The Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Assn. released a Distributor Profile Report which shows that general optimism rules the day among STAFDA distributors.

STAFDA members who responded expect their business to grow nearly 8 percent this year, according to findings conducted for the association by the Profit Planning Group, STAFDA's financial/benchmarking/survey firm.

Profit Planning's president, Al Bates, discussed the optimistic expectations among STAFDA members, as well as other findings.

Many respondents, Bates said, "are in niche businesses and are construction heavy. And they're saying that construction is on a roll and is going to stay on a roll."

Many distributors, not only STAFDA members, have added to their product lines in recent years, and this diversity has paid off for many. Bates is glad to see this, but doesn't see product diversity as a cure-all or even something that is necessarily for everyone.

"Given the nature of distribution, you need more than one thing in your bag of tricks," he said. "They're diversified but they also aren't trying to sell everything to everybody."

As part of the more diverse product lines, technology has become more common and implemented by many distributors, a group long considered slow to respond and adopt technology developments in their business. Or, as Bates puts it, tongue in cheek, "many of them have now joined the '90s!

"I think they are grudgingly coming around and are making the [technology] investment as quickly as they can," Bates analyzed.

A somewhat troubling item in the STAFDA survey, in Bates' opinion, was that only 23 percent of respondents have a minimum order requirement. He thinks it's something distributors should address.

"Unless you have a reasonable minimum," he explained, "you can end up with a lot of $100 orders, and you just don't make much money [that way].... We're still really afraid that anything we do can chase the customer off. But the reality is that it's bad for the customer to place a bunch of small orders. They're wasting their money and time, too. So we all need to plan a little bit better."