As the New Product Introduction process starts, a confusing relationship starts to unravel between your company, your manufacturer and the maker of the parts you are attempting to buy. Somewhere in that mix, a distributor steps in to provide the needed parts to your manufacturer, sales representatives from all sorts of companies start calling on you, and your technical questions are redirected to mysterious FAEs. But who are all these companies and how do they interrelate? And before you shrug it off and don’t think any of them matter to you (they’re ‘business people stuff’) I can tell you from experience that FAEs can be the difference between getting a part to work and hitting my head against a wall for weeks. And a good sales rep and distributor will not only help you find the right parts to meet your needs, they also drive pricing. Meaning they can bring your product from out of reach due to cost to exceeding margin expectations. The Four Main players When manufacturing a product, there are four main players that …