With recent quarterly reports from Rexel, Graybar and AD in addition to the recent WESCO quarterly report, we now have Q1 performance representing about 30% of sales and about 140 distributors. IMARK as well as CED, Sonepar, City Electric and […]
The continued focus on energy efficiency powered by LEDs has fueled growth in the lighting market. For many distributors lighting now represents 30-40% of sales. And the lighting controls market has grown. For the past few years we’ve reviewed Acuity’s […]
There continues to be much discussed in the industry regarding “eCommerce”. Daily we hear about Amazon Business, Grainger and the coming “conquering of the channel” by eCommerce. It almost seems as if everyone expects that the zombies in the Walking […]
For the past couple of years the industrial segment has been “challenged”. Much of this was driven by the decline in the oil & gas market which had a significant ripple effect. Concurrently, a strong dollar hurt exports for many […]
Over the past few weeks distributors and manufacturers are reporting an uptick in their industrial business and, in some cases, a significant increase. The reasons vary from “general optimism” to the increase in oil rigs; from replacing / upgrading aging equipment […]
Last week’s NEMRA meeting pulled together the industry’s sales organization. Over 1900 manufacturers and manufacturer reps came together to review 2016, recognize successes and discuss how to accelerate growth in 2017. In the words of one attendee, “this is the […]
Last week WESCO and Grainger released their fourth quarter reports and shared some comments looking forward. As the two seem to be a barometer for the industrial market (overall, not always from a company performance side), we looked to see […]
Recently I’ve spoken with a number of distributors who have shared that business is up and in some areas it is being driven by residential growth in their market. Frequently this growth is new home construction, however, sales performance at Home Depot […]
Acuity achieved a 10% organic sales growth last quarter while the Juno acquisition generated another 9%. Both become key metrics for distributors to benchmark themselves. Additionally, 66% of Acuity’s fixture business is now LEDs, another benchmark metric for distributors. Acuity’s […]
Happy New Year. And with a new year comes 2017 predictions. This year, at least at this time, there appears to be some economic optimism in the air. Whether it’s sustainable given that the economic and regulatory reforms that are […]
