Last week Graybar announced a record year with sales exceeding $7 billion and a 100% improvement in net profit. So, just like we reviewed WESCO and Grainger’s end of year annual calls, we reviewed the Graybar 10-K to identify items […]
2019 has started with a bang. We’ve had lighting manufacturers sold. A lighting manufacturer go bankrupt and a major company becoming a public entity. And this is on top of a market that has dealt with weather in many parts […]
Many talk about the impact of Amazon. It’s impact on societal expectation. Influence on retail. It’s emergence as an MRO platform through Amazon Business. It’s foray into branded products / private labeling through Amazon Basics and its integration into the […]
Who said lighting couldn’t go back in time? From a product side it’s moved into the future with LED’s, lighting controls and now LiFi. But we’re now going, to a degree, backwards in the sense of “traditional lighting companies” with […]
Interesting article in Electrical Wholesaling, “Amazon Business is Growing. Do Distributors Have a Plan” written by Unilog essentially saying you need to either join or fight Amazon Business because they are / will be taking over the distribution business (and […]
Feedback from this week’s NAED South Central conference was positive with many reporting productive meetings between their suppliers / customers, which is the key, and in many instances, sole reason for attending the conference. Surprisingly, there was also decent chatter […]
WESCO and Grainger both recently held their EOY / Q4 earnings calls. Reviewing them highlights that these two companies, while both serving primarily the “industrial” market, are really a tale of two companies with differences being: Business focus … CapEx […]
Last week’s NEMRA meeting engaged almost 2000 electrical industry manufacturers and independent electrical manufacturer representative sales in discussions about the business and in how to achieve 2019 sales objectives. There was much optimism in the air as many reps reported […]
There were six distributor acquisitions in January. While the Super Bowl was a defensive battle, both teams exhibited high powered offenses in January. Their aggressive offenses positioned them for success just like the recent acquisitions by a number of electrical […]
Over the past six months we’ve seen a number of distributors upgrade their websites – either the “look and feel”, evolve to a webstore or upgrade both. Why the investments? Because these distributors recognize that “table stakes” for at least […]
