Distributors of the future, true leaders, innovate constantly and prioritize initiatives that create the conditions for growth.

Several market trends in the distribution sector appear likely to stay .

Development and growth concept. Businessman plan growth and increase of positive indicators in his business.

Mergers and acquisitions

The clustering of firms in the distribution sector has taken off in recent years. But care must be taken to strike the right balance among growth, exclusivity and brand integrity.

Business model adaptability

A company’s long-term viability is built on its business model. To push it forward, the company must look beyond simply marketing a new, sought-after product: it must also give thought to long-term success and implementing the means to guarantee the business model’s growth and efficiency.

The winning distributor is the one who constantly questions, challenges and reinvents the company business model.

Pivoting towards new sources of revenue

Diversify activities to secure new revenue sources. Diversification can be horizontal (extending product range), geographic (setting up in a new region) or vertical (adding assembly or production activities). The winning strategy comes to those who anticipate market changes instead of just reacting to them.

Always adjusting the sliders

To be « innovation-ready », every organization should have a balanced portfolio of where and how they focus their resources, and make deliberate choices about how their business models will evolve over time.

When we talk about resources we mean people, money and time. How you focus these 3 elements is important and they should be spent in the right proportions along a continuum of activities.

The efficiency activities, still needed but that do not provide much value to the organization, should be streamlined and made as lean and efficient as possible. Organizations should strive to run these activities with the least amount of people and at the lowest operational costs possible.

The sustaining activities are at the core of your business and consist of all the day-to-day transactional operations that occupy why you are in business and how you best serve your customers. Leveraging industry « best practices », here you bring to your customers the products and services at the quality levels they expect, and they pay you for it.

The transformative activities are the « next practices » you have implemented and-or are launching. They will bring innovations of all types both internally and externally. The outcome of those activities will allow you to become or stay the leader in your industry segment, outdistance your competition, and provide value to your customers that others cannot match.

Common challenges

How do you boost digital growth and completely redefine the customer relationship ?

How do you build customer loyalty and control your margins ?

How do you improve your logistics and see clearly among all the digital tools that offer ever-increasing automation in your warehouses and production facilities ?