Vinegar lover Reggie Smith founded his company, Supreme Vinegar to bring nearly-lost, old world vinegar flavors back to the marketplace. Each batch of uniquely-flavored vinegars - including date, pineapple, raspberry, and even watermelon - is created using a combination of traditional cooking methods and modern chemistry, which results in a superior quality product. For years, Reggie created these vinegars in his own kitchen, and stored them in his home. As the popularity of his product grew, so did his inventory. He needed a bigger space to store the vinegars, and assistance in fulfilling the orders he received. He turned to Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to prepare, pick, pack, and ship his product.

ASD’s President and General Manager, Phil Lanctot , talks about the convenience and benefits of choosing ASD to assist your business with asset recovery, re-deployment, recycling, and lease returns. Q: Phil, which types of companies use ASD’s asset management services, such as Virtual Warehouse & Distribution, Service Bench, and Service Anywhere? A: Large organizations have Asset Management systems. Typically, it’s the physical resources - knowledgeable staff and facilities - that they’re lacking. Assets tend to pile up because these companies don’t generally hire full-time staff to handle the logistics of physically handling used IT equipment. This is equipment should be re-deployed, or returned to a leasing company. Other assets must have the data cleared and disposed of. So they’re also paying to store equipment not in use, which is costly and puts their data at risk. Every office - every business - has a pile of IT assets they’re reluctant to throw away. And the staff is too busy to figure out what to do with it. That’s where ASD comes in. Q. How does it work when a client is ready for ASD to handle an equipment return? A. Our team can be onsite with the client to pack the equipment securely for transport. Then we ship the units to the ASD depot. Of course, we provide tracking reports to our clients, so they have a record of the equipment that was recovered and shipped to our storage facility. Q. Once equipment is received by ASD, what happens? A. Once we receive the units at ASD, it’s triaged in one of three ways. If the equipment has reached the end of its lease, the ASD team expertly wipes the data from the machine and returns the equipment to the lessor. In this industry, previously used equipment is sometimes redeployed to new users, while it still contains sensitive information that can be accessed with relative ease. In fact, this scenario was a catalyst for a major healthcare provider to call upon ASD to handle disposals, re-deployments, and lease returns of its multi-function printers (MFPs), as health information privacy is of utmost importance. If the equipment is still under lease, and requires storage until it’s re-deployed, ASD’s staff once again wipes the data for security reasons. They refurbish it to client specifications, making it plug-and-play ready for the next user. The item is then placed in the client’s online “storefront,” where managers can review equipment inventory and select the item for re-deployment when they need it. In the meantime, it’s safely stored at ASD’s facilities. Finally, older, unusable equipment requires disposal. It needs to be recycled properly, in an environmentally-friendly manner. ASD’s team disposes of electronics in accordance with R2 Guidelines, which is the gold standard for recycling this type of equipment. ASD recovers, re-deploys, recycles, or returns equipment like (but not limited to): computers multi-function printers phones tablets computer carts medical devices (such as scales or blood pressure equipment)

The expenses associated with operating a small business can be overwhelming - and potentially detrimental to the company’s bottom line.Using virtual solutions may lower your human resources and overhead costs.Plus, you can depend on a reliable staff to get the job done right - without the hassle or frustration of traditional employee management.