Given today’s rapidly changing business environment, strengthening your company’s ability to compete requires you to think about your businesses like never before.

The environment requires new levels of strategic vision and a growth mindset that prioritizes strategic planning and investment. We are all challenged every day to stay relevant and enhance our ability to compete, and this is true now more than ever.

As part of its centennial year celebration, APR Supply Co. has set the goal of their teammates giving back to the communities in which they conduct business by donating 100 Days’ worth of community service through an internal program called 100 Days of Giving.

Due to continued and unprecedented escalation in raw materials and transportation costs, Matco-Norca announced it will be implementing a 21% price increase on Schedule 90 PVC Pipe Nipples.

The Ducane line of residential unitary HVAC equipment will be available to contractors through any of the fifty TGG wholesale locations across the 6 New England states. Inventory has already started to land and will be fully stocked across the Granite Group branch network in mid-March. Available products will include gas and oil furnaces, air handlers, condensing units and heat pumps, many of which qualify for homeowner rebates in New England. This, combined with the addition of packaged rooftop units from Allied Commercial, will allow The Granite Group to offer a full range of equipment from 1.5 ton up to 25 ton.

Several Plumbing Manufacturers International (PMI) members and PMI’s federal government affairs consultant will address the industry’s most urgent water and regulatory issues at the 2022 Emerging Water Technology Symposium (EWTS). The event will take place from May 11-12, in San Antonio, Texas. Early bird registration runs to March 15.

HARDI released its monthly TRENDS report, showing the average sales performance by HARDI distributors was an increase of 35.3% during January. The average annual sales growth for the 12 months through January is 25%.

Once again, Martin, the spokes-gecko for Geico insurance company, is rambling on about their amazing customer call center, immediate, on-the-job appraisals, replacement value and tremendous low rates. We hear the same tired story from Allstate, Progressive, State Farm and all the insurance companies. It’s at the point where they never say the word insurance.  That is because they are not selling insurance, they are selling peace of mind. Should anything happen to you or a member of your family they will make it all better. You have nothing to worry about.

One of the father-daughter activities myself and said daughter enjoy is listening to music on car rides, specifically anything in the 1970s-1980s genre. Apparently, my daughter is a teenager going on 40 years old. Her tastes range from The Carpenters to Twisted Sister and Vanilla Ice. Like father like daughter. As we were listening to a recent Motley Crue song, she indicated the band had a lot of hidden gems on B-sides of albums. Who would have known? That a today’s teenager knows what a B-side album is, now that’s impressive. “Too Young To Fall in Love” is one of my favorite underrated Crue songs, though I’m not sure if that was a B-sider or not.

In October 2021, OSHA released preliminary data for the top 10 most-cited standards in fiscal year 2021. The data includes violations cited between Oct. 1, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021. The preliminary data was presented at the 2021 NSC Safety Congress and Expo by Patrick Kapust, deputy director of the Directorate of Enforcement Programs at OSHA.

NIBCO announced its Wrot Racer “Start Me Up” promotion to celebrate its next generation of push fittings that it recently launched. The multi-faceted promotion centers on the Wrot Racer C8 Corvette that will tour the U.S., making stops at distributor locations that have qualified.