The areas where you do not sell, and why nobody goes there

Every distributor has a mental map of their territory, and that map has holes in it.

They are not areas where the goods are not needed: they are areas where the cost of reaching them exceeds what comes back.

The arithmetic is easy. An agent covering a province has to generate enough commission to justify their time, and to that figure you add the contributions you carry and what accrues towards the end of the relationship.

If that province holds thirty practices and each orders a few hundred euros a year, the potential revenue supports neither your cost nor their income. The area stays uncovered, and not because anyone is lazy.

Those thirty practices buy all the same. They buy from whoever reaches them another way.

This is where a commission-based channel does something an agent cannot: reach thirty scattered customers without anyone having to travel.

There is no minimum revenue justifying a presence, because there is no presence to justify. An eighty-euro order from a distant province costs seven per cent and the shipping, not a journey.

It counts for even more beyond the border. An agent in Portugal or Poland is not a budget decision: it is a strategic one that takes years, and nobody takes it in order to explore.

With a translated catalogue and VAT that does not apply between European businesses, that same exploration costs no more than listing the products you already hold.

It is worth saying what does not happen, in fairness. An order does not arrive the next day, and in uncovered areas it takes time for anyone to find you.

But the right question is not how long it will take: it is what waiting costs you. In an uncovered area the answer is nothing, because today you take nothing from there anyway.

It is the one case where trying has no alternative cost: you are not moving resources away from something that works, you are covering something that is not there.

In summary: a revenue threshold exists below which a territory does not justify an agent, those customers buy from someone else anyway, a commission channel needs no minimum because it needs no presence, abroad the difference is sharper still, and in uncovered areas trying takes resources from nothing.