Flender/Flender Gear Units/Bevel-helical gear Reduction Box B4
utors was made to related parties, and the remaining 7 percent was to unrelated distributorships. Changes in Operations Distributors were

asked to indicate on the Commission' questionnaire whether they had experienced any changes in their operations which affected sales or

varied the makeup of their firms. Thirteen of the surveyed firms indicated that the makeup of their businesses had been

altered through acquisitions, closures, and expansions. According to distributors, acqui- sitions and expansions enabled them to provide local service in

new markets where service had formerly been furnished from distant areas. Changes experienced by distributors in the character of their establishments' operations that affected safes or marketing during 1-8 are shown in the following tabulation: Number of Type of change occurrences Acquisitions 2 Expansions 1 Closures 9 .. Distributors' Sales Total sales of allproducts reported by distributors increased annually from $4.9 million in 1 to $7.7 million in 1 (table -. Ten distributors accounted for $5.6 million or 7 percent of total sales in 1. The ten leading distributors' annual sales for 1 ranged from $2.0 million to slightly less than $2.0 million. As gear products became less important to distributors, the proportion of total sales of all products accounted for by gears and gearing, including couplings, declined from 1 percent of the total during 1 to almost 1 percent in 1. Sales of domestically produced open and enclosed gearing and parts dominated distribu- tors' gearing sales, accounting for more than 9 percent of total gearing sales in 1 and 9 percent in 1. Enclosed gearing and parts constituted the largest single segment of sales during the period surveyed. Sales of domestically produced enclosed gearing and parts declined from $4.3 million in 1 to $3.0 million in 1, before rising to $4.6 million in 1. The proportion of total gearing sales accounted for by domestically produced enclosed g