Mega Distributor INGRAM’s Direct-to-Consumer Option
By Cathy Gilmore
Many Catholic organizations are not yet familiar with a service provided through the INGRAM Content Group called Aer.io. It is a system through which direct-to-consumer ordering and distribution provides an alternative to the restrictive policies of Amazon. The Aer.io system enables the store, who chooses to use this shopping mechanism on their website, to provide customers a seamless online shopping experience. Customers enjoy the convenience while still supporting a favorite brick-and-mortar store. Stores can choose from any of the hundreds of thousands of titles distributed from INGRAM and thus carry an online selection far surpassing what can fit in a physical store.
Here’s a portion of an interview of Aer.io founder, Ron Martinez, on the Bookseller Blog by Porter Anderson:
“Martinez says, potential lies in the brick-and-mortar bookseller arena. He and Aer.io have worked extensively with member-companies of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), looking at that peculiar gap between a corner shop's shelves and online retailing.
"The way we're set up, there's the bookstore on the corner. And maybe a third of independent booksellers in the US have an online presence, per the ABA, which is surprising. It's complex and expensive. But with Aer.io, there's so much price and margin control. The economics are so beneficial. You can discount up to 25 or 30 percent. So if you're selling at list price, you're doing 25 or 30 percent, and that's net margin, not gross margin. Because we're handling everything.
"There's no reason why my favorite bookstore on Fillmore" Street in San Francisco "can't have access to 14 million titles that can be sold at reasonable margins. Then they bring their curation and marketplace presence and community and connection and passion to sell the books. Good for publishers and authors."
If booksellers take the cue here and explore what this kind of access to online agility offers, one of Martinez's principles will have been realized: inclusiveness, the democratisation effect he was writing about in his manifesto.
"You can't just go ahead and blow out the corner bookstore," he says. "You have to start by asking how to do things in a way that works for people who know how to sell books? Bookstores are selling books. And you fail if you cut out any part of the ecosystem." Read the rest of the Bookseller article HERE
In a world where many religious specialty shops have been devastated by the transformation in the marketplace through online selling and distribution, it’s refreshing to see that INGRAM offers a way to level the playing field for local retailers and specialty stores.
