Why Industrial Parts Are So Hard to Identify and Match
Manufacturers maintain proprietary part-numbering systems, while distributors map products to their own SKUs, creating inconsistencies across ERP and product-data systems. A part fails. The line is down, and every minute costs money. The replacement might be on a shelf ten miles away. Before anyone can pull it, someone has to answer one question: what is this part? We call…
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Myths of Selling to a Surplus House
Myths of selling to a surplus house All of them keep the profitable check on someone else’s desk instead of yours. Every distributor and industrial…
Customer Stratification Delivers Focus, Profits
Industrial supply distributors sit in the middle of a demanding value chain: manufacturers rely on them to place products close to the market, while customers…
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…
Q3 Pulse of Industrial Supply Survey Open
The industrial market continues to be one the economic highlights and that, coupled with data centers, is helping to drive the industrial distribution segment. While…
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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 on…
Q3 Pulse of Industrial Supply Survey Open
The industrial market continues to be one the economic highlights and that, coupled with data centers, is helping to drive the industrial distribution segment. While many may wonder how data center construction benefits the industrial distribution industry, there are three elements: Within the construction phase there are tools, safety equipment and more. Within a data center, there are standard “MRO”…
From Technology Expense to Business Advantage
Did you ever get the feeling that costs rise but the value proposition doesn’t change. Or you sense that you’re over spending? Or perhaps you know that someone hasn’t had the time to review “the pennies and nickels” that, when accumulated, become dollars. We’ve all heard about subscription costs that run amuck because no one remembers them. Or have heard…
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 sales fundamentals while many upgrade their systems and processes.” The Industry Outlook, a quarterly report based on a survey of NetPlus members, tracks business results and trends in the industrial and contractor supply markets. The…
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 that is company-specific and/or projections from Cleveland Research, and the information is as of June. The key is considering market trends. Key “strong” markets are: Aerospace Contractor Food Products Government Medical Mining / Aggregates Primary…
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,…
