MANA Welcomes Guest Blog by Jim Perritt

MANA is pleased to present an insightful guest blog by Jim Perritt, North America Sales Manager, Product Assembly Adhesives, LORD Corporation. Our business focuses on industrial adhesives primarily sold through distributors who engineer applications.

Utilizing Manufacturers’ Representatives

LORD Adhesives has a longstanding history of employing manufacturers’ representatives in the automotive aftermarket and has extended this practice to the sign market for over 20 years. The reasons for using manufacturers’ representatives include:

• They have established relationships with local distributors.
• They are familiar with the local end users who are our distributors’ customers.
• They are geographically closer to the distributors and their customers.
• They have a deep understanding of the applications for our adhesives.
• They help us achieve a lower cost of doing business compared to direct sales.
• They create synergy with the lines on their line cards.

Our adhesives bond to substrates, making any customer for substrates a potential buyer for our adhesives, and vice versa. While we still have regional managers covering all our businesses, manufacturers’ representatives allow us to more effectively target specific market segments like the sign and automotive aftermarkets due to their specialized knowledge.

About MANA

The Manufacturer’s Agents National Association (MANA) is the leading national non-profit association dedicated to supporting independent manufacturers’ representatives in the United States. Since 1947, MANA has been successfully connecting reps and manufacturers while advancing the professionalism and effectiveness of independent manufacturers’ representatives through education, networking, and advocacy.