The Heating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) replaced its annual year-end summit with an all-new virtual format in 2020. The virtual conference took place Oct. 7-9, bringing in 349 wholesale-distributor attendees from 127 different member companies, and a grand total of 695 attendees from 270 member companies.

For the last 25 years, Henderson ran his own rep company, Fluid and Steam Specialties, a valve, regulator and controls focused rep business.

A few years ago, the WIT buying group held its fall owners meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah — a neat area of the country if you have never checked it out. Part of the event involved a tour of member Standard Plumbing Supply’s impressive headquarters operation in nearby Sandy.

It is with great optimism that I begin my term as your ASA president. To be candid, this was not what I had in my mind, though.

Gil Carlson, who was the first person to come up with many of the hydronic concepts we take for granted today, was also my teacher. He would often say, “For a difference to be a difference, it has to make a difference.”

Wherever we turn, people are telling us that working from home and shopping on the Internet are becoming the new norms. Is that true? Not yet, but COVID-19 has required many of us to work out of our homes and forced us to navigate the virtual mall — the Internet.

It’s no secret that 2020 was a year packed with challenges for the PHCP-PVF supply chain. Some areas of our industry, such as the residential construction and remodeling markets have flourished. No matter the market sector, distributors have entered 2021 with high hopes and are searching for answers when it comes the state of the industry.

Once upon a time — 2006 to be exact — in a not far away land, Home Depot sold MRO products to the industrial and commercial markets. Top executives at Home Depot determined their strategy should be to focus on homeowners and home contractors, so they spun off MRO products into an entity dubbed HD Supply.

Many plumbing distributors have been in business for more than 50 years — and they have always found opportunities to thrive regardless of Congress and presidential executive orders.

The Keltech acquisition will also begin a new partnership between Bradford White and Bradley.