With distributors now offering same and next-day delivery, online ordering and more value-add services than ever before, it’s sometimes hard to picture the humble beginnings many independent distribution businesses started from. For Craig Norlin, co-owner of Wautoma, Wisconsin-based Mid-State Supply, it’s not difficult to recall at all; he remembers his father — Austin Norlin — delivering product out of the family’s station wagon with a four-wheel farm wagon towing behind in the 1960s.

With the unemployment rate at its lowest level in decades, employers across the nation continue to struggle staffing their companies with high-quality talent.

Advocacy is one of the pillars of the American Supply Association. When the association was founded more than 50 years ago, the need to advocate on behalf of the industry as a whole with a unified voice was paramount and the need remains today.

In 2022 more the 4 million people left their jobs each month in the U.S. This ongoing mass exodus was coined “The Great Resignation” in 2021 by Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at University College of London. The Great Resignation was brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and the way it changed how people think about how, when, where and why they go to work. Klotz recently told CNBC Make It that he expects quitting and company turnover to slow down in 2023 — hopefully good news for businesses nationwide struggling to staff their companies.

The ASA OPR has been regarded as the gold standard in PHCP-PVF distributor benchmarking for more than 40 years and presents more than 130 financial datapoints for wholesalers to compare themselves against the entire industry, firms of similar sales volume, similar product offerings and of similar geographical location.

Distributors help keep businesses running smoothly by ensuring they have the right items in the right place at the right time. And if you’re doing your job well, the public doesn’t even see you.

Respondents to ASA’s monthly sales reported a median sales increase of 18% for January 2023 vs. 2022. This reverses a four-month trend of slowing year-over-year rates of growth.

Last month, the room at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Florida, was brimming with more than 100 volunteers representing multibillion-dollar international companies, regional independent companies, and maybe the lifeblood of the industry, multigenerational family businesses.

The overall survey queried sectors such as industrial, electrical, safety, HVACR, plumbing, building materials, safety, hardware, chemical and plastics, oil and gas products, JanSan and several others. The survey featured an 85-15 percent split between distributors and manufacturers.

Affiliated Distributors (AD) announced the launch of the Center for Independent Distributor Leadership (CIDL), a development program designed to prepare the current and future leaders of independent distribution with the competencies and experiences to build long-term, sustainable success for their companies.