In the words of Hank Williams, “are you ready for some football?! The season for the most watched sport in America started this weekend with Miami vs Florida and will continue until early February. Whether peewee, high school, college or […]
Earlier this month NAED held its marketing conference, AdVenture, in Nashville. According to reports, there were 100-110 attendees representing 20-25 manufacturers and 30-35 distributors. The TED Best of the Best awards were also presented, which presumably helps attendance. One of […]
Grainger frequently is a good bellwether for the industrial market given their MRO focus on Fortune 500 industrial accounts. Grainger’s performance highlights that the industrial MRO rate of growth decelerated significantly. Q2 Report From their quarterly report and slide presentation: […]
ABB recently launched a new initiative, eFinder, that enables visitors to its website to purchase material online. But they are not disintermediating the channel. Instead they are providing distributors with the opportunity to generate incremental business online. And at the […]
Rarely are the terms “manufacturer rep” and “marketing” referenced together. In reality, their is a synergy between the two. They both relate to communicating and demand creation. Historically manufacturer rep agencies have consisted of salespeople calling on distributors, “buyers” (contractors […]
Many industrially-oriented distributors lament that they can’t compete versus Grainger for MRO business at their accounts. They say “we now the ‘decision’ makers and can beat them on price but we can’t get the business. The same occurs with large […]
This week WESCO is taking 800+ people on an Alaskan cruise as part of their WESCO VIP incentive program. It looks like an exciting adventure (check out this pre-program video and follow them on their program Instagram page or on […]
3M’s recent decision to terminate most, if not all, of its remaining manufacturer reps may have represented the culmination of a decision to drive the business in a different direction where the company believes that its brand is strong enough […]
During recent calls with distributors to get the pulse of the industry, one area we touched on is eCommerce and specifically the activity that they are seeing from their customers, the investments that they are making and how it is […]
The color orange signifies joy, happiness and creativity, however, it is also representative of fire and, given that the color is between yellow and red on the color spectrum it is, from a business perspective, between caution (yellow) and “bad” […]
David Gordon
Channel Marketing Group
919-488-8635
