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Maximize Your Operation With the Right Warehouse Design and Layout
Operations

Critical Skills for Front-Line Leaders in Distribution

You get tested when power and systems go out and you’ve got three hours to figure it out before you miss every commitment.
  • Will Quinn
  • August 26, 2025
Distribution Technology

Beating Delivery Delays with Smart Logistics: Why Distribution’s New Competitive Edge Lives in the Last Mile

Smart logistics technology isn’t replacing human expertise, it’s amplifying it.
  • Brian Hopkins
  • August 26, 2025
AI in Distribution

Palmer Holland Rolls Out AI Product Platform to Streamline Product Data

Palmer Holland, a Cleveland-based specialty chemical and ingredient distributor, has launched an AI-driven product knowledge platform aimed at streamlining how customers and suppliers access
  • Distribution Strategy Group
  • August 26, 2025

Upcoming Programs

  • Upcoming Program

How Distributors are Driving Employee Engagement

Join us on Sept 10, 9 PT/12 ET, as we explore how top-performing distributors are building engagement that fuels performance and loyalty.
Register Now
  • Upcoming Program

Economic Update: Forecasts and M&A Trends Shaping Distribution

Join us on Sept 11, 2025 at 9PT/12ET as we navigate both economic forecasts and M&A trends with Economist Alex Chausovsky.
Register Now
  • Upcoming Program

The Sales Rep’s AI Playbook: What’s Working in Distribution Today

Join us on Sept 17, 2025 at 9PT/12ET as we delve into what real AI adoption looks like in the field today and how
Register Now
  • Upcoming Program

The Distributor’s “Technology Dreamstack”

Join us on Sept 24, 2025 at 9PT/12ET as top technology leaders will help you prioritize and make smarter technology decisions.
Register Now
AI in Distribution

Pattern Group’s $400 Million IPO Puts Distributors on Notice as Brands Double Down on Marketplaces

Pattern uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to process more than 46 trillion data points and add 100 billion more each week.
  • Distribution Strategy Group
  • August 25, 2025
2013 state of e-commerce in distribution
Distribution Technology

The E-Commerce Revolution is Pushing Distribution Toward a Digital-First Future

As a catalyst for transformation, e-commerce strategies can be tailored for distribution and leveraged to facilitate improvements across customer experience, sales enablement, and supply
  • Travis Rothstein
  • August 23, 2025
Distribution Sales Strategy

Riding the Distributor Sales Culture into Commodity Hell

In this article, we detail the problems of sales cultures in mature B2B markets.
  • Scott Benfield
  • August 20, 2025

Recent Reports

The State of Customer Experience in Distribution

Transforming Wholesale Distribution with AI

State of CRM and Sales Analytics in Distribution

2025 State of Technology in Distribution

8 Reasons Distributors Fail at Digital
Digital Strategy

8 Reasons Distributors Fail at Digital

No matter how hard you try, it’s really easy to build a doomed website. In a recent episode of the Wholesale Change webcast and
  • Ian Heller
  • December 28, 2020
Secure Buy-in to Your Pricing Initiative
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change: Secure Buy-in to Your Pricing Initiative (December 16, 2020)

Without buy-in from your entire team – including that salesperson that complains the most – a strategic pricing project will, simply put, not yield
  • Ian Heller
  • December 17, 2020
How Distributors Can (Finally) Succeed at Cross-Selling
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change: How Distributors Can (Finally) Succeed at Cross-Selling

Debbie Paul joined Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein to talk about what’s in distributors’ way, and how emerging technologies are making it easier to
  • Ian Heller
  • December 10, 2020
Digitally Native Vertical Brands: Lessons for B2B Channels
Digital Strategy

Digitally Native Vertical Brands: Lessons for B2B Channels

As of yet, the Digitally Native Vertical Brand is not common in B2B markets. But B2B channels can learn from the success of DNVBs.
  • Jonathan Bein
  • December 9, 2020
How Culture Can Be Cultivated on Zoom (with John Tisera, CEO of Johnstone Supply)
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change: How Culture Can Be Cultivated on Zoom (with John Tisera, CEO of Johnstone Supply)

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
  • Ian Heller
  • December 2, 2020
High-Tech AND High-Touch: How Distributors Can Win in a B2C World
Digital Strategy

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
  • Ian Heller
  • December 2, 2020
3 Technologies That Deliver 10X Returns for Distributors
Digital Strategy

3 Technologies That Deliver 10X Returns for Distributors

Based on our extensive work with distributors, we distill your list of technology choices to the investments that we believe can have the greatest
  • Jonathan Bein
  • December 1, 2020
How to Get Your Brand Out of the Graveyard
Distribution Marketing

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
  • Jonathan Bein
  • November 30, 2020
If Marketplaces are a Must, Should You Build Your Own?
Digital Strategy

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
  • Ian Heller
  • November 25, 2020
How Fastenal is Outperforming the Market in 2020
Digital Strategy

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,
  • Jonathan Bein
  • November 23, 2020
AI vs BI in Sales: Why Distributors Should Choose Artificial Intelligence
Digital Strategy

AI vs BI in Sales: Why Distributors Should Choose Artificial Intelligence

Today, distributors can choose from an array of sales tools that all promise data-driven results. In theory, this should help distributors understand their customers
  • Benj Cohen
  • November 20, 2020
Leverage Customer Loyalty Programs for Long-Term Growth
Wholesale Change Show

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
  • Ian Heller
  • November 18, 2020
Home Depot
B2B eCommerce

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
  • Ian Heller
  • November 18, 2020
Prevent Customers From Leaving You
Distribution Sales Strategy

Prevent Customers From Leaving You

For some companies, an annual increase of 1% in customer retention over each of the next ten years results in 20% increase in annual
  • Robert Kelley
  • November 12, 2020
Why a Great Shopping Experience is More Important Than the Checkout Experience
Wholesale Change Show

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
  • Ian Heller
  • November 12, 2020
The Difference Between Alibaba and Amazon: How Alibaba’s B2B Platform Works for Distributors
Digital Strategy

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.
  • Ian Heller
  • November 10, 2020
The Minefields of Building Companies through Acquisition
Distribution Industry Analysis

The Minefields of Building Companies through Acquisition

A study of both successful and disastrous consolidations finds 10 common mistakes that drive employee misunderstanding and mistrust after the deal.
  • Bill Wade
  • November 4, 2020
Why Distributors, Their Suppliers and Customers All Believe Disruption is Real
Wholesale Change Show

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.
  • Ian Heller
  • November 4, 2020
2 Trends to Watch in B2B: Item Recognition and Voice Ordering
Digital Strategy

2 Trends to Watch in B2B: Item Recognition and Voice Ordering

This post previews some of the key findings in the third report based on our research for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors into how
  • Jonathan Bein
  • November 2, 2020
Distributors’ Quarterly Checkup: Notable Results, Surprises and Market Moves
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change: Distributors’ Quarterly Checkup: Notable Results, Surprises and Market Moves (October 28, 2020)

Wholesale Change hosts Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein dig into public distributors’ earnings reports from across segments to bring you insights into how your
  • Ian Heller
  • October 29, 2020
Pull Your eCommerce System Back from the Jaws of Defeat
B2B eCommerce

Pull Your eCommerce System Back from the Jaws of Defeat

The increase in digital buying behavior is here to stay, pandemic or no – especially as the number of millennial decision-makers rises. If your
  • Dean Mueller
  • October 28, 2020
A Conversation with John Caplan, President of North America & Europe, Alibaba
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change Show: A Conversation with John Caplan, President of North America & Europe, Alibaba (October 21, 2020)

In this episode Ian Heller welcomed Alibaba’s John Caplan to the Wholesale Change Show to discuss Alibaba’s capabilities and the marketplace’s long-term plans.
  • Ian Heller
  • October 22, 2020
How to Fend Off Amazon with AI Strategies of Your Own
B2B eCommerce

How to Fend Off Amazon with AI Strategies of Your Own

Amazon Business is projected to make $52 billion in sales by 2023. For distributors to fend off this AI-powered giant, they’ll need to understand
  • Benj Cohen
  • October 22, 2020
When Your Sales Team Sabotages Your eCommerce Initiative
B2B eCommerce

When Your Sales Team Sabotages Your eCommerce Initiative

When salespeople are slow to embrace ecommerce, they miss opportunities that not only hurt the company, but the customers they are trying to help.
  • Dean Mueller
  • October 19, 2020
Local SEO for B2B: How Distributors Can Optimize for Local Search
Digital Strategy

Local SEO for B2B: How Distributors Can Optimize for Local Search

If you are a distributor on a quest to get on page one of Google, don’t neglect the importance of being found locally. Here’s
  • Dean Mueller
  • October 16, 2020
Amazon’s AI-Powered Secrets to Success (and How Distributors Can Respond)
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change Show: Amazon’s AI-Powered Secrets to Success – and How Distributors Can Respond (October 14, 2020)

Learn how Amazon uses AI and how distributors can fend off this B2B juggernaut with their own strategy around product recommendations, search relevancy and
  • Ian Heller
  • October 15, 2020
Which distribution verticals are vulnerable to disruption
Distribution Technology

Why Some Distribution Verticals Are More Vulnerable to Disruption

To understand how vulnerable a distribution vertical is to disruption, look at the relationship between the product category’s complexity and the ability for the
  • Jonathan Bein
  • October 13, 2020
The-Real-Reason-Digital-Fails---Its-Not-Because-CEOs-are-Dinosaurs-Blog-Featured
Wholesale Change Show

Wholesale Change Show: The Real Reason Digital Fails: It’s Not Because CEOs are Dinosaurs (October 7, 2020)

Successful ecommerce in B2B is wildly more complex than in retail. Multiple users, workflows, e-procurement, punchout, email-to-order conversion and many more challenges make it
  • Ian Heller
  • October 8, 2020
Burned But Not Destroyed: How Crises Foster Innovation
Distribution Industry Analysis

Burned But Not Destroyed: How Crises Foster Innovation

Recently, the Atlantic posted a story about the resilience of human societies in the face of disaster. The author made a strong historical argument
  • Bill Wade
  • October 7, 2020
How Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) Can Solve Small-Order Problems
Distribution Sales Strategy

How Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) Can Solve Small-Order Problems

Setting a Minimum Order Quantity is quick, predictable, and perfectly suited for the V-shape recovery. It’s a great strategy for distributors that have taken
  • Randy MacLean
  • October 1, 2020
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