Sai Koppaka, president and CEO of BEL USA, isn’t worried about Amazon. Instead, the head of firms including DiscountMugs.com, said he worries about that person in a garage, hard at work developing whatever technology will one day supplant Amazon. Koppaka talked with ASI’s Andy Cohen about his company’s approach to technology in a session called “Change Agents: Meeting the Demands of Shifting Markets” at the 2017 ASI Power Summit in San Diego this week. 

Rather than trying to survive in an ever-shifting market, your business should be the one leading whatever those changes may be, he said. “Unless we evolve as a company, we will get lost,” Koppaka said. “We should take risks and not worry about profit margins. Inertia means we’re opening up doors to competition.” 

He urged promotional products suppliers and distributors to embrace digital technology in every form, whether it’s going paperless and equipping employees with tablets, or switching from traditional imprinting methods like screen printing to more cutting-edge techniques. The transition can be painful, but sometimes it’s best to “rip the Band-Aid, rather than trying a slower integration of technology into your business processes,” Koppaka said. 

Industry professionals must also acknowledge the changes in consumer buying habits and the shift toward instant gratification. Taking seven days to ship an order is no longer acceptable, he said. Even Amazon Prime’s two-day delivery service is becoming too long of a wait for some online shoppers. “Our goal by the end of 2018 is to get every order out in three hours,” Koppaka said, admitting that it was certainly a stretch goal, but one that he believes is achievable.

Koppaka also addressed the elephant in the room: how BEL USA can operate on both the supplier side and as a $198 million distributor with its DiscountMugs site, without alienating other distributors in the industry. According to Koppaka, DiscountMugs catches smaller-scale orders, perhaps $1,000 each, whereas BEL’s distributor clients are placing much larger orders, in the tens of thousands of dollars. “We would never steal a customer,” Koppaka assured the audience. “It makes no financial sense for us to do so.”