RON: The number of conversations you and I have had over the last decade about it all comes back to integrity, right? If you don't have integrity, you're not going to succeed. But if you have integrity, even when things go awry, if people know you have integrity and you're going to take care of them, that goes a long way.
Let's talk about some of the considerations about the members themselves and about buyers groups and some of the things that the platform and the catalog may need to do with regard to some of the different members. Obviously, with our platform, one of the things that I always talk about is the custom ability and the scalability, right? Because one thing I know for sure, just like the weather here in Texas, wait 15 minutes and it's going to change
People's businesses change, too. You may have had your business last 50 years and say, “We've done business this way for the last 50 years.” If we sat down and really talked about all the things that you changed over the last 50 years, you would be surprised if you started writing it down.
Most people just think nothing ever changes, but everything changes and it changes all the time. Some of it is within your control and a significant amount of it outside of your control. So you want to make sure that the platform can scale both up and down, both in and out, depth and breadth.
Consider the long-term impacts of the possible group purchasing platform integrations. One of our clients—Chris mentioned something earlier about millions of SKUs. It reminded me of one of our clients—he came to me and said he had 50 million SKUs. And I said 50 million SKUs. That's a first for me. I mean, we've got a couple of clients that are in the millions, but 50 million, that that's new to me. I've never heard of anybody with 50 million.
And he said, “Well, I've been in the business for 75 years, and although between me and my suppliers I only stock 3 million SKUs, my platform has every single part number for the last 75 years, what today's replacement part is for that part number, as well as every competing part number and every other manufacturer and OEM part number. So for every part number that I have, I might have anywhere from 3 to 10 additional part numbers this part is a replacement for.
If anybody comes to that site looking to fix this water heater from 37 years ago built out of this country and they put in a part number, I have to have the replacement part for that for every single piece of equipment out there for the last 75 years.”
So you need to make sure that as part of the long-term implications of the integrations are the part numbers, the replacement part numbers and the ability to serve those clients. Chris said it quickly, you want to be able to serve them quickly.