[EP 14] Modern Merchant Podcast: Special Guest, Mike w/ Essendant

Below, you will find a transcript of the episode.

Austin Rose:

Hey everyone and thanks for tuning into the Modern Merchant Podcast. My name is Austin. I’m your host and the go-to Market Director here at Flxpoint. With me, as always, I have Travis Mariea, the CEO of Flxpoint. In today’s episode, we have a very special guest. We have Mike, who is the Senior Manager of Content, Syndication, and Technology Partnerships with Essendant. Thanks for jumping on Mike, I appreciate it.

Mike Zatezalo:

Hey, thanks for having me glad to be here.

Austin Rose:

Of course, that was a good job title description there. I think everybody got what you do, but just to get us started, give us a quick background about yourself. Let us know exactly, what does that entail for Essendant? And then just a little bit about who Essendant is.

Mike Zatezalo:

Sure. I’m in the marketing group, technically, at Essendant. Focusing on the digital and e-commerce side. And so, what my teams are responsible for is the processes and the distribution and syndication of all of our digital item product content. Essendant is a wholesaler, we’ve got warehouses all over the country, and we have probably anywhere from 60 to 70,000 or so office products, cleaning products, industrial safety, janitorial break room. All different kinds of products traditionally go to resellers who sell office products, jan-san, industrial, those types of things to other businesses. So my teams are actually in charge of managing and syndicating all of our digital product content to our partners and to our resellers who use that data to sell products on their websites.

Mike Zatezalo:

So we’ve got a one size fits all flavor of our content in a few different database formats, as well as pricing and inventory information, which I think is what you guys consume, actually. Flxpoint, from us. And we syndicate that content monthly and the pricing and the inventory is more real time. And then there’s another team, actually, that does a lot of customized syndication for certain larger customers that have more, maybe rigorous formatting requirements and things like that. Where they’ve said, “We can’t just take the one size fits all flavor from you guys. We need custom mapped content,” and things like that. So we do have the ability to do that in certain cases and I have a team that does that as well.

Mike Zatezalo:

The technology partnership side is just more my role in working with folks like you guys. Our, I guess what we would call, we have an acronym internally called 3PV that stands for third party vendor. And that’s really just any typical software vendor, in either e-commerce or ERP or data, that provides services and systems to our resellers in our market. And so, obviously like with you guys, we have a vested interest in working with you guys so that you understand what our data is and how to integrate with us and things like that. And so, I manage relationships with a lot of the partners such as you guys that work with us.

Austin Rose:

Excellent. And how did you get started with Essendant?

Mike Zatezalo:

I started with Essendant, I guess, at the end of 2012, so almost nine years ago. Actually, my background was in engineering. I came from electronic design automation, so companies that design software for companies that design microchips and circuits and stuff like that. So I was an applications consultant in that world. And then I went to work for a startup and was working from home in that field for a while. It was an international startup, working there for a few years, didn’t exactly pan out and was looking to do something a little bit different.

Mike Zatezalo:

A little bit more on the business side with managing relationships, particularly in software, and happened to see a position at Essendant that was open to do just that. So I was really hired to be the partnership manager for third party vendors and software. And as time has gone on and different reorganizations and things like that, I think because I’ve had a chance to work with so many customers and so many e-commerce vendors and understand how they consume data it morphed into this role of also being able to handle the content syndication piece. Because I think it ties really closely to how we work with our partners.

Austin Rose:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think we’ve been working with the Essendant for a while now. I remember getting looped in, Justin worked with the other Mike Z, and then we’ve got you. We had the two headed sphere of the Mike Zs and it’s been a really good ride with you guys, from an inventory source perspective to start, and then into Flxpoint, because we do help out from that data side of things. And that leads me to our first question, and I was really curious about this because when Travis and I, and a bunch of people in this company, we talked to other vendors or suppliers or distributors that we work with.

Austin Rose:

Either data’s lacking or it’s good, it’s manageable. And there’s usually maybe a few people that help out in that realm or it’s a team effort kind of thing with those different companies. But you guys have your own digital content syndication group and that works, specifically on that. So have you guys always had that group? And is that the forefront of where you guys see a lot of value with your company? With being able to provide really good data to resellers.

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah. I think we have had syndication in the past, I guess even technically, obviously before I was here. We haven’t had some of the customization that we have now and we haven’t had maybe quite as much of the digital focus as we’ve had in the past five to eight years. I think a lot of where content was focused when Essendant, when it was the United Stationers first started, the focus was the print catalog. So a lot of the content development, as well as the processes for syndication and things probably originated in this, how do we get the printed catalog out there and how is that going to work?

Mike Zatezalo:

And as time has gone on, syndication has moved from more of a based merchandising function to get some digital stuff out there in addition to the catalog. To what it is now, where it’s really the primary focus of how we get our content out there. And then we’ve bolted on, in the past few years, this customized piece as well. So I think we’ve always had syndication to some extent, but it continues to grow and the focus shifts to being digital and multi-channel that way. And I think we’ve made a lot of strides since I’ve been here based on how it started.

Travis Mariea:

You mentioned the customization piece, do you mind just going into that? What is that side of the business? And you said, it’s recently you guys rolled it out. What specifically [crosstalk 00:07:13].

Mike Zatezalo:

Sure. And I mean, within the past few years. So instead of just having our, let’s say static couple formats of the database that we make available, some customers, we may have an API connection directly to them … if they share a vendor with us. They may be large enough to say, “Hey, we’ve got a portal that you need to use and we call … You guys have a category called chairs, we call it office chairs.” All these different things where we’ve got to make our content fit, not necessarily change it or rewrite things in a certain way, but more like here’s the way we map it from one person to another. And so that mapping, particularly for categories and for structures and portals, can take some time. As you guys, I’m sure, are aware of and have automated a lot, coming to you from all these different sources. We need to do that in some cases with some of our major customers. And so, we’ve got some dedicated resources to do some of that work.

Travis Mariea:

Got you. All right, that makes a lot of sense. I’m just curious, you guys have, you said, 60 to 70,000 products. I’m sure you’re getting new products maybe every quarter or every month, who knows? What does the process look like? How often, one, do you get new products that you guys might start selling? Is it daily? Is it quarterly? And then when the new product shows up, how’s that go from team to team, to be able to be live and have data on the website or available for your resell? I’d just love to know more about that process.

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah. Oh boy. How many minutes-

Travis Mariea:

At a high level [crosstalk 00:08:48].

Mike Zatezalo:

No, but yeah, I mean really at this point, I think years ago it was probably more of a quarterly, monthly cycle. Driven by the fact that people couldn’t consume the data that quickly. We’ve got to make it for this catalog, come out the next quarter or whatever it is. Now, I mean particularly with COVID and how fluid things have been, I mean we introduce products daily, weekly. Not en masse, but it could be really any day of the week we could have a new product coming in, an old product coming out, and getting content. So basically I’d say our content flow is probably similar to a lot of other major customers in e-tailers. But where we’ve got a, let’s say, a portal interface and our merchandising people work with our suppliers to approve items, onboard what that content is going to be, we have certain base requirements that we need for operational and then rich content to bring those on.

Mike Zatezalo:

Once those items get set up at a base level into our system, they come into our content development team. So we have a team, whereas my team is more focused on pushing out, their team is more focused on the inbound and then making sure that we get, A, all the information we need and that it’s formatted and organized the way that it needs to be. And then within all of that too, we have to be conscious of, when is pricing set up for it, when are we going to have inventory and a certain number of warehouses? So there’s all these other processes from other groups that need to be followed before an item can be ready for syndication.

Mike Zatezalo:

So I would say, for our static database, like the ECDB and things that … we typically have a monthly cycle where we refresh that data that would include any new items over the month and things like that. But for some of our other channels, such as our Smart Search suite of web services and some more real time things, technically you could get a new item every day, depending on how quickly it’s set up and the inventory is there and things like that. So depending on how people are consuming data from us, they could be seeing new items every day or they could be seeing them every month.

Travis Mariea:

Got you. Yeah, it sounds like a process that’s definitely evolved to be a lot more real time than, like you said, back in the day with the catalogs going out quarterly. And it sounds like you also are doing it in a smart way, you’re leveraging a lot. The vendors are actually providing you some data via your guys’ vendor onboarding system. And then you’re augmenting that, tweaking it, approving it. So you’re not rewriting it and basically … Well, maybe you’re rewriting in some scenarios, but you’re not reinventing the wheel each time. They’re giving you a little bit of a leg up out the gate?

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, we work with our suppliers directly to get the base content. Because we’re the wholesaler, we’re in the middle, so we’re not manufacturing … We do have some own brand products that are our brands that we do manufacture, and obviously would have content for that, but for the thousands of others that we work with, we do rely on them as the source of truth. But because we’re often working with the end customer’s and e-tailers and such a wide range of folks, we get a really good look into what’s needed out in the marketplace. And so, that helps us drive to what we asked suppliers for and what we need. Whether it’s compliance data or whether it’s, “Hey, you only have one image. We really need five,” or stuff like that.

Travis Mariea:

Got you. Got you. Are you guys taking your own pictures ever or are typically asking the vendor for it?

Mike Zatezalo:

In the past, I think we used to take more pictures. I think we might have some capabilities still where we do that, but typically, we get it from the supplier.

Travis Mariea:

Cool.

Austin Rose:

Do you guys ever not onboard a new vendor or brand because their data is so bad?

Mike Zatezalo:

That’s a good question. I don’t know that we’ve ever … And again, this would be more on the merchandising end. So even if we have, I haven’t had the visibility to it. I’ve not really heard that we’ve kicked anyone to the curb or anything like that. It’s typically more like, “Well, these are what our standards are, and so, in order for an item to get through we need to work with you to get to this standard.” So that’s the approach we’ve taken, I think.

Austin Rose:

It seems like, with us, it’s just a recurrent thing. Especially on the inventory source side, is people just dropping vendors and suppliers or distributors, just because of bad data. It’s like, they have the products, they have the brands that you want to sell and make the margin. But if I can’t show that to my customer, especially with a 50K SKU catalog, it’s a daunting task and people would just end up quitting on that front. So, yeah, no, that makes sense. And staying on that same breadth of data, so you provide the data in a bunch of different formats, like you said, for your customers. Some that could be … Well, we were integrated with an [ICAPS 00:14:00] file and then API integrations and then some other random stuff. But you see that good data is the driving needle for you guys. So really what I’m trying to get at is, for me to pick Essendant over a competitor, like a distributor that holds the same products you guys do, do you guys see having better data is that cherry on top to keep your customers and to get new customers?

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve known for a while, obviously, how important e-commerce has been and how important your product content is for sales. And I think it’s just exponentially accelerated over the past year or so with COVID. So I think product data, it’s almost not even, in my opinion, a cherry on top. It’s a core need and value, I think, at this point. If you don’t have content at a certain level, I mean, because that’s so key to competing online, and competing online is competing, I think it’s really a core value. Having that good content … that’s what’s selling your product and if people are going to do their research, and they don’t have what they need, they move on.

Austin Rose:

So have you guys seen … I feel like we always talk about this on podcasts, we have to bring it up, is COVID. And have you seen a major spike in new resellers? People needing better content? Has it been a little bit crazier for your end? Maybe not specifically, because we’ve talked about it on the warehousing side. The manual intervention of somebody actually having to pick, pack, and ship, and that’s just hard in some states and other cases. But from a content perspective too, I don’t know if you want to hit on both, but from a content perspective, is it just out of the roof? You guys are just so busy helping massage content and providing API, providing support for all these different ways of integrating?

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think on the operation side, I mean obviously our drop ship capabilities, which is one of our strengths at Essendant, I just … more and more people are taking advantage of that than have not before. And that also opened us up to other customers that might be outside of our traditional wheelhouse. I mean, I can even see, just from the number of resellers that we’re working with, together with you guys, and that I’ve been able to … Based on what their needs are in e-commerce, I mean, I feel like I’ve been more engaged with you guys and with partners like you because of this boom in these customers that are like, “Hey, I’ve got a Shopify site, I’ve got a Magento, I’ve got a big commerce. I need to manage all this data. I want to drop ship. I want to be able to order. I can’t do that all by myself, I’ve got this great website, but how do we make that all come together?”

Mike Zatezalo:

And I’m seeing a lot of new customers in that realm for us outside of maybe your traditional office products, jan-san, B2B accounts, that we would normally work with. And so a lot of them too, maybe are outside of that vertical, but they’re just looking to expand their assortment. They want access to more products and to be able to sell them online. So they need that content. The content is the first thing. They’re like, “We don’t even have a warehouse. We just need to be able to send you an order and we need that content.” The content is key, because that’s how they’re selling it. So yeah, I mean, it’s been booming from our perspective. In that way.

Travis Mariea:

I’m curious, we’ve got some different ideas and opinions. We obviously have a good idea of the type of customers or why there’s been a shift or demand spike, really drop ship, but I’m just curious from your side, what you’ve seen. If there’s anything we can maybe pick up on, why exactly has drop ship been so highly demanded because of COVID? Obviously if you want to go online, it doesn’t mean they have to drop ship. So I’m just curious, have you seen anything? Is it existing customers who have a brick and mortar? Is it more so just the new guys who want to get online because they realize that everything’s moving there now with COVID? At least it’s kind of spiked up in their mind. I’m just curious, any insights into why you think drop ship specifically has picked up so much with COVID.

Mike Zatezalo:

I guess, and this is, again, it’s just from what I see. Which is probably a limited view. But I think it’s more the folks that, they don’t have warehouses and they maybe don’t have a lot of trucks or they want to service a larger area than they’re physically capable of doing, so they want to find a partner that can help them do that. So maybe you’re normally doing business in South Carolina, but you want to get somebody in Florida those same products and you can’t drive that far. But hey, Essendant’s got a warehouse that can pop it over there at night. So we see a lot of customers, I think, or at least I have that, that do that.

Mike Zatezalo:

Also, working with some larger customers that just have a big footprint and take multiple suppliers in and leverage the drop ship capabilities to fulfill on their behalf. But I will say the majority, or a majority, a lot of our customers too, do the last mile fulfillment. And because we work with so many small to mid-sized businesses and independent resellers, they really put a lot of value in their own last mile delivery and service proposition. And that really is what helps differentiate them in the marketplace. So we have a ton of customers that are also invested in doing that as well. So it’s not just drop ship, but it’s both.

Austin Rose:

So one thing that I did want to talk about, and this just popped in my head, quick question. Because we’ve worked with you guys, especially United Stationers back in the day, and we’ve had people request ORS Nasco, I believe it was a different company. And do you guys have different departments and verticals, is that right? If so, could you hit on the different … Because you quickly ran through it. Jan-san, office supplies, are there any new ones that are coming into play that you guys are looking to tap into?

Mike Zatezalo:

Right now it’s actually … So at one time we had ORS Nasco, which was industrial, mostly heavy industrial stuff. Our jan-san, which is now under the Essendant bucket, was with a separate company called Lagasse, which was bought by United Stationers. The United Stationers were more office products. I think Medco is a company that we had owned that had auto body shop equipment, and there were some other ones, but we’ve since spun off, I think, ORS and Medco and some of the others. So I don’t know that, I mean, we haven’t recently acquired any different verticals. But I think we are expanding our assortment and some of the suppliers that we’re working with into some new verticals. I mean, we still have some industrial and safety, a lot of safety stuff. Our jan-san continues to be a growing area.

Mike Zatezalo:

You may have heard of a company called Azerty. Azerty was, a long time ago, bought by United Stationers but I still hear a lot of people using that in the marketplace. And that was more focused on office technology [inaudible 00:21:32], computers, that kind of thing. So we do quite a bit of that. And we’ve actually got some business that we do as well that’s what we call vendor direct. So maybe fresh food items, maybe different furniture, maybe things like that, where we can be working with the vendors, providing content and orders. But having them drop ship on our behalf and things like that. So there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say from an acquisition perspective that I’m aware of, that I’ve seen much new stuff recently. But as far as partnering with other suppliers and vendors for different types of fulfillment and different products, I think there’s going to be more.

Austin Rose:

Nice. That was one thing I remember, with ORS Nasco, that was a hard integration for us. And people wanting to drop ship … Like the products were huge. Weren’t they these massive, industrial …

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, like oil meters and, yeah, gosh. Stuff for pipelines and all kinds of crazy things.

Austin Rose:

Trying to pull in weights and dimensional weights and all the different ways that you guys would fill those types of products. I mean, that was a, yeah, that was a fun one. When we were first, originally scoping out that integration. And then around that time, we started hearing some rumors and seeing some things about you guys getting acquired by Staples and how that went down. What was that experience like?

Mike Zatezalo:

Well, it was interesting. I mean, I guess technically we didn’t get acquired by Staples but we got acquired by the company that owns both Staples and us. So the nice thing, I mean at least from my perspective, has been, is that we’ve been able to operate independently. And I guess the biggest change or improvement or whatever that I’ve seen, really, is just the attention that we have to our customer data. The safety of our customer data and making sure that there’s protocols and processes in place so that we’re not sharing data with Staples. And this is all pretty public stuff, I think is a condition of that merger. We’re very careful about how we deal with our customers and not giving Staples access to that because there’s competition that goes on there.

Mike Zatezalo:

So that was, I mean, one big change. Just from procedural and technology firewalls and things like that. But really what it’s enabled us to do a lot is leverage some of the … I think the, probably supplier relationships and some technology and some of our fulfillment network capabilities that Staples has. For example, this past year we rolled out a program called Market ADOT. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with what ADOT is in our world, it stands for automated dealer order transfer, and in a nutshell it’s just how we handle operational logic to fulfill item orders from different facilities. Like you have a home facility and there may be spoke facilities, and if they have the item, they can deliver it to the home. And it’s the bread and butter of a lot of our operational processes around rapid labeling and delivering products.

Mike Zatezalo:

But what we rolled out with Staples in the past year or so is, we’ve added some of their warehouses to our network. And so, they show up like a sending facility, and I believe it’s been 19 or so facilities, so in addition to just having more facilities from which to pick, some of the items that they stock are the same as what we stock. So you get a better fulfillment on those items, but in addition to that, they have items that Essendant never traditionally stocks that they do have access to. That now, because they’re part of our network, our customers now have access to as well. And so we’ve been rolling out, over the past year, programs so that our resellers can take advantage of that. And again, being very careful that data is not being shared with other Staples facilities and everything being on the up and up, but basically being able to pass that value on to our customers. And that’s gone over really well.

Austin Rose:

Got you. I remember seeing those emails, which had to have been towards the middle, beginning of the year, of all of these different locations getting added. And that’s, I mean honestly, if I was a reseller and I’m selling online and I just know that I can just keep selling away, but something’s going to get fulfilled even quicker than … You guys are just adding so much more value to the relationship of selling online and being able to do … I mean, we live in this, and Travis can speak to this, we’ve talked to Ship Engine recently, we’ve talked to Ship Hero in the past. We’ve talked to all of these different shipping companies and fulfillment side, and that’s the recurring theme of, how do we compete against same day shipping from Amazon? Or the same thing of, how do we compete with free shipping and getting that out quick as possible? So you guys adding those different fulfillment centers has been probably key to a lot of resellers.

Travis Mariea:

Yeah, I think it’s interesting too, you mentioned that you guys might actually have one of your vendors drop ship on your behalf. If I heard you correctly. Obviously you have your own warehouses and then you guys are in the middle of a retailer that might be dropshipping or buying from you. Or going all the way around that chain to a vendor. So just managing that technology, that’s what we’re also bullish on in that, this is like … We talk about the modern merchant, we call this the Modern Merchant Podcast because that is this new virtual warehouse management, virtual inventory management. Where the inventory is not behind you on a shelf anymore. There might be one, but there’s 100 others, and vendor networks, and other warehouses. So I applaud you guys on the technology being able to roll out and be able to manage that. And really, from what we hear is, have reliable shipping and accurate data along the way. So always interested to hear that because it sounds like you guys are pretty progressive on that front.

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, absolutely.

Austin Rose:

So is there anything new coming out with Essendant? Are you guys rolling anything out from a technology perspective or just a product perspective?

Mike Zatezalo:

I think a lot of, and for many years it was about services, and it still is, to an extent. Services and things that we could offer for others to consume, whether it’s an API or some real-time services. And I think we’ll continue to roll some of those out. A lot of what we’re doing, at least in my world internally, is again, focusing on our content and continuing to innovate there, up to our standards. We’re working through some internal system migrations and things like that, that should put us in a really good position for bringing on more content and speeding up, at a higher standard, but also speeding up that time to getting it in and getting it out across the organization. As we were talking earlier, there’s still quite a lot of dependencies about, once an item comes in, how quickly can we get it out?

Mike Zatezalo:

And we do a pretty good job there, but let’s just say if you have six different systems and groups trying to talk to each other and coordinate, versus maybe one or two where things get consolidated and the technology’s a little bit higher, that enables us to speed up our processes a bit. As well as make sure our data is more accurate inbound and less we spend less time correcting later and things like that. So in my world, a lot of what’s going on is going to be us investing in processes to up our content game so that we can then push that out to you guys, and our resellers, and other partners to easily consume and take advantage of.

Austin Rose:

And that’s almost like the same game that we run into. We’ve got our users, like Travis said, fulfilling from all these different partners. We’ve got to consolidate everything in the middle to push it out. And we’re starting to see, inventory source was easy. It’s just that one-to-one connection, you pick and choose, and it goes to your sales channel. But with Flxpoint, all the different ways that I can source products from, being a product information management system to curate and massage that data is great. But how quickly can you do that? And it seems like lately too, with our team, we’ve been optimizing on product load speeds and jobs speeds, all these different progress things that we do to move and manipulate data has been all about, let’s speed up, speed up, speed up. And we’ve heard from multiple customers, “You guys are the fastest app I’ve ever seen, especially for someone that has a 60K catalog.” So we’re definitely dealing with the same stuff, just, I think, on the different side of the fulfillment. The supply chain.

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah. Well, and I think one of the things that I think you touched on that you guys also do really well is, a lot of folks think about content. Well, I need the content for my site, but in addition to content, there’s just data. There’s inventory, there’s delivery proposition, there’s having the right pricing and being able to update that quickly. And so, while the content of course is so important, I think the whole e-commerce experience revolves around all that data and you guys being able to handle all of that, manage it, and automate that, really gives people a leg up.

Austin Rose:

Travis, any final thoughts? Wrapping up time here.

Travis Mariea:

No, I think this is really cool to hear and see how Essendant’s progressed. I’m just always curious if there’s anything, Mike, from your side that you feel maybe we didn’t touch on. Anything that’s interesting about Essendant that we didn’t get to. Any thoughts over on your side?

Mike Zatezalo:

Let’s see, there’s always interesting things, I guess. No, I mean, I think we touched on a good part of it. I think, in addition to just the content that I touched on, Essendant has a lot of additional digital services that we provide to resellers in the form of hosted search, digital analytics programs that our resellers can have their sites tagged in a certain way. And if they want, they can provide that click-through data to us, that we can use to provide reports back to them. To give them actionable KPIs and things based on what we’re seeing from their site performance and ways to improve their business.

Mike Zatezalo:

The hosted search also has APIs for enhanced content, merchandising, other rebates that can be pulled onto the site, video and things like that. We even have, I believe, personalized marketing recommendations that can be sent for products, and relationship items that can be sent, based on what people are searching for. And so, there’s a lot, other than just static content and data and pricing, there’s a lot of other opportunities for resellers. Particularly if they’re working with e-commerce vendors that have developed around some of this stuff to really excel [inaudible 00:33:01].

Travis Mariea:

The hosted search is interesting and it reminded me of a podcast we did a while back where we just talked about, is the distributor dead? Because everyone can go direct to the consumer and there’s more 3-PLs popping up. We basically said, no, because there’s a lot of value in having one catalog under one middleman, or a wholesaler, if you will. But then, the whole argument was about the value and how it’s changed over the years. I think the value used to be access to products, which is a little bit less there where you can work directly with brands.

Travis Mariea:

And then the 3-PLs are kind of like, the logistics side is getting easier for brands and retailers, but I think the value of switching to more of this digital technological enablement, if you will, is what we’re seeing. Like you guys, once again, being progressive in that nature of hosted search, better data, improving the ways you can access data, having real time APIs and things like that. It seems like that is the value shift we’ve been seeing in distributors, as a whole, and still maintaining, obviously, the great turnaround in shipping and things like that.

Mike Zatezalo:

Yeah, no, I would definitely agree. And I think we take a lot of pride in that as well. And so, when we talk to customers, I think a lot of them feel it’s definitely a differentiator between us and some of our competition.

Travis Mariea:

Interesting. Yep.

Austin Rose:

Perfect. Well, we’re wrapping up on time now, Mike. Obviously appreciate you jumping on. A lot of good insight there from a data perspective, from a distributor. Give us a quick little plug on why someone would want to check out Essendant?

Mike Zatezalo:

For top-notch fulfillment over a wide array of products and just a great company of people to work with, that are really customer focused and focused on doing good in the world around them, I recommend anybody work with Essendant.

Austin Rose:

I know you guys are number one, they’re who I recommend, and it’s almost purely all on that support perspective. You guys have been a great partner, very responsive to our customers. That’s a big thing that people look for when finding a distributor partner, so we highly love that. Thanks for jumping on, again. Travis, thanks for joining, as always. And obviously if you’re listening to the podcast, make sure to subscribe on your different channels; Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher. Check us out on YouTube. Any questions, head over to Essendant or Flxpoint and let us know, we’d love to chat with you. Thanks again, guys. And everybody, have a good day.

Mike Zatezalo:

Thanks a lot.

Austin Rose:

All right, bye guys.