Three distributor success stories in different channels – steel, industrial-paper/jan-san and fluid power – are profiled in a new book by distributor consultant Bruce Merrifield.
The smallest of the three (fluid power) started their journey with one location doing $8MM in sales with 22 employees. Their CEO had been working hard for 15 years to achieve only mediocre success. Their 10-year, trailing average pre-tax return on total assets was 7%: a typical, mediocre distributor rate. After 30 months, their ROTA is now 22% with these additional benefits: