Joint Calls, Am I Suffering from a Split Personality?
I’ve been thinking about joint calls lately. You know the drill… taking supply-partners out to visit your customers. As I sat down to write about the subject, I found myself conflicted. To the point of wondering if I were developing distributor directed personality disorders. As I sorted through dozens of conflicting thoughts, I even found myself putting a face…
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NetPlus Q3 Outlook: Focusing on Fundamentals
NetPlus Alliance distributors reported another quarter of growth after the close of the second quarter. According to its Q3 Outlook report, “members remain focused on…
3M Shares 1st Half Insights
Recently I received some information that 3M shared regarding first half insights: The key takeaways are not so much the market, or sales, performance, as…
The Parts Nobody Wants to Hold
The Parts Nobody Wants to Hold — and Why You Need Someone Who Will Surplus houses exist because the industrial supply chain produces inventory nobody…
Why Routine Decisions Keep Finding the President
President’s Need to Operationalize Trust You built a good company. That is not the problem. The problem is what a good company does to the…
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The Parts Nobody Wants to Hold
The Parts Nobody Wants to Hold — and Why You Need Someone Who Will Surplus houses exist because the industrial supply chain produces inventory nobody can afford to keep — and everybody eventually needs. Every Shelf Charges Rent Holding inventory in any industry costs 20–30% of its value, annualized. Capital, storage, insurance, shrinkage, labor — the meter runs whether the…
Why Routine Decisions Keep Finding the President
President’s Need to Operationalize Trust You built a good company. That is not the problem. The problem is what a good company does to the person who runs it. Somewhere between your first few million and your current size, you stopped doing everything yourself and built a real organization. You hired people better at sales than you. You built a…
Fastener Distributor Growth and Exit Opportunities
Are you a fastener distributor, or a distributor with fasteners as a significant percentage of your business and Have ambitions to grow the business but don’t have the capital? Perhaps think “I could be a mini-Fastenal in a bigger pond than I’m currently in?” Or, perhaps, you’ve been thinking of exiting the business and know that the business is good,…
Grainger Grows – High‑Touch Momentum, Tariff Rebates, and the Demand Cycle
Grainger, considered the industrial supply industry’s leading distributor, or at least bellwether as it relates to offered services and products, reported 2Q 2026 results on August 4, with sales of $5 billion, up 10.3%, or 13.7% on a daily, organic constant currency basis). Grainger achieved operating margin of 16.1% on a reported basis, up 120 basis points y-o-y. Growth was…
2026 Q2 Pulse of Industrial Supply … Organically Flat , Pricing Drives Revenue
Each quarter, Industrial Supply Trends, in conjunction with William Blair, conducts a quarterly Pulse of Industrial Supply survey. We gain input from a wide array of distributors and manufacturers so that we can correlate performance and then share with you the results. Survey respondents received a copy of the results in early July. Industrial Supply Channel … a Mosiac Now…
Honeywell’s “Post‑Spin Pop” With a Strong Q2, Sharper Portfolio, and a Clearer Industrial Story
Honeywell Technologies, after the June 29, 2026, spin‑off of Honeywell Aerospace and the earlier separation of Solstice Advanced Materials, is now a three‑segment industrial automation and technology company with a materially different mix and a higher margin profile than the legacy conglomerate. See the detailed June 11 Investor Day presentation for details. The first test of the “new” leaner and more focused…
How Agentic AI Could Change How Industrial Supplies Are Bought
Amidst the conversation about AI, data centers and the industrial construction market, all of which distributors benefit from, there is another conversation that, as typical, starts on the consumer side and then migrates to B2B. This is how AI is / may change business models … and when Inevitably it does not occur as quickly as the Big 4 consulting…
Motion, DSG – Two Different Approaches to The Distribution Market
Genuine Auto Parts Company (GPC), and Distributor Solutions Group (DSG), are choosing two different ownership paths going forward. Both transactions make sense as each respective entity operates in the distribution space – GPC as part of a larger company, so a spin-off is logical. GPC Spins Off Motion GPC is splitting into two stand-alone companies, with Motion Industries revenue around…
