Darn Good Distributors

Most distributors treat their e-commerce site as a simple portal for existing customers to reorder. Denise M. Foley sees it differently: your website should be your best salesperson for acquiring new customers. ㅤ In this episode, Kyler Nixon sits down with Denise to break down how ULE Group transitioned from 25 years of word-of-mouth business to a digital powerhouse. Denise pulls back the curtain...

Don Esbjornson started in 1993 with no customers, no suppliers, and a partner's shell company that had been sitting dormant since 1984. Thirty-three years later, Packaging HERO has four distribution centers, 25,000 SKUs, and a website that cost a quarter of a million dollars to build. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Don Esbjornson , President of Packaging HERO , to discuss what distribution looked l...

Search engines are changing. The days of simply stuffing keywords and chasing domain authority are fading. Now, the focus is on Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) . The goal isn't just to get a click: it is to provide the direct answer inside tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI overviews. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Wendy Sponaugle , Vice President of Marketing at SupplyOne, to break down...

Most business leaders try to keep their personal beliefs separate from their professional lives. Kyler Nixon sits down with Craig Penland to discuss what happens when you do the exact opposite. Craig opens up about the terrifying winter of 2009, when he dropped to his knees in a quiet office to seek direction, only to receive a call that saved the business days later. ㅤ You will hear how Craig na...

Most family business transitions happen quietly behind closed doors. For Andrew Johnson , the handoff included a meeting he now calls "The Apocalypse." Before he became the CEO of ShelfAware, Andrew was just a son trying to modernize his father's legacy company, O-ring Sales & Service. ㅤ Host Kyler Nixon talks with Andrew about the messy reality of entrepreneurship. They discuss the friction...

Distributors often look to direct-to-consumer giants for website inspiration, but B2B buyers have fundamentally different needs. They are not shopping for entertainment: they are doing a job. Kyler Nixon sits down with Tari Elkin from Restek Corporation to break down exactly how to convert busy lab managers into loyal customers. ㅤ The secret is not adding more features: it is removing the barrier...

Most entrepreneurs believe the distribution market is a "solved game" dominated by giants like McKesson and Medline. Kevin Finley disagrees. In less than five months, he launched Keystone Supply Group and is already profitable by doing exactly what the legacy players refuse to do. This episode is a masterclass in supply chain resilience and aggressive, scrappy sales tactics for new distributors. K...

B2B distribution marketing is changing fast. The old playbook of sending a catalog once a year and waiting for the phone to ring is dead. Today's business buyers are consumers first. They check texts between meetings. They listen to podcasts on their commute. They doom-scroll TikTok. In this episode, Kyler sits down with Damien Garber from Groomer’s Choice Pet Products to break down how a legacy d...

Manufacturers need great distributors and great distributors need great manufacturers, especially when the line between B2B and B2C keeps blurring. On this conversation of Darn Good Distributors , host Kyler Nixon sits down with Jonathan Costa from Rex-Cut Abrasives to highlight the relationship between a manufacturer and its distribution network. ㅤ Jonathan shares how a full scale abrasive manuf...

Acquisition costs are up, ad costs are up, and retention is a core focus of 2026 and beyond for distributors. On Darn Good Distributors, host Kyler Nixon brings on friend of the show and business partner Jeff Felten from Forward Studios to talk about going deeper inside your existing house file and getting second, third, fourth, and fifth orders from customers you already acquired. ㅤ They focus o...

Customer Smile Champion in a LinkedIn bio stopped Kyler Nixon while he was scrolling and turned into a practical conversation with Terry Brei , president of Sure Controls . Customer first sits as a key cultural pillar, with manufacturers literally lined down and production back up and running when components and parts arrive at the right time. ㅤ Terry shares how autonomy, customer first, and crea...

Very few distributors have success with a rewards program, but this one is crushing it. Kyler Nixon sits down with Jackson Orin to talk about the Reinders Rewards program and a year long loyalty program designed to keep customers engaged all year instead of dropping off after seasonal online only campaigns. ㅤ They walk through internal conversations about e-commerce, ERP, and platform selection,...

Supplies should be one of the easiest parts of a dental practice, not another problem on a long list of cancellations, staffing issues and insurance reimbursement. In this conversation, Kyler Nixon sits down with fellow Wisconsinite Jordan Lorenz from Green Bay to talk about what it really takes to run a dental distribution company that feels both fun and serious. ㅤ Jordan explains how Dental Cit...

A sign supply distributor with weird videos, a slightly serious podcast, and 82 straight weeks without missing. That rhythm shifts casual viewers into customers who already feel like they know the team. Hosted by Kyler Nixon , this conversation with Tyler Hull from Wesco Sign Supply walks through how consistent content, in person events, long form podcasting, and honest recommendations create real...

A 40th year in distribution brings perspective on culture, leadership, and growth. Kyler Nixon sits with Mark Knight , CEO at Fibre Glast, to talk management style, respect, and giving credit where credit is due. Mark shares early lessons like “sometimes you just need to show people who’s boss,” and why he chose assertive, direct, and supportive leadership instead. He explains servant leadership a...

SMS marketing shows up where busy professionals live, on their phones. In this conversation, Kyler Nixon sits down with Kristin Dean to unpack why hairstylists, massage therapists, and spa pros engage in the middle of the day, how product-focused texts beat education in SMS, and why webinars still win. Kristin shares the starting point, taking top-performing short emails and turning them into conc...

Branding can carry a mythical connotation, but the real signal shows up in how you communicate when the waters get murky. In this conversation, Kyler Nixon sits down with Andrew Haring to contrast blanket price increases with a customer-first stance that says we are here to serve our customers and we are in your corner. Andrew unpacks proactive pricing announcements, why trust and service trump pr...

A big e-comm overhaul with brick and mortar, e-commerce, sales reps, and education moving together. Kyler Nixon  sits down with  Jeremy Ott  to unpack a massive ecommerce overhaul. The conversation walks through a six to eight month RFP process, executive buy-in from a forward-thinking CEO, and the push for more core out of the box functionality, personalization, and newer technolog...

“Customers are buying trust.” That line stopped the conversation and set the tone for a candid look at long sales cycles, culture, and product bets. Host Kyler Nixon sits down with Nic Breedlove to unpack a model that blends distributor and manufacturer, serves about 350 distributors, and manages operations in Indianapolis, Savannah, and Houston. The buying journey is often 90 days or more, and a...

Launching a business focused podcast under a distribution brand can open doors and still fall short of the sale. Host Kyler Nixon sits down with James Gilman , president of Perimeter Office Products and host of “Pushing the Envelope,” to talk about starting in January 2024, recording forty plus episodes, and choosing to pause when it did not drive what he thought it would. James shares why the sho...

Welcome to Darn Good Distributors with Kyler Nixon . Today’s conversation with Eric Reffett centers on a 360 view of the organization, moving from a finance path to president, and building a team that is direct, respectful, and aligned. Eric explains starting in a space between a startup and an established company, doing invoice entry and reconciling accounts, then letting new people come in and o...

When distributors talk about a website overhaul, it usually stops at dreaming. For Kyler Nixon and his guest Faith Tank , the story is different. Faith, Director of Marketing and Events at Zip’s AW Direct , shares how her team transitioned from a brochure-style site into a fully integrated e-commerce platform. ㅤ From the challenges of merging brands and sub-brands, to navigating a multi-year repl...

Kyler Nixon welcomes Jason Hugo , founder and president at Quick Response Fire Supply , to explore how a decade of blogging and long form content reshaped a distribution business. Jason traces the journey back to 2012 when a single conference sparked the idea that consistent SEO-driven articles could attract the right buyers. Early experiments showed nothing—until the concept of “marination” revea...

Core values that feel obscure turn into core actions that live in the fabric of a company. Host Kyler Nixon sits down with NataLee Allen , Visionary and CEO at ClearBags, to walk through a practical shift from five words to 26 behaviors that repeat every week. NataLee shares how she stepped into leadership after 2019 without the “everything falls on me” fear because the business runs with a great...

Explaining B2B to someone who only knows consumer brands can feel like a challenge. Kyler Nixon sits down with Marta Dalton , VP of Customer Growth and Data at PetSafe Brands , to explore the core differences between B2B and B2C eCommerce and where they overlap. ㅤ Marta shares how pricing, catalogs, checkout, and delivery look completely different in the B2B world and why customer-specific journe...