2018 may go down as the year of tariffs. Earlier in the year tariffs were implemented on steel and aluminum. In July the first round of tariffs targeting Chinese products found its way into the industry while there have been […]
Southwire is a very intriguing company. Years ago they took a commodity product that defined the company (wire), combined it with some acquisitions and mixed in marketing to convert the company from the perception of a staid, commodity company to […]
Q3 is coming to an end and with it is time for our Q3 Pulse of Lighting survey, conducted in conjunction with William Blair. Our Q2 report received feedback from almost 200 distributors, manufacturers and manufacturer reps and projected a […]
That’s one of the questions we’ve had a number of distributors, and some manufacturers, ask this week “What’s the story / what have you heard about this story regarding Schneider, Legrand, Rexel and Sonepar coming out of France?” and the […]
When times are tough people often say “cash is king”. This can frequently determine which companies survive and thrive during difficult economic times and those that suffer. Nowadays, as companies ramp up their eCommerce initiatives product content is king. This […]
For the past few years many have talked about eCommerce and have made investment plans. Now a number of these investments are coming to fruition and the conversation is evolving to “where is this going?”, “what are customers doing / […]
Corporate success, for many, is typically defined as sales success as sales revenue is an easily identifiable, and discussed / shared, metric. But in a quest to grow sales, and due to competitive pressures, gross margins for many distributors have […]
Lighting agents. Those two words conjure a range of emotions and business observations for many in the industry, and especially for electrical and lighting distributor. It’s almost as if this element of the channel is revered and either tolerated or […]
The company formerly known as Mayer Electric Supply made a small but subtle move recently and changed its name to Mayer. Along with the name change came an evolved brand and updated logo and mark. For a company that is […]
Over the past couple of weeks national chains and groups announced their Q2 performance, shedding insight for others regarding the health of the market. Below are Q2 2018 overviews from AD, Grainger, Anixter, Graybar, Rexel and WESCO. And, it appears, […]
David Gordon
Channel Marketing Group
919-488-8635
