John Tisera, president/CEO of Johnstone Supply, joined Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein in this episode to talk about how the distributor has built and cultivated its culture through Zoom, including adapting their onboarding process and holding a quarterly Coffee with CEO where he personally meets all new associates.
High-Tech AND High-Touch: How Distributors Can Win in a B2C World
If you aren’t building high-tech platforms that make it hyper-efficient for your customers to execute simple transactions, you’re losing the game. But simply adopting a high-tech model isn’t the answer either.
How to Get Your Brand Out of the Graveyard
You’ll know you’re stuck in a brand graveyard if your customers only buy a small percentage of your product offering, only buy big products from you but not accessories to those, and buy infrequently.
If Marketplaces are a Must, Should You Build Your Own?
Independent alternatives to third-party marketplaces like Amazon are emerging, and some distributors have found success selling through them. This has many wondering if they should build their own marketplaces.
How Fastenal is Outperforming the Market in 2020
Fastenal is outperforming its peer distributors in 2020 despite the recession. They’ve recovered quickly by capitalizing on their end market and excellent company culture, hitting their top line goals.
Wholesale Change: Leverage Customer Loyalty Programs for Long-Term Growth (November 18, 2020)
Learn why loyalty is a powerful emotion and how to leverage it in B2B, best practices in designing loyalty and incentive programs, and how to manage program success.
Home Depot Buys Back HD Supply; MRO Distributors Get Squeezed
Home Depot pays a 25% premium for an enterprise value of $8 billion to reacquire HD Supply, putting branch-based distributors square in the middle of the Devil and the Deep Orange Apron.
Wholesale Change: Why a Great Shopping Experience is More Important Than the Checkout Experience (November 11, 2020)
While offering a transactional website has become a must-have in today’s environment, enhancing your shopping functionality has become even more critical to meeting customer needs.
The Difference Between Alibaba and Amazon: How Alibaba’s B2B Platform Works for Distributors
John Caplan talks about how Alibaba’s customer-focused business model may be a better digital marketplace for U.S. distributors than Amazon Business.
Wholesale Change: Why Distributors, Their Suppliers and Customers All Believe Disruption is Real (November 4, 2020)
Everyone recognizes the effects of emerging technologies, as well as well-capitalized competitors, on the channel and on their businesses.