United Stationers is the largest broad line wholesale distributor of business products in North America with revenue of $ 4.6 billion in 2007. To enhance competitiveness, United Stationers has built an information and logistical web around their suppliers, retailers and customers.

United Stationers built a project called “marketopia” the goal of which was to understand the unique needs of each one of the retailers (N=1) and help them tailor their operations to serve their customers better. Each retailer can have a unique product portfolio, focused promotion programs and the ability to respond quickly to their customers’ demands. United Stationers sources their products from a large network of manufacturers who also provide a significant portion of the advertising and promotional budget (R=G).

This case illustrates the need for building an ecosystem of suppliers, retailers and their customers into a seamless information and logistical web. The critical lessons that this case highlights are:

a. the criticality of building a compatible ICT backbone out of multiple and often incompatible systems

b. training and upgrading a “old fashioned” channel (resellers)

c. coping with a very large throughput (volume, complexity of SKUs) of low margin products.

Without these innovations the firm could not have grown profitably.

Source: Prahalad & Krishnan (2009)