and call the next counter person and get a different price."
"Our challenge was taking a 20 plus year old business with pricing that had been managed by multiple people and turn it around to have one common unified price structure," explained Croom.
Wilmington also needed one place to look up and manage customer contracts. "We work off the web but there was no way to pull all that information together in one spot to see what we sold, how many we sold, and what percentage it was," related Croom. "We have tried to standardize pricing numerous times through the years. But we never could find a clear path because we didn't have access to all the data in one spot at one time."
Margin dollars increased since implementing epaCUBE
Customer
Johnstone Supply, Wilmington
Location
Wilmington, North Carolina (1 Location)
Industry
HVACR Wholesale Distribution
Partner
epaCUBE
Software
EpaCUBE Price Optimization, ddisystem Distributor Focused ERP
Partner Website
epacube.com
After Wilmington made the decision to move ahead, the initial steps to get epaCUBE running proceeded quickly. "We were setting pricing within the first three weeks," confirmed Croom. "The first week, we made a plan for the implementation, week two, we started initializing that plan, and then by week three, we were working on pricing."
Wilmington then dove into a long period of pricing work. "We went all in for an eight month stretch of two meetings a week to sit down and work on our individualized pricing plan," explained Croom.
World-class data analytics and software supported by epaCUBE's B2B distribution pricing professionals helped Wilmington build market-level pricing that wins orders and helps them take share. The software enables them to monitor pricing changes to gain margin without sacrificing top-line sales.
"We would go through the pricing structure of each category and set the pricing node by node," Croom continued. "And we did that for eight months until we worked through all the nodes. And now we're working on individual pricing contracts."
Croom's team created all new customer and product segmentation, setting ABCD pricing levels with 2,710 price records.
Wilmington performs weekly data shares with epaCube. "First, we did an 18-month data share and then some 12-month shares," Croom related. "Now we're down to weekly data shares. Every Monday our IT guy sends a report of our weekly transactions to epaCUBE. They run it through and usually give us a scorecard by Tuesday."
On epaCUBE Support
"There's not been a time that we have tried to get in touch with them that they've not responded. They're always there if we need anything. They're awesome!"
— Larry Croom, Branch Manager
Using epaCUBE, Wilmington has increased its margin dollars 8.6%, adding tens of thousands to YTD gross profit as of 6/1/22. Croom attributes the increase to consistent unified pricing, contract information in one place, and the ability to track more items.
"We realized that we were letting a lot of items go at a lower price than we should have. We found more items that we were low on than high. So, we've been able to make more positive changes in our pricing than negative."
epaCUBE's pricing categories enable Wilmington to group similar customers together. "Now we have all these nodes set for A, B, C and D customers. If we want to change a price, we just make one change versus having to change it for every customer."
"If our IT guy made changes on special contracts, it would take him a few days. Now he can do it in a couple of hours. All the time we spent to get here is nowhere near the amount of time we spent before to never get anywhere."
Margin increase, adding tens of thousands to YTD gross profit
"epaCUBE makes my part of dealing with pricing so much simpler. Items are priced correctly. And it's made my job a lot easier."
"epaCUBE has allowed us to create a unified structure with everybody on the same playing field. Now if they call one counter person and get a price and turn around and call the next counter person, that price is the same."
"The biggest benefit is having consistent pricing and being able to manage it with one place to look at and manage individual customer contracts," Croom concluded.
Croom was more than happy he didn't wait for his data or ERP system to be reorganized before getting started. "Items are priced correctly. And if we need to make a change or a judgement, it's very easy to do. Distributors should take the steps now to work with epaCUBE even if their operation is not fully organized or automated. epaCUBE will be a partner along the way."