The MDM Podcast

Katie Poehling Seymour might be the busiest executive in distribution. But she made time to stop by and discuss her path to leading family-owned First Supply, the progress on women's representation in distribution and why "this is distribution's moment."

One quarter through 2023 the pricing pendulum appears to be reversing with volume moderating across most distribution sectors. Dorn Group's James Dorn and Tom Gale discuss sell-side, buy-side and program improvements distributors can make in this year's environment of contraction to protect and improve profit.  

CEO Jeff Crane joins to discuss a year of change for ERIKS North America, which divested from ERIKS NV in early 2022. We discus the company's new-look leadership team, a recent acquisition and how the company is looking to grow as standalone entity.  

Great ideas sometimes turn into train wrecks. No company bats 100% when it comes to initiatives or projects. But too often management is reluctant to admit a mistake, holding out hope that a positive outcome might be salvageable. In this week's Quicktake, Indian River Consulting Group's Mike Marks outlines strategies for minimizing damage and creating best possible outcomes.  

We chat with The Master Group President Neil McDougall about the Quebec, Canada-based HVACR distributor's recent growth and greater North American expansion roadmap, as well as how product demand and the labor situation compares between Canada and the U.S.

In the distribution sector, there's arguably no bigger champion for the skilled trades than Andrew Brown, who founded eCommerce-based industrial distributor Toolfetch in 2002. This episode dispels misconceptions about the skilled trades, why Brown is so passionate about supporting them and how they tie in with distribution. Sponsored by White Cup

GPT-4 released this week and with it another wave of hype, hope and hysteria over the ways artificial intelligence, search and chatbot technologies will change our world. Indian River Consulting Group's Mike Marks joins Tom Gale to examine the impacts and implications for distributors.  

Leadership teams have several options for increasing long-term enterprise value. This week Dorn Group's James Dorn and Tom Gale recap some of the key themes from MDM's recent Distribution M&A Summit and outline the most pertinent areas of improvement for EBITDA margin, growth and value.

We are in the midst of profound industry structural changes for how distributors create profit and remain competitive. MDM's Tom Gale and IRCG's Mike Marks discuss three things – talent inertia, artificial intelligence and culture – that are defining the competitive landscape of 2023.  

Mike Hockett chats with Terry Albrecht, who has been led Green Bay, Wisconsin-based Packer Fastener since co-founding the company when he was 22. They discuss how the distributor's culture and unconventional hiring and retention practices have worked wonders.

From a trio of short interviews at the recent NAW Executive Summit, distributor leaders tell us about their top challenges and how demand is faring as of early 2022.  

We chat with ISA President Brendan Breen to preview ISA23 in April, how the association has evolved to focus on year-round engagement and what he's hearing from members about business conditions.