Do Distributors Carry All the Same Products?

“A common misconception among clinics is that their distributors carry all of the same products. Most of us do not realize how different these catalogs really are.”

We all know that pricing differs between distributors, but what about the breadth of products they carry? A common misconception among clinics is that their distributors carry all of the same products. Most of us do not realize how different these catalogs really are.

Vetcove’s catalog lists more than 165,000 unique Products (SKUs). Once we exclude compounded products from suppliers like Wedgewood from this total, we’re left with 98,333 manufactured products. This is actually an under-representation of the total, since many generic products have as many as 20 variations, which we count as only one product. By comparison, the largest distributor that can be interfaced with using Vetcove has just over 34,000 products in their system. Most other suppliers, including suppliers that serve the entire nation, carry many fewer products.

These facts do not include tens of thousands of compounded products, which are all made-to-order and unique to just one supplier, or generic products we’ve grouped into just one item. It’s easy to see that having multiple distributors gives us much greater access to products, and has become necessary given how much distributors vary.