Complaint Review: WB Mason Co - Brockton Massachusetts

Ok I am going to say this up front, I am a former employee of W.B. Mason. I worked as outside sales representative for the company for a little less than 5 years. I have a really good understanding about their sales and business strategy.

Its obvious that the original post is from a disgruntled former employee of the company and that the rebuttal was obviously written by W.B. Masons marketing department. I left the company good terms and hold no ill will, but there were some things I wish that were different about their approach to market. So I am going to be objective with this.

Monopoly?

It is impossible for W.B. Mason to monopolize the market.W.B. mason holds a market cap of just under $1 billion dollars. This may seem like a lot but compare it to Staples whose B2B side of their business accounts for over $10 Billion of the total market cap. Compare these #s and youll find its blatantly obvious that W.B. couldnt currently hold a market monopoly.

The other 2 points

1.They bait customers in by marketing lower prices on certain items (ie: copy paper) & Price them out far below cost to expose the competition in specific areas.

Every company that sells commoditized products does this -Staples, Wal-Mart, BJs etc. its called Loss Leading. Read Below

Loss Leader- A business strategy in which a business offers a product or service at a price that is not profitable for the sake of
offering another product/service at a greater profit or to attract new customers.

Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lossleader.asp#ixzz1mBUOjQ00

When I was a rep I would expose competitors prices all the time and was proud to do so. Example: I had a customer who was paying $60 for a case of paper from a local independent. The going whole sale cost $25. That means the greedy local independent was making/gouging a 140% PROFIT!!!! 

The Problem that I have with W.B. Mason on this is the way they would train their reps to implement the loss lead strategy. W.B. Mason has over 700 sales reps. Many of them are fresh out of college. When a rep goes into a business they present a sales flyer with loss lead pricing on it. There have been many times where these kids are so desperate to get people ordering they will neglect to tell the customers that the pricing they are showing is introductory and will probably only be held for about 3-6 months.  I was fortunate to have a boss that trained me to communicate this properly and it kept me from getting in trouble with the customer. Going forward if W.B. Mason is going to have a good name in the market they should do a better job training their reps in this area.

2.The competiting companies in those areas are forced to go out of business and Now, since there is no competition to keep prices fair --WB Mason is able to step in and make a killing- Switching their entire price structure and Price gouging you on every item possible!!!

The competiting companies in those areas are forced to go out of business and Now, since there is no competition to keep prices fair Im sorry a 140% profit margin is not fair. The competition will go out of business because they have a flawed business model that requires them to gouge their customers. It is a moral imperative that those companies go out of business. Does W.B. Mason Raise prices to make money on accounts? Yes, But they are always willing to bend on price to keep someones business. Nobody in the market that I ever encountered actually legitimately offered to beat anyone elses
price, and if they did it would be for a limited time only and only on certain items.

So If I were a company doing or about to do business with W.B. Mason I have 2 suggestions:

1.Price check them:
You should do this with all vendors. It is a smart business practice and it is a responsibility of any good business person or owner to do so. If you are getting charged too much its your fault, not theirs.

2. Communicate:
 W.B. Mason will beat pretty much everyones price on office products if you give them the opportunity. Again, If you are getting charged too much its your fault, not theirs.

I hope this was helpful.

How is it possible for the company with the lowest profit and least number of stores with the least coverage be a monopoly??? 

 Staples has over 2,000 stores in multiple (over 25) countires and makes over 27 billion dollars.

 Office Max has over 40,000 employees and takes in over 9 billion.

 Office Depot has stores in over 15 countries and more than 42,000 employes and takes in over 14 billion dollars.

 That sounds like some pretty successful companies and there are others, these are just the most well known.  If there were a monopoly being run by W.B. Mason would these companies be able to flourish with these spectacular number that steadily increase year to year since they were founded all around the mid 80's. 

 W.B. Mason has under 3,000 employees, less than 500 delivery trucks and operates in less than half of the 50 United States making less than 1 billion dollars.  How can a company of this lower caliber than the big corporate box chain style stores be a monopoly?

 W.B. Mason started over 100 years ago in "1898" - thats right they were first.  They invented the office delivery business.  They perfected it and they still do it better, friendlier and with more care for the customer than any of those other companies.  They don't have that big corporation chain style shopping cart dept. store style because anything and everything a customer would ever need for the office environment can be delivered directly to them.  Just because they invented and perfected a certain aspect of an industry doesn't make them a monopoly.  All those other stores may make more in revenue and profit and have more stores and offer the same products and even have a delivery service, but all their customers complain about their delivery service, customer service and interaction, and inconvenience of going to one of their stores.

 It sounds to me that this complaint was either written by an unsuccessfull small business owner that just didn't have the will and knowhow to succeed or someone who had a bad experience with the company itself.  If it's an ex-owner then it's too bad that you couldn't do it, don't blame another company just because you were most likely covering the same market.  If it's the latter then oh well face it people have bad experiences sometimes with any company, when I searched W.B. Mason on ripoff report this is the only one result that came up, Staples has 165, Office Max has 100, Office Depot has 162, so it seems to me that W.B. Mason gotta be doing something right...

 Here's just a little more background... U.P.S. founded in 1907 - after W.B., D.H.L. started in 1969, also after, Fedex started in 1971... so W.B. Mason started the office supply delivery industry, and it was the very first specialized small local based delivery company beside the United States Postal Service which was formed in 1775 by Benjamin Franklin but was based on previous forms of mail delivery systems which already existed, but Franklin found a way to specialize, proifit and improve an exisitng entity.  Which is what all those other companies did by following the tracks laid by W.B. Mason.

 So all I really wanted to say is that W.B. Mason is a small company and it is not a monopoly.  It is based in it's founding location from 1898 of Brockton, MA.  And everything else in the compaint is just some ramblings of a crazed not in a straight state of mind with emmotions flying every which way causing some untruthful opinionated views toward them...I set out facts which I researched so you can base your own opinion.   In my opinion the writter of the original complaint was steaming over some little incident whilst typing his or her little essay.

 thanks for your time and please repond to this and let the writter know your opinion as well.