We're in another quarterly earnings reporting period, with this one much more positive overall than any of 2016. Big 50 distributors Grainger, Fastenal, Motion Industries, EIS and Motion Industries have reported their fiscals in the past two weeks, with all posting at least small year-over-year sales increases.
Here's this week's Top 5
GPC Subsidiaries Motion Industries, EIS Post Solid Q1 Sales Growth: GPC's subsidiaries Motion Industries and EIS Inc. — Nos. 8 and 22 on ID's Big 50 List — both saw healthy year-over-year sales gains in Q1, while GPC announced an acquisition for its automotive business.
Snap-on CEO Talks Trump Visit, American Manufacturing: President Donald Trump visit Snap-on's Kenosha, WI headquarters Tuesday, turning back to his key election message of "Buy American and Hire American." On Thursday, Snap-on posted a from message chairman and CEO Nick Pinchuk regarding Trump's visit and issues facing American manufacturing. See that message in-full here.
Are You Selling The Way The Customer Wants To Buy?: Too many salespeople either ignore or are unclear about their customer’s buying process. If salespeople don’t cater to or understand the buyer’s process, they also don’t understand the buyer’s needs throughout their process. Paul Reilly explains.
U.S. Oil Rig Count Now Highest In 2 Years As Price Tops $53: The U.S. active oil rig count grew last week for the 24th time in the past 25 weeks to its highest mark since April 24, 2015.
Purvis Industries Acquires Kinder Morgan Engineering & Conveying Unit: The new company will operate as a separate and wholly-owned subsidiary of Dallas, TX-based Purvis Industries under the name KMEC Engineering and Conveying Systems from its current location and with its current leadership.
There was no Top 5 last week as our office was closed for Good Friday. However, our Top 5 items of last week were:
Amazon Asks Large Consumer Brands To Sell Direct: Amazon will attempt to persuade several prominent companies to completely overhaul their retail strategies during a meeting in its native Seattle next month, reportedly wanting them to transition away from traditional brick-and-mortar retailers in favor of the direct-to-consumer model.
ID Video Q&A - Amazon's Threat To Industrial B2B, And What To Do About It: ID editor Mike Hockett chats with Applico's CEO and head of platform to discuss the current impact of Amazon on the industrial distribution market, and what distributors should be doing to adapt.
Ace Hardware Hires Grainger Sales VP To Lead Wholesale Business: Mark Spanswick joins Ace after spending the last 27 years at Grainger, most recently serving as regional sales vice president. He was previously Grainger's VP of mergers, acquisitions and sales integration.
Fastenal Sales, Profit & Onsite Growth Accelerate In Q1: Fastenal had sales growth across the board in Q1, with March being the company's best daily sales growth month since February 2015. The company continued to reduce its overall store count, but ramped up its Onsite locations and further grew its installed vending machines count.
Amazon Business Announces Availability Of Line-Item Detail On Customer Purchases: Amazon Business says by providing enhanced transaction data on customer purchases made with Visa commercial cards, customers can easily reconcile their business purchases, resulting in increased speed, visibility and accuracy of expense recording.
