Distributors are increasingly expected<br>to deliver value adding services

According to Electronics Weekly, electronics distributors say they are seeing growing demand for services from buyers looking to get greater value from their preferred distributors. OEMs and EMS companies have discovered that more and more component distributors are willing to provide a variety of value added and supply chain services. “Distributors who have survived have gotten away from competing on price and try to sell services", Robin Gray, executive vice president of the National Electronic Distributors Association in Alpharetta told Electronics Weekly. “They have been out there pushing the fact customers buy based on value and not price from them. Those distributors that tried to compete just on price aren't around anymore", he adds. “There isn't a correlation that says larger customers will want our value added services and small customers won't," says Jim Mooney, vice president of global programming and tape and reeling services for Avnet. “In a lot of cases, customers that have smaller production runs do not want to make investments in the tooling that may be required so they are looking for someone else to do it", he added.