Wholesale Change – News, Analysis, and Opinions for Distributors

Wholesale Change is a weekly live news show for the distribution industry, hosted by Ian Heller and Mark Brohan. Each episode dives into the stories that actually matter to distributors—earnings reports, M&A, AD and buying group developments, Amazon Business, AI, and the strategies behind the headlines.

This isn’t a neutral recap; it’s a news + analysis + opinion program. Ian and Mark bring decades of distribution and B2B expertise to:

• Explain what’s really driving the numbers behind public and private distributors
• Connect quarter‑to‑quarter trends across leading players
• Call out who’s talking about AI vs. who’s actually doing it
• Explore what industry shifts mean for mid‑market distributors trying to compete at scale

The tone is lively, candid, and occasionally snarky—more “two experts telling you what they actually think” than “one more corporate webinar.” Regular segments, lightning‑round questions, and guest appearances from industry leaders keep the show fast‑paced and fun, while still grounded in data and real‑world experience.

Who it’s for:
Executives, strategy leaders, finance and sales leaders, and anyone in distribution who wants to stay ahead of what’s happening in the market—without having to read every earnings release and analyst note themselves.

How it works:
Subscribe once and you’re set for the season. You’ll receive a single recurring Zoom link that works for every episode. There’s no need to register week after week, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Every distributor has accumulated technology over time — systems added in layers, inherited through acquisitions, or chosen to solve a single problem without a view of the whole. The result is a stack that works, mostly, but doesn’t hang together the way leaders wish it did. The question worth asking now is: if you were building from scratch today, what would you actually choose?

In this Technology Leader Panel, distribution executives and technology leaders come together to define what a purpose-built distributor tech stack looks like in 2026 — the platforms, integrations, and capabilities that belong in it, and the legacy choices that don’t. Panelists will share what they’ve learned from real deployments, what they’d do differently, and how they think about making smart technology investments in an environment where the options keep expanding.

Key Takeaways

• What the core components of a modern distributor tech stack look like and how they fit together
• Where ERP, CRM, ecommerce, analytics, and AI tools intersect and where the gaps most often appear
• How leading distributors are evaluating and prioritizing technology investments in 2026
• What integration and data strategy decisions have the biggest downstream impact on stack performance
• How to build a technology roadmap that’s durable, not just current

What You’ll Learn

• The platforms and capabilities distribution technology leaders would prioritize if building a stack today
• Where current stacks are falling short and what’s most commonly missing or misaligned
• How to think about the build vs. buy vs. integrate decision across the stack
• What success looks like when the technology actually works together as a system

Join Us

If you’re responsible for technology strategy, operations, or digital transformation at a distribution company, this panel will give you a practical framework for evaluating where your stack stands and where to focus next.

Wholesale Change – News, Analysis, and Opinions for Distributors

Wholesale Change is a weekly live news show for the distribution industry, hosted by Ian Heller and Mark Brohan. Each episode dives into the stories that actually matter to distributors—earnings reports, M&A, AD and buying group developments, Amazon Business, AI, and the strategies behind the headlines.

This isn’t a neutral recap; it’s a news + analysis + opinion program. Ian and Mark bring decades of distribution and B2B expertise to:

• Explain what’s really driving the numbers behind public and private distributors
• Connect quarter‑to‑quarter trends across leading players
• Call out who’s talking about AI vs. who’s actually doing it
• Explore what industry shifts mean for mid‑market distributors trying to compete at scale

The tone is lively, candid, and occasionally snarky—more “two experts telling you what they actually think” than “one more corporate webinar.” Regular segments, lightning‑round questions, and guest appearances from industry leaders keep the show fast‑paced and fun, while still grounded in data and real‑world experience.

Who it’s for:
Executives, strategy leaders, finance and sales leaders, and anyone in distribution who wants to stay ahead of what’s happening in the market—without having to read every earnings release and analyst note themselves.

How it works:
Subscribe once and you’re set for the season. You’ll receive a single recurring Zoom link that works for every episode. There’s no need to register week after week, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Employee engagement has always been a challenge in wholesale distribution — a workforce spread across warehouses, delivery routes, and sales territories, often with limited visibility into company direction and few natural touchpoints with leadership. The pressure is sharper now. Retention costs are real, frontline expectations have changed, and the organizations that figure out how to build genuine engagement across their entire workforce — not just corporate staff — are seeing it show up in performance.

In this Subject Matter Expert session, Nancy Disbrow, SHRM-SCP, Managing Director of Talent at Nivalmi Consulting, draws on her direct experience leading HR at a wholesale distributor to examine what employee engagement actually looks like in a distribution environment — the specific practices that move the needle, why standard approaches often fall short in this industry, and what distribution leaders can do starting now to build a more engaged workforce.

Key Takeaways

• Why employee engagement looks different in wholesale distribution and why generic HR approaches often miss the mark
• The frontline engagement gap — where most distributors lose ground and what leading organizations are doing differently
• How to build connection and visibility across a workforce that is rarely in the same place at the same time
• What managers at every level can do to drive engagement without adding bureaucracy or overhead
• How engaged workforces in distribution translate to measurable outcomes in retention, productivity, and customer experience

What You’ll Learn

How to build a culture of engagement that sustains itself through leadership transitions and periods of growth or change9, 2026 at 9PT/12ET to explore how AI is transforming warehouse operations in wholesale distribution.

Practical engagement strategies that work across the distinct segments of a distribution workforce — warehouse, delivery, inside sales, outside sales, and operations

How to assess where your organization stands on engagement and identify the highest-leverage areas to address first

What communication, recognition, and development practices are making a real difference at peer distribution companies

Distribution leaders are under real pressure right now. Tariffs, margin compression, and rising customer expectations are colliding with internal systems that were never designed to work together.

The commerce chain sits at the center of all of it. A sales rep gets a complex request from a key account. They have to pull pricing from one system, check contract terms in another, build a quote manually, wait for approvals, then hand it off to legal or ops before anything gets signed. Every step is a potential delay. Every delay is a potential lost deal.

This roundtable is designed to dive into the concepts of the commerce chain, understand where distributors are seeing the most bottlenecks, and develop a framework to start thinking about connecting the dots from pricing to signature. We will hit on topics that range from point solutions vs platform as well as the age-old question of build vs. buy.

This is not a presentation or product demo. It’s an opportunity to compare notes with fellow leaders, exchange ideas, and gain insight into how organizations across industrial, automotive, and chemical distribution are approaching these challenges.

EVent Details

• Format: Virtual Executive Roundtable
• Duration: 60 minutes
• Participants: Limited to 6–10 distribution executives
• Date: Sept. 30th
• Time: 12:00 PM ET / 10:00 AM MT / 9:00 AM PT

Attendance is limited to maintain discussion quality.

Wholesale Change – News, Analysis, and Opinions for Distributors

Wholesale Change is a weekly live news show for the distribution industry, hosted by Ian Heller and Mark Brohan. Each episode dives into the stories that actually matter to distributors—earnings reports, M&A, AD and buying group developments, Amazon Business, AI, and the strategies behind the headlines.

This isn’t a neutral recap; it’s a news + analysis + opinion program. Ian and Mark bring decades of distribution and B2B expertise to:

• Explain what’s really driving the numbers behind public and private distributors
• Connect quarter‑to‑quarter trends across leading players
• Call out who’s talking about AI vs. who’s actually doing it
• Explore what industry shifts mean for mid‑market distributors trying to compete at scale

The tone is lively, candid, and occasionally snarky—more “two experts telling you what they actually think” than “one more corporate webinar.” Regular segments, lightning‑round questions, and guest appearances from industry leaders keep the show fast‑paced and fun, while still grounded in data and real‑world experience.

Who it’s for:
Executives, strategy leaders, finance and sales leaders, and anyone in distribution who wants to stay ahead of what’s happening in the market—without having to read every earnings release and analyst note themselves.

How it works:
Subscribe once and you’re set for the season. You’ll receive a single recurring Zoom link that works for every episode. There’s no need to register week after week, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Ecommerce is no longer a side channel for distributors. It is central to how customers buy, how companies grow, and how competitive positions are established or lost. Yet performance varies dramatically across the industry, and most distributors still lack a clear benchmark for where they stand.

In this session, Jonathan Bein, Ph.D., Managing Partner of Distribution Strategy Group, will present findings from DSG’s latest State of eCommerce Best Practices Study. Drawing on primary research across the distribution industry, he will share what separates digital leaders from the rest of the field, where distributors are investing, and which strategies are producing measurable results.

Key Takeaways

• Where distributors stand today on ecommerce adoption, revenue attribution, and customer experience
• The practices that consistently distinguish high-performing digital distributors
• Where investment is flowing and which technology decisions are paying off
• How customer buying behavior is shifting and what distributors must do to keep pace
• Practical benchmarks you can use to assess your own digital maturity

What You’ll Learn

Current ecommerce adoption rates across the distribution industry, including what percentage of revenue is flowing through digital channels and how that compares to prior years.

The specific practices, platforms, and organizational structures that characterize distributors with the strongest ecommerce performance.

Where distributors are directing technology investment and which capabilities, from search and personalization to self-service and integration, are delivering the clearest returns.

How B2B buyer expectations are evolving and what the data reveals about gaps between what customers want digitally and what most distributors currently offer.

A benchmark framework you can apply to your own operation to identify where you stand and where the highest-priority opportunities are.

Delivery is one of the most visible touchpoints in the distributor-customer relationship, and one of the most operationally complex. From fleet decisions and route optimization to proof of delivery and customer communication, the last mile touches margin, satisfaction, and loyalty all at once. Yet most distributors have cobbled together their delivery operations over decades, and few have a clear view of how their approach compares to the field.

In this Distribution Leader Panel, distribution executives share how they are managing the last mile today: what is working, what still does not, and what decisions they wish they had made sooner. The conversation covers the full range of delivery models, from owned fleets to third-party carriers to hybrid approaches, and the technology, staffing, and process choices behind each.

Key Takeaways

• How distribution leaders are structuring their last-mile delivery operations across different models and market types
• The technology investments making the biggest difference in delivery efficiency and customer visibility
• How leading distributors are managing cost, speed, and reliability tradeoffs without sacrificing service
• What customers actually expect from delivery today, and where most distributors still fall short
• The organizational and staffing decisions that determine whether last-mile operations scale

What You’ll Learn

The operational and staffing decisions that determine whether last-mile capabilities scale as a business grows.

How distribution leaders are structuring their last-mile delivery operations, including the fleet, carrier, and hybrid models in use and the reasoning behind each.

The technology investments making the biggest difference in route optimization, real-time tracking, proof of delivery, and customer communication.

How leading distributors are managing the tradeoffs between delivery cost, speed, and reliability without degrading service quality.

What customers actually expect from delivery today, where the gaps are most common, and what separates distributors whose delivery experience earns loyalty from those where it does not.