Operations is the lifeblood of a distributor as it delivers upon sales’ commitment of getting material to the customer. And at the end of the day, distribution, and customer satisfaction, is about getting the right material to the customer when […]
2016 seems to have been the “year of pricing”. A number of distributors either discussed, or undertook, pricing initiatives this past year. In many instances it was a desire to reverse an industry trend … eroding margins. Others recognized that if […]
Many electrical and lighting distributors have devoted resources to marketing, selling and managing utility rebates to support their customers and as a differentiator to earning lighting retrofit projects. Frequently utility rebates are used to support LED sales. The rationale essentially […]
For the past 18 months NEMRA has been working with its NMG (NEMRA Manufacturer Group) to better understand the impact of the lack of industry standards to report point of sale (POS) and point of transfer (POT) between distributors and […]
Rebates are a fact of life and the first marketing group rebate negotiation, in 1968, was designed to capture incremental revenue (for a wire company) with the distributors collecting the funds for a social engagement. But the core issue was […]
Last week the electrical industry’s major, publicly held, distributors shared their Q2 performance. Reading their quarterly reports highlights that there continue to be industrial challenges, they are responding differently to the MRO and construction markets. So let’s look at WESCO […]
Earlier this month the headline that many were commenting on was “U.S. Hiring Slowed Dramatically in May; Jobless Rate Falls to 4.7%“. The story emphasized that non-farm payroll was up only 38,000 jobs and that March and April data were revised […]
We’re a month past the first quarter and publicly held companies are starting to report their quarterly reports. Here we review ABB and Schneider Electric. (comments are in italics) ABB Within the channel we think of ABB as ABB products and […]
Over the past month or so Allen and I have had a number of calls for data. Some are from owners / senior management, some from marketing personnel and some from operational staff. The calls are from manufacturers and distributors. […]
Yes, we’re talking about liens! They types that accounting / credit people like, not “lean” as in “lean processes” which we’ll touch on in the near future when we discuss innovation. Why liens? Basically because a couple of weeks ago […]
