As you might have heard, the economy has kind of been in a funk the last few years.
You, our readers, have been inundated with information from all sides concerning market data and recessionary slumps and that meta-topic of globalization. You have seen mergers and acquisitions taking place left and right. Companies have restructured, re-restructured, and worked hard to stay afloat – and many of them have.
Regardless of where you fall in the supply chain, the distribution landscape is a changed landscape compared to a decade ago. There is more market volatility, less give and take in pricing and delivery timelines. For a lot of you, I am sure that most days still seem like a lot more give and a lot less take.
This give and take dynamic is most clearly seen in your relationships with your suppliers.
We have done surveys in the recent past that asked you how often you evaluate your supplier base – do you do it once a year? Every few years? Never? Over 40% of our respondents said that they evaluate their supplier base more than once a year (you can view the full article here). That seems like a lot of evaluation on your part – and consequently, a lot of time spent making sure that you and your suppliers are continuing to be a good fit for one another.
Since this seems like such a relevant topic to our readers, we at Industrial Distribution decided to explore the issue in our upcoming September/October issue of ID in an article that will look at how you as distributors manage your relationships with your suppliers. How do you decide who to work with? How do you decide when a relationship is nearing the end?
Here is your chance to tune-in with your thoughts, your opinions, and your strategies on a topic that resonates with each and every distributor around the world regardless of size, product selection, or yearly sales. We realize that although this topic is extremely important to cover, it can be a very sensitive one for people and companies on both sides of the table. Relationships are what make the industrial distribution marketplace such a great industry to be a part of, and we don’t want to run the risk of anyone damaging a relationship just to answer these questions. Anyone who wishes to answer the survey may remain completely anonymous if they desire – and we hope you do respond.
The survey is just three questions and is open-ended on purpose: to encourage you to share your thoughts with us as detailed as you like, or as simply as you like.
Please click here to enter the survey.
We really appreciate your feedback. If you have any questions or comments about this topic that the survey fields don’t cover, or if you are having issues with the link above, feel free to email me directly at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.
