Darn Good Distributors

Most manufacturers know what they sell. Solve Industrial Motion Group is in the middle of figuring out how to tell people everything else they can do. VP of Marketing John McMillian joins Kyler Nixon to talk through a pivotal moment: Solve acquired four companies in roughly 60 days in 2025, shifted from a bearings-heavy portfolio to a full drive solution provider, and jumped from about 5% US manuf...

Four months before the call that nearly ended it, Nick Muscari's company was the one getting praised at every weekly meeting. Great gross margin. Strong cash flow. The favorite little side company. Then the parent distributor collapsed, the assets went to a competitor, and Factory Cleaning Equipment was set to be liquidated. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Nick Muscari to walk through a company take...

What does it actually look like when a small distributor decides to go deep on one product instead of wide across a whole market? That's the question at the center of this episode. Kyler Nixon sits down with Kevin Fielder from Iron Mountain Refrigeration & Equipment , a Wisconsin-based commercial refrigeration distributor that has deliberately stayed in its lane while the industry around it ke...

Most distribution leaders say they're open to change. A lot fewer have actually been forced to rebuild a 70-year-old company from the inside out, with no industry background, during a pandemic, before buying out their own family to take ownership. That's the situation Marlee D'Arco walked into when she joined Safety Services, Inc. in 2019. ㅤ On this episode, Kyler Nixon and Marlee go deep on what...

Most distributors don't have a digital roadmap. They have a list of projects someone wants to do, a budget fight waiting to happen, and a general sense that they're behind. Kyler Nixon sits down with Sam Schwartz , B2B ecom expert, to walk through a real framework for building one. Sam presented this process at B2BEA in Scottsdale, where the RICE prioritization method she introduced reportedly had...

Cyberweld has been in business since 1938, online since 2000, and is watching AI-referred traffic climb from 1% in February to 15% this month, with 25% expected by summer. Kyler Nixon sits down with Bob Goodliffe , fourth-generation CEO of Cyberweld, to get into how a welding distributor builds product pages, runs retention, and survives a platform migration. Bob's philosophy on product copy hasn'...

Most marketers in distribution and manufacturing can write a polished paragraph about a product they barely understand. Rich Ward , Director of Marketing at AcroMat, decided early in his career that path had a ceiling. So he made product expertise his first deliverable, before he built a single campaign. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Rich to talk about how that decision shaped his career and grew...

Most distributors spend a lot of time talking about retention. This episode goes the other direction. Kyler Nixon and Mark Ryan break down a direct mail acquisition campaign that Plush in a Rush ran to find new florist customers before Valentine's Day. The numbers are specific: 22,000 mailers, $18,000 all in, 130 new sales, $39,000 in revenue, and a gross profit of nearly $21,000 on the campaign a...

When a company grows by acquisition, the obvious risk is fragmentation. Fifteen cutting tool plants, each built by an entrepreneur who spent decades doing things their own way, don't automatically speak the same language. The challenge isn't the products. It's getting every part of the business to pull toward the same outcome. ㅤ That's the problem Kyler Nixon and Shane Hollenbaugh dig into on thi...

Most distributors know they need better SEO. Very few have actually built a process around it. This episode goes deep on what it really takes: the wrong moves that cost money, the weighted analysis that told one distributor where to start, and why knowing your products is a prerequisite for any of it to work. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Amanda Clark of Barron Equipment Company to trace her journ...

Most B2B distributors hear "loyalty program" and think DTC. SupplyHouse.com built one anyway — and it's been running for over a decade. Kyler Nixon sits down with Nick Haertel , Director of Growth Marketing at SupplyHouse.com, to break down the TradeMaster Program: what it is, who it's for, and how it powers retention across every owned channel the company has. ㅤ The conversation covers TradeMast...

Most sales playbooks tell you to follow the script, hit the cadence, and move to the next number. Jeff Buster did it that way for a while, too - until he stopped, started just being himself, and became one of the top sales reps in the nation at one of the world's largest industrial MRO companies. ㅤ Kyler Nixon sits down with Jeff Buster , Owner and President of Buster's Industrial Supply in Fort...

How do you stand out as a small distributor in a category dominated by massive conglomerates with sales teams bigger than your entire company? For Pineapple Hospitality, the answer isn't revolutionary: it's doing the fundamentals really well. ㅤ Host Kyler Nixon sits down with Lynn Martin to talk about how her team has carved out a real position in the guest room amenities space by serving indepen...

Hiring marketing talent in the unsexy world of B2B manufacturing and distribution is notoriously difficult. How do you find people who actually care about selling industrial or dental products? Kyler Nixon sits down with Brian Shoberg to challenge everything you know about recruiting and onboarding. Brian argues that the traditional HR playbook belongs in the trash. Instead of looking for perfect...

What happens when you bring a fast-paced retail playbook into a legacy B2B distribution environment? Kyler Nixon sits down with Andy Hall to find out. ㅤ After spending 12 years building digital experiences at The Home Depot, Andy took his philosophy to US Foods. His core rule is simple: stay close to the cash register and the customer. But how does that actually look when you are selling to thous...

Marketing in the distribution world often feels like a constant battle for budget, attention, and sales team buy-in. How do you bridge the gap between building brand awareness and hitting targeted revenue goals? Kyler Nixon sits down with Jasmine Widmer to explore how a century-old business stays culturally modern while serving the heavy industries of the Intermountain West. ㅤ They discuss the re...

Distribution companies often rely on legacy relationships and a 20-year-old logo to drive sales. But what happens when the digital age brings fierce competition right to your doorstep? Host Kyler Nixon sits down with Mordy Kurtz , Marketing Director at The Boxery, to explore why a packaging supplier needs a distinct personality. ㅤ Mordy explains how branding goes far beyond a simple visual identi...

Most distributors view a fifty-dollar online order as a transaction. Kristin Livesay views it as a handshake. As the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Component Supply , Kristin uses a "starting point" strategy to turn small, urgent R&D orders into long-term custom fabrication partnerships. ㅤ In this conversation, Kyler Nixon asks Kristin how her team bridges the gap between raw manufa...

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...