Sandwell Paper Analysis

Company Background: Sandwell Paper Company is a large paper wholesaler, which ties its roots to Omaha, Nebraska in the 1980s. The firm started in sales and distribution to its consumers and bought its paper from other wholesalers. Sandwell Paper Company grew as its sales grew and eventually became a warehouse operation of its own. The product line includes fine printing and industrial wrapping grades of paper. The fine printing paper line is the more profitable as well as specialized of the two parts of the paper product line. The printing line is profitable because printers don not want large inventories but want fast delivery and for this reason they are pay premium to wholesalers to keep inventories of wide range. They want to ideally have inventories of different grade sizes, weight and colors. In order to keep up with the sales growth, several divisions exist. There are operations in Bakersfield, San Diego and also San Francisco. Sandwell Paper Company is a dual house supplying both fine printing and industrial wrapping paper goods. The company also carries stocked plastics and other non paper items to promote unitized selling. (Sandwell Paper Company Case) Sandwell paper Company’s objective of having unitized and packaged selling is so the end user, the consumer can be attended by the sales people. The sales people are there to supply the entire customer needs which makes it both more simply in customer ordering, simplifies billing and also maximizes the selling efficiency. (Sandwell Paper Company Case). Sandwell Paper was at a time a franchised distributor for Medallion Paper Company, and in areas serviced by more than one wholesaler Sandwell Paper Company had exclusive sales of the Medallion paper line. (Sandwell Paper Company Case) This helped decrease inventory problems, because quality could be depended on as the company was in charge of the whole line.
Company organization is as follows: * Bakersfield branch sales force is a team of three