The margin isn’t in the next price increase. It’s already inside your four walls.
In this research brief, Distribution Strategy Group presents findings from a survey of more than 200 wholesale distribution executives across vertical markets and ownership structures, examining where profitability is won, lost, and left on the table.
The central finding is structural, not cyclical. Top-quartile distributors adopted price optimization and rebate-management discipline years ago — and the advantage compounds. Meanwhile, 40% of distributors investing in AI cite profitability as the goal. Only 4% measure whether it delivers. The gap between intent and measurement is where strategy goes quiet.
What the data surfaces is not a pricing problem. It is an operating discipline problem. Margin leaks through override habits, cost pass-through timing, the 0-and-5s rounding effect, and SPA reconciliation cycles that run three to six months. None of it requires a single customer price increase to fix. The dollars are already inside the building. The leaders found them. The rest of the field is still looking.
The report maps the four recurring margin leaks, defines the end-to-end handoffs that let money escape across departments, and sequences the investments — from this-week moves requiring no software to an AI detection layer that finds the needle-in-the-haystack transactions no analyst will catch consistently.
Download this report to benchmark your profitability discipline against the industry and identify the highest-yield margin moves available to your organization right now.