Industry Insights
-
GrubMarket Launches AI Sales Agent for Food Distributors
The launch is the latest addition to GrubMarket’s broader strategy of developing specialized AI applications for food supply chain companies.
-
Distributors Pay Up for AI Talent as Hiring Expands Beyond IT
The next phase of competition may depend less on which AI tools distributors purchase and more on whether they can recruit, train and retain employees capable of turning those tools into measurable business results.
-
Anthropic IPO Filing Signals Enterprise AI Has Become Core Business Infrastructure
For wholesale distributors, the implications are clear: AI is becoming part of the infrastructure of modern commerce, and the competitive gap between organizations that effectively deploy it and those that do not is likely to widen.
-
The Mid-Cap Distributor’s Pricing Quandary
One idea that sits underneath it all — pricing is a market-facing capability, not an internal clean-up project. The distributors who win build the foundation before they buy the tools.
-
Amazon Pushes AI Buying Tools Deeper into Small Business Procurement
As AI assistants become more capable of conducting research and narrowing supplier options, distributors may need to ensure their product catalogs, pricing information, inventory availability, and technical specifications are accessible in formats that AI systems can easily interpret.
-
Google’s Agentic Commerce Push Raises Stakes for Distributors
As Google’s commerce infrastructure expands, distributors that can be found, understood, and transacted with by AI agents may gain an advantage
-
Congress Still Has No AI Law, Leaving Distributors to Navigate Growing Patchwork of State Regulations
The pace of legislative activity continues to accelerate. By March, lawmakers in 45 states had introduced more than 1,500 AI-related bills, exceeding the total number introduced during all of 2024.
-
The Hidden Cost of Inefficient Quoting in Distribution
Today, the hidden cost of inefficient quoting is no longer limited to administrative overhead. It affects how distributors compete, how customers perceive them, and how effectively they can scale growth over time.
-
Amazon Opens Its AI Commerce Tools to Retailers and Distributors
For distributors, the development represents more than another AI product launch. It signals that technology once available only to the largest ecommerce companies is becoming increasingly accessible to businesses throughout the supply chain.
-
Census Bureau Data Show Wholesale Trade Lagging National AI Adoption Rate
Even under the broader definition, wholesale trade, manufacturing, and retail all reported AI adoption rates below the national average.
-
ServiceCall Expands AI Property Intelligence Platform with 350 Million Permit Records
The announcement reflects broader adoption of AI-driven analytics tools across distribution and home services industries as companies seek more precise ways to identify demand, improve sales productivity, and anticipate repair and replacement activity.
-
Grainger Embeds AI Across Warehouse Operations, Customer Service and Ecommerce
CEO D.G. Macpherson said Grainger’s AI deployments now fall into two primary categories: internal productivity and customer-facing digital capabilities.
-
Schneider Electric CMO Says AI Turned B2B Marketing into Structural Change
Among Schneider Electric’s pilot users, 100% said they would recommend the new generative AI tools to colleagues. But only 55% said they were personally ready to use the tools themselves.
-
The AI Divide in Wholesale Distribution Is Widening Faster Than the Industry Realizes
Distribution Strategy Group’s Best Practice Series is built around one principle: distribution executives do not need more content. They need a structured forum to pressure-test strategy against what peers and the data are actually showing.
-
Why Distributors Are Still Leaving Money on the Table with CRM
Despite so many businesses having a CRM in place, results remain underwhelming. Why? Because CRM is often installed, not implemented.
-
How Distributors Lose Profit Opportunity Before an Order Is Even Placed
The real risk and opportunity live upstream: in how quotes are profiled, built, priced, and delivered.
-
A Noted Author Launches Practical Operations Guide for Distribution Professionals
Each chapter closes with a Monday Move, a single concrete action the reader can take the following week. Quinn said the structure was deliberate.
-
Amazon Expands AI Supply Chain Push with Autonomous Agents
The larger significance for distributors is that Amazon is combining AI-driven procurement automation with physical logistics infrastructure.
-
Under Attack: How AI Is Supercharging Cybercrime Against Wholesale Distributors
AI has given criminal organizations the ability to impersonate executives using their own voices, construct vendor identities from scratch, personalize phishing emails with details no generic scam would know and deploy ransomware with a precision that disables backup systems first.
-
Distribution Strategy Group Expands AI for Distributors Event Series with Atlanta and U.K. Forums
Distribution Strategy Group is expanding its Applied AI for Distributors event series with two new events: a regional one-day forum in Atlanta on Aug. 12 and an international edition of the event in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 15.