Over the past few weeks, a number of national distributors have released their 2024 performance and earnings reports. AD, Grainger, Fastenal and others have made news. We've also talked to a number of manufacturers who see the "highlight" numbers and use them as benchmarks, so we've reviewed and sought to find some trends. Overall, business is improving or stable depending on … [Read more...] about Industrial Distributor: Year End Performance 2024 – AD, Fastenal and Grainger
Distributor News
Distributors – Maximize Your Volume Rebates with a Strategic Revenue Plan
Given the importance of rebates to the net profitability of distributors, I reached out to a friend and former distributor client, Greg Smith, to share his first-hand experience, and best practices, to help distributors optimize their rebate earnings. For those who don’t know Greg, he owned a small electrical distributor, sold the business to a regional distributor and then, … [Read more...] about Distributors – Maximize Your Volume Rebates with a Strategic Revenue Plan
Increasing Warehouse Output While Managing Costs
With business in 2025 looking like “slow growth” looking forward, leading industrial distributors are focused on improving the operational / warehouse aspects of their business. While national chains, over the years, quickly moved to a CDC or RDC model, larger independents have also adopted this approach. This achieves a dual mandate of “improved” inventory management and … [Read more...] about Increasing Warehouse Output While Managing Costs
Why do strong B2B Industrial distribution websites fail? It’s often a much simpler answer than you might expect
Has your distributor digital transformation journey seemed like an endless race with hurdle after hurdle? I’ve been in the B2B digital race many times as a distributor in my career, and have crashed into more than a few hurdles. It can be a hard journey to make your ERP and tech stack work, build the right functionality, get the product attributes and pricing to work, but even … [Read more...] about Why do strong B2B Industrial distribution websites fail? It’s often a much simpler answer than you might expect
