How Portage works with manufacturers and distributors.
Listen first. Learn how you sell before we change anything. Build the site, the collateral and the sales playbook together so your team sells with it. Put a senior operator on every project, working with AI first. And be clear about the way forward.
A working conversation with a senior operator. You talk for most of it, and nobody is reading from a script.
Fixed scope for described work, quoted before anything starts, ending in something you own.
A senior US operator leads every project and stays your point of contact from the first conversation on.
Be the sun, not the salt. Dolphins, not sharks. Selling with sellers, not against them.
We learn how you sell before we change anything.
The first conversation is an introduction, not a qualification call. The job is not to describe Portage and it is not to score you. It is to understand the business well enough to give you a clear view of the way forward, and to hear what your customers value most.
You talk. We listen.
What is happening in the business. What made you start looking. Who is asking for it: customers, your own reps, or a systems project already underway. How an order actually arrives today. What you have already tried, and what happened. If nothing changes in eighteen months, what that looks like.
Two answers decide most of the scope.
What you believe the platform cannot do for you, and whether customer-specific pricing and credit live in your ERP or would live in the storefront. We do not ask these as questions. They surface on their own if the call is going well.
Then the one thing that matters most.
Why do your customers choose you? What makes you unique to them? Whatever you say is written down in your words. It is the thing the new site is not allowed to break, and it will not appear in any requirements document.
You leave the first call with a clear view.
If it is a fit, the next step is Discovery, and the plan it produces is yours to keep or hand to another firm. If another firm would serve you better, we say so and make the introduction. A recommendation against a project is a successful engagement, scoped and priced exactly like one that goes ahead.
We agree on what a good answer looks like before the research starts. That is what makes the yes worth acting on.
We take the approach of the seller, not just the marketer.
Portage connects the go-to-market strategy, the eCommerce site, the sales collateral and the sales plays, so your team sells with the site instead of against it. That connection is what turns a launch into a channel your customers actually use.
Selling with sellers.
Your reps have been successful for a reason. They know which customers want a call and which would rather reorder at nine at night, and they are a big part of why your customers have trusted you for years. We bring them into discovery, build what they know into the site, and give them a paddle: a sales playbook for selling with the new site, ready when it launches.
One senior lead, start to finish.
The senior operator who leads your first conversation opens the kickoff, sets the vision and tells the story, because they did the listening. They stay your point of contact through launch and after, while the work behind them moves quickly. You are never handed off, and if something goes bump in the night you know exactly who to call.
A senior operator on every project, with AI doing the heavy lifting.
The client experience is better for it, because Portage brings its expertise to the conversation and the decisions, not just to the tickets. We know eCommerce so you do not have to.
The best of every resource.
Every project is led by a senior operator in the US, and their first resource is AI. Not everything can be done that way, so when the work needs more hands we bring in partners we have worked with for years, onshore and offshore. On your side it is seamless: you only ever talk to your senior lead, and your lead owns the result.
Rooted in southeast Michigan.
Portage is in Saline, Michigan. A lot of us grew up in southeast Michigan with parents who worked in the auto industry, at one of the Big Three or at one of the tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers that make the whole thing work. That is a fact about where the firm comes from, not a value it claims. It is why a real warehouse, a real sales team and a real ERP are not abstractions to us.
You do not need more options from an agency. You can get those from AI.
What an agency has to provide now is experience and judgment. Often that means calling BS on a plausible idea from an AI that will fall apart on contact with a real platform, a real ERP, a real warehouse or a real sales team.
The real value of an agency is to understand the unique value you bring to your own customers, and then guide you through the flood of information coming out of the technology world. Twenty years gives the clarity to see past the hype.
We use AI every day. It pulls context so we can spend the human time on the human details. It does not replace the person in the room, and it never gets to be the reason a connection got cheaper instead of deeper.
What people ask about working with us.
What happens on the first call?
You talk for most of it. You bring what you know about your customers and your business, we bring the commerce experience, and between the two we work out what the next move should be. You are talking with a senior operator who has run these projects, not a salesperson. You leave with a clear view of the way forward and whether we are the right crew to help you get there.
Who will I actually work with?
A senior US operator who leads your engagement from the first conversation on and stays your point of contact throughout. They work with AI first and bring in specialists from long-standing partners when the work calls for it. You always know who is accountable, because it is the same person every time.
Do you use offshore developers?
Sometimes, and always behind a senior US lead. Our operators execute with AI first. Where a project needs more hands than that, we draw on offshore partners we have worked with for years. You never manage them and never need to talk to them. Your senior lead owns the work and the result.
Do you require a retainer?
No. Every service is a fixed scope that ends. The recurring options, Support and enhancement and Program execution, carry a minimum term because anything shorter is not useful, and both name in writing what your team can do without us.
What if you think we should not do the project?
We say so, on the call if we can see it that early, and in writing if it takes Discovery or a brief to see it. A clear no costs the same as a yes, and it saves you the year you would have spent finding out.
Tell us where you want to go.
Start with a conversation about your goals. We will listen, share what we have seen work, and lay out the route we would take from here.