I can’t really remember when I saw my first “Red Box”; it probably wasn’t all that long ago. But over the past few months, these things have become a part of my environment. I see them everywhere – at the local Walgreen’s, in the front entry of my neighborhood grocery store and at busy convenience stores. And, last week, I noticed one along side an interstate McDonald’s. For those of you who spent the past 5 years holed up in a hermit’s cave or incarcerated in solitary confinement, the Red Box is a refrigerator sized vending machine that dispenses rental DVD’s. What makes the machine cool is: You can locate and reserve DVD’s over the internet There are 5-6 of these machines within a few miles of my house. I can see which movies are available at the machine standing at the Walgreen’s a half mile from my house. You can rent from one location and return to another You can rent movies while traveling; basically watching movies as one hops from machine to machine across country. Your ...

One point of discussion among distributors across all lines of trade comes under the heading of POS data. Distributors find themselves being muscled into providing POS data which is expensive (because every manufacturer wants it done differently) and distracting. In a recent informal poll conducted by this office, most distributor sales managers could think of just one or two suppliers who provided them with a reasonable clue that POS data was being used for anything worthwhile. A recent survey completed by Pembroke Consulting backs up this largely anecdotal story. Distributors and their partners need to get together on this. Sending data "over the wall" where it is not properly used is only friction in the channel. AHTD , PTDA , NAED and a number of others have developed POS guideline models that need serious consideration. A survey recently completed by Pembroke Consulting uncovered a "surprising number" of companies, still using manual systems for collecti...