How Distributors Build an Electric Wheelchair Range

Most distributors do not lose money because they picked a bad wheelchair. They lose money because they picked too many good ones that do the same job. A showroom full of chairs that differ only by a colour, a small weight difference, or a feature nobody asked about ties up cash, confuses the sales team, and leaves the customer with no clear reason to choose one chair over another. How Distributors Build an Electric Wheelchair Range is really a question about discipline: which jobs your range must cover, which overlaps you are willing to cut, and how the chairs you keep will be supported after the sale. A range is not a catalogue. A catalogue lists everything a supplier can make. A range is the smaller set of chairs you have chosen, on purpose, for the customers in your market. Every chair in it should answer a different need, sell to a different buyer, or cover a different price point. If two chairs answer the same need for the same buyer at nearly the same price, one of them is a duplicate.

How Distributors Build an Electric Wheelchair Range: What Does a Balanced Range Look Like?

A balanced range covers the jobs your customers bring to you, not every job a wheelchair could do. Start by writing down the real requests your team hears in a normal month: a buyer who needs a chair for daily trips around town, a family buying for a parent who travels, a care home ordering several chairs at once, and a heavier user who needs a sturdier frame. They need chairs that are easy to tell apart, by purpose, by price, and by what they feel like to use. A practical way to test balance is the one-sentence test. For each chair in your range, your sales team should be able to finish this sentence in plain words: this chair is for the customer who… If two chairs finish that sentence the same way, you have an overlap to deal with. If a chair cannot finish the sentence at all, it is probably in your range because a supplier offered a good price, not because a customer needs it. Balance also means balance of risk: volume in the middle, a credible premium option at the top, and an honest entry point at the bottom.

How Many Tiers Does a Distributor Really Need?

For most distributors, four tiers cover the market without spreading stock too thin. More tiers are possible in a large market, but each extra tier adds stock, training, spare parts, and showroom space. A small distributor who tries to run six or seven tiers usually ends up with thin stock everywhere. The first tier is the travel tier: folding chairs that pack small, lift easily, and suit buyers who move the chair in and out of a car often or take it on trips. The selling point is the whole routine, not just weight: fold it, lift it, store it, unfold it again without a struggle. Keep a demo unit in the showroom and let customers try that full routine themselves. The second tier is the everyday tier, the workhorse of most ranges: a comfortable, reliable chair for daily use around the home, the neighbourhood, and the shops. It does not need to be the lightest or the cheapest. It needs to feel steady, charge simply, and survive daily use without constant adjustment. This tier usually becomes the volume seller, and the tier where your team builds its reputation. The third tier is the heavy-duty tier, for larger users and harder daily use, with a sturdier frame, a wider seat, and a drive system built for longer days. Do not stretch an everyday chair into this job by describing it more boldly than its frame allows. Note the honesty rule here: a chair rated for 125 kg is not a bariatric chair, so do not describe it as one. The fourth tier is the premium or comfort tier, with better seating, a smoother ride, and finishes that make long days in the chair more comfortable. It will not be your biggest seller, but it keeps customers who can pay more from going to a competitor. Keep this tier small, e.g. one model, until demand proves it deserves more.

Tier	Job it covers	Buyer who needs it	Typical role in the range
Travel	Folding, lifting, and trips	Travellers and car users	Draws people in
Everyday	Reliable daily use	Most private buyers	Volume seller
Heavy-duty	Sturdier frame and longer days	Larger users and care settings	Covers other tiers’ gaps
Premium comfort	Better seating and ride comfort	Buyers who pay for comfort	Proves the top

That table is a starting shape, not a rule for every market. Adjust the weight for your market, but keep the discipline: each tier must cover a job the others do not.

Where Do Ranges Usually Overlap, and What Should You Cut?

Overlap creeps in quietly. A supplier launches a new model close to one you already stock, a sales rep offers a good price on a chair almost the same as your everyday model, or a customer asks for one feature and you add a whole chair to cover it. After a year, you have three chairs competing for the same buyer, and none of them sells as well as one clear choice would. The most common overlap is inside the middle of the range. Two everyday chairs with similar weight, similar seating, and a small price gap do not give the customer a real choice. They give the customer a reason to delay, and they split your stock so that neither chair is ever properly in stock. When you find this overlap, cut the weaker chair, judging strength by evidence: fewer service problems, easier to explain, and selling without discounting. Another common overlap is the feature overlap. A chair added only because it has one extra feature, such as a slightly larger battery, rarely earns a full slot. In most cases the same customer can be served by offering that feature as an option or accessory on the chair you already stock. Cutting a chair is harder than adding one, because someone on the team usually likes it. Make the cut on a fixed review date, e.g. once a year, and judge every chair on the same three questions: does it still cover a job no other chair covers, does it sell without regular discounting, and can your service team support it without special effort. A chair that fails two of those three is a candidate to drop, even if it once sold well.

How Do Shared Parts Change the Math?

A range is not only a set of chairs. It is also a set of parts, tools, and skills your service team must hold. Every new model that uses a different controller, charger, or battery connector adds a line to your parts shelf and a page to your training notes. Two chairs that look different to the customer but share a controller, a charger type, and a battery platform are much cheaper to support than two chairs that share nothing. When you compare two candidate chairs for the same slot, ask the supplier which parts they share with the chairs you already stock. Shared batteries and chargers matter most, because they are the parts customers need most often and that cause the most urgent calls when they fail. Shared controllers matter next, because a team that knows one controller well will fix it faster than a team that must learn three. Forcing every chair onto identical parts can limit your range, because different tiers genuinely need different drive systems. The aim is not total sameness, but avoiding needless variety: if two chairs can use the same charger without any downside for the customer, choose the pair that does. If a supplier cannot tell you which parts are shared, treat that as a warning sign. This parts logic also shapes how you think about accessories. A separate guide covers which accessories distributors should stock, and the same rule applies: stock the accessories that fit across your range first, and only add model-specific ones once the shared ones are covered.

How Should Travel Models Fit Into the Range?

Travel chairs deserve care, because they are often the first chair a new customer tries, and the easiest chair to oversell. A folding chair is only a good travel chair if the whole journey works: folding it at home, lifting it into a car, storing it, and unfolding it at the destination. Folded size, folding effort, and whether the battery removes easily for charging matter just as much as weight. Place travel chairs in your range as their own tier, not as a lighter version of the everyday tier. That distinction helps your team explain the trade-off honestly: a travel chair gives up some seating size and ride comfort to gain folding and portability, while an everyday chair gives up some portability to gain comfort for a full day. Customers accept trade-offs they understand. They complain about trade-offs they discover later. For air travel, keep the language careful. A folding chair may be designed for air travel (airline approval required), but no distributor should promise that any airline will accept a particular chair and battery without checking. Airline rules differ, and the final decision sits with the airline on the day, so approval must be confirmed with the airline in advance. A related guide on folding versus non-folding chairs is useful background when a customer is torn between a travel chair and a sturdier non-folding chair. The range question, though, is different: not which type wins, but whether your range holds both types in the right balance for your market.

How Do You Test a Range Before You Commit to It?

Do not commit a full season of stock to a new range shape on the strength of a catalogue and a good meeting. Test it in the cheapest honest way first: put the candidate chairs on the showroom floor, train the team on the one-sentence pitch for each tier, and watch what customers do for e.g. four to six weeks. Demo discipline matters more than demo quantity. One charged, clean, working demo per tier beats three flat-battery demos of the same tier. If your own team struggles to fold a travel chair smoothly, customers will struggle too.

What Should Service Coverage Look Like Across the Range?

A range that sells well and cannot be serviced will damage your business faster than a range that sells slowly. Before you add a tier, check that your service coverage reaches it: who fixes it, how fast parts arrive, and what the customer does while waiting. A premium chair with no local service route is a promise your business cannot keep, and a heavy-duty chair in a care home cannot wait weeks for a part. Service coverage does not have to be identical for every tier, but it does have to be planned for every tier. Everyday and heavy-duty chairs, which customers depend on daily, need the fastest route: trained local staff, common parts on the shelf, and a clear loan or swap plan while a repair is underway. Travel chairs need clear advice on batteries and folding mechanisms. Premium chairs need staff who know the seating adjustments, not just the drive system. This is where range planning connects to after-sales planning. A guide to building an after-sales service network explains how distributors set up that coverage in practice. The point is simple: do not add a chair until you can describe, in one paragraph, how it will be serviced.

How Do You Keep a Range Current Without Rebuilding It Every Year?

A good range is reviewed, not rebuilt. Once a year, sit down with your sales and service records and ask the same questions of every tier: which tier sold best, which caused the most service calls, and which customer request did you hear most often that no chair answers well. Those answers usually point to one change, not ten. Small, steady changes beat big relaunches. Swap one overlapping chair for a clearer one, add a tier only when a real gap shows up repeatedly in customer requests, and drop a chair when its job has been taken over by a stronger neighbour. Each change should leave the range easier to explain than before. Keep a simple record of each review: the tiers you held, what each one sold, what it cost to service, and why any chair was added or dropped. Over two or three years, that record replaces memory and opinion with your own sales history. The lightweight end deserves its own careful look during that review, because it moves fastest and overlaps most easily. A separate lightweight stocking guide works through weight tiers in detail: use this guide for the shape of the whole range, and that guide for the lightweight tier inside it.

What About Replenishment Once the Range Is Set?

Setting the range is only half the planning job. Once the tiers are chosen, each one needs its own replenishment rhythm, because tiers sell at different speeds. A travel tier that sells in holiday season needs different timing from an everyday tier that sells steadily all year. Treating every tier as if it sold at the same pace leaves you overstocked on slow chairs and out of stock on the chairs customers actually want. That rhythm is a separate planning task from range shape, covered in a replenishment planning guide. A clean range makes replenishment simpler, with fewer stock lines to watch and clearer sales signals for each tier. If your replenishment feels chaotic, the cause may be a range with too many chairs doing the same job. Freight planning belongs in the same conversation. When you compare landed costs across tiers, work from gross weight and carton weight, not net weight, because freight is charged on the shipped carton. A light chair in a large carton can cost more to ship than a slightly heavier chair in a compact carton. Ask every supplier for carton dimensions and gross weight before you judge a tier on price alone.

What Do Distributors Ask Most About Range Planning?

How many models should a small distributor start with?

Start with one chair per tier, e.g. four chairs in total. Add a second chair to a tier only when that tier is selling well and customers keep asking for a variation the first chair cannot offer.

How do you know when two chairs overlap too much?

Use the one-sentence test. If your team describes two chairs as being for the same customer, at nearly the same price, for the same job, they overlap. If one only sells when the other is out of stock, or only with a discount, the overlap is already costing you money.

Should every chair in the range share the same battery and charger?

Sharing across the whole range is rarely possible, because different tiers need different drive systems, but sharing within a tier and between neighbouring tiers is worth pursuing. Ask suppliers which parts are shared before you commit, and prefer pairs that share batteries, chargers, or controllers.

How often should a distributor review the range?

Review it once a year, on a fixed date, using sales, service, and customer-request records. Review sooner only if a tier stops selling, a supplier drops a model, or service problems cluster on one chair.

What is the biggest range mistake new distributors make?

Stocking too many chairs that do the same job, usually because each one looked like a good deal on its own. A range is judged as a set, not chair by chair. If a new chair covers no new job, buyer, or price point, it does not strengthen the range. A range that is easy to explain, easy to service, and honest about its trade-offs will outsell a larger range that confuses customers and strains the service team. That is the practical test at every review: can your team explain each tier in one sentence, can your service team support each tier without special effort, and does each chair cover a job no other chair covers. How Distributors Build an Electric Wheelchair Range comes down to answering those three questions, tier by tier, and cutting the chairs that fail them. Key Takeaway: Pick one chair per job, cut overlaps on evidence, share parts where you can, and never add a tier you cannot service.