Your Best People Are Retiring and Nobody Wrote Any of It Down
While inventory may site on your balance sheet as your most important financial investment, every distributor owner and manager knows that their people are their biggest asset and can also be their biggest liability. They are an asset as they are the #1 differentiator within your business. Without them, a distributor is a vending machine. People interact with customers,…
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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…
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…
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…
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…
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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,…
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…
