The finding
Most talk about automating a distributor’s inbox is about quoting. The inbox we measured was mostly something else: customers placing orders at prices already agreed, not asking for new ones.
Across six full weeks, from August 10 to September 20, 2026, Ettore classified 650 incoming emails as purchase orders and 192 as quote requests. The ratio moved between 2 and 4 to 1 from week to week, but it never reversed.
| Week of | Purchase orders | Quote requests | Orders per quote request |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 10 | 84 | 21 | 4.0 |
| Aug 17 | 61 | 30 | 2.0 |
| Aug 24 | 87 | 25 | 3.5 |
| Aug 31 | 98 | 30 | 3.3 |
| Sep 7 | 115 | 35 | 3.3 |
| Sep 14 | 205 | 51 | 4.0 |
| Six weeks | 650 | 192 | 3.4 |
Where each kind arrives
The two kinds of request do not land in the same place. Orders concentrate: almost two thirds arrived in the one mailbox dedicated to orders. Quote requests scatter across four mailboxes, including a sales rep’s own address.
For anyone automating this, that is the practical point: watching the shared orders address catches most orders but only a small share of quote requests.
| Mailbox | Purchase orders | Quote requests |
|---|---|---|
| Orders mailbox | 395 (64%) | 24 (14%) |
| A sales rep’s own mailbox | 189 (31%) | 54 (33%) |
| General mailbox | 18 (3%) | 58 (35%) |
| Other mailboxes, incl. enquiries | 12 (2%) | 30 (18%) |
| Total | 614 | 166 |
What it means for automation
If you only automate quoting, you automate the smaller part of the inbox. In this case, roughly one request in five.
Orders and quote requests also need different outcomes. A quote request ends as a quotation sent to the customer; an order ends as a sales order the customer is waiting on. Treating both the same way either negotiates a deal that is already closed or delays one that is not.
And the mailboxes matter as much as the matching. An automation connected only to the shared orders address would miss two thirds of the quote requests in this inbox.
How the data was collected
Every email arriving in Aronlight’s connected mailboxes is read by Ettore’s intake classifier, which labels it by intent. We counted only the two intents that create work — purchase order and quote request — and left out everything else in the inbox.
The weekly figures cover full weeks only; the partial week from September 21 is excluded. The mailbox table counts requests created in the 30 days to September 24, 2026, that were not later removed. The query was read-only, run against production on September 24, 2026. Mailbox names are generalised, and no customer is identified.
Limits
This is one distributor, in one sector, over six weeks. A distributor whose customers mostly buy project by project may see far more quote requests.
The labels come from the classifier, not from a person checking each email, so a small share may be misfiled. Weekly totals also rose over the period, which is why the ratio, not the volume, is the finding.