Starting in late 2023, we’ve rolled out a series of MDM Case Studies, which are deep, three-part dives into distributors that have undergone significant change in recent years, whether in terms of their sales model, technology adoption or other innovation levers they’ve pulled.

We now have four of them published, covering Fastenal, Wesco, Ferguson and Watsco — each well-represented on our Top Distributors Lists. Premium members have complimentary access to them from their Premium Dashboard, while non-members can purchase them in the MDM Store.

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So far, each of these case studies has been authored by John Gunderson, who is a veteran sales, category management, analytics, pricing and marketing leader for a handful of major distributors that include EIS, Anixter, White Cap and Crescent Electric. He’s also an experienced industry consultant and writer, and MDM’s former VP of Analytics. He has a wealth of knowledge on industrial supply channel topics and has a great mix of perspectives on it, making him a perfect candidate to write these case studies.

In this episode — our first of 2025 — Gunderson and I discuss the two most recently published Case Studies that explored Ferguson and Watsco — the latter of which went live in early January. We also preview his latest feature — Part 1 of his MDM Case Study on MSC Industrial Supply, which was published on Jan. 13. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3.

Listen to the full episode via the audio player above, and you can find our whole archive of podcast episodes here.

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MDM’s Case Study Series

• Watsco (in Premium Dashboard here, in MDM Store here)
• Ferguson (in Premium Dashboard here, in MDM Store here)
• Wesco International (in Premium Dashboard here, in MDM Store here)
• Fastenal (in Premium Dashboard here, in MDM Store here)