Thinking outside the box of traditional sales
When Rita Bonarrigo founded her company in 1999, B2B sales was a time-consuming process. Selling computer media backup tapes to oil and gas companies in Texas required a lot of driving and face-to-face meetings in order to build relationships with her clients. “Everything took so much time,” she remembers. Bonarrigo recognized that the business landscape was evolving, and fast. New technology and buying preferences were changing the nature of B2B sales, and the old labor-intensive sales model was no longer sustainable. She needed a way to scale up her company’s sales, adopt a new e-commerce model, and reach new customers beyond the confines of the Lone Star State.
To take advantage of the new demand for B2B e-commerce, Bonarrigo expanded the company’s catalog to sell a wider range of office supplies, targeted new government, education and other business customers, and in March 2018, started selling on Amazon Business. The Office Tex now sells far more than media backup tapes — it sells more than 100,000 items to customers around the world, everything from paper to toner to canned air.