One of the things you can count on in business is change.

Maybe your star salesman has been lured to another company. Or, your boss has decided to take early retirement. Or, the Department of Transportation has issued new regulations. Or, your equipment supplier has changed how your relationship is going to work.

Whatever the issue, you can count on the fact that change is on the way.

In this issue of Gases & Welding Distributor we have a featured article by Jerry Leary, the president of Koike Aronson/Ransome, Inc. Koike Aronson makes welding equipment, including welding positioning tables and multiple-torch cutting tables for the metalworking industries, in Arcade, N.Y.

Leary talks about what he has done to change his company's dealer and distributor partnerships, and how he has developed a tiered partnership system that provides greater rewards to his company's partners that do well.

That tiered system of rewards helps to ensure stability among Koike's distributors, but one of the points that Leary makes is that the number of partners that his company has changes on a year-to-year basis as distributors make it to — or drop off of — his company's “A” list.

We are featuring Leary's comments on the way he has re-established his distributor relationships to provide other distributors a view of how equipment makers see the markets for their products, and to give distributors ideas the changes they can make to improve their operations and make themselves more valuable to equipment makers.

We will have articles in the future about the changes that equipment makers are putting into place to improve their distributor relationships and to make their operations more competitive.