Distributor Margin Management in Inflationary Markets

Alongside supply chain woes and labor shortages, the topic of inflation has dominated distributors’ concerns throughout 2022 and most of 2021. As we’ve covered here at MDM, the 40-year high inflationary environment has resulted in a bumper year for most industrial, commercial and construction distributors, as customers have been willing to pay whatever is needed to acquire product as long as distributors can get it to them. Pricing strategy has gone hand-in-hand with inflation. With so many factors influencing pricing these past two years, its management has become increasingly complicated.…