Author: Ken Thompson

The GAWDA gavel will pass, once again, at the conclusion of the 2024 Annual Convention in Phoenix. Indiana Oxygen President Gary Halter will hand it off to his neighboring state colleague, Eric Wood of O. E. Meyer.  In 2024, GAWDA debuted a new Technology Committee. This committee was commissioned to recognize an enormous change that will challenge the very existence of a business model that has successfully served our membership for more than 75 years. Digital Technology touches everyone’s life in just about everything we do. It’s no surprise, therefore, that our conduct of business MUST adapt to operating in…

I am a DISTRIBUTOR. I distribute “stuff!” The only reason I exist is because people who manufacture “stuff,” can’t be on every doorstep, eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose with everyone who might want, need, or use their “stuff.” I am hired to carry the manufacturer’s message. I earn my spot in the supply chain. I advertise the manufacturer’s stuff. I promote it, explain its features and benefits, install it, train the client’s team in its use, service or repair it, inventory locally all the parts and disposable SKUs necessary to keep it operating and upgrade it as new improvements surface. Not only do…

Keeping tabs on one’s competitors is not a bad idea, particularly when they come from alternate channels and are somewhat out of sight. Welding and Packaged Gases distributors began seeing some industry specific SKUs slip into alternate channels with the emergence of e-Bay. Managers would become distressed when a customer would appear in one’s showroom, sight a machine sitting on the floor, and remark that they had just purchased the identical product from an e-Bay site. At that point, terms like B2C and B2B were not even in our vocabulary.  We learned quickly that Amazon, and a whole group of…

How many recall riding your bike, or being dropped off by your parents at the local movie house to watch a couple hours of Saturday Morning Serials? These “thrillers,” featuring adventures of The Lone Ranger and Tonto, Dick Tracy, or Batman & Robin would occupy most of our morning. Each episode would conclude in a surrounding of high tension, guaranteeing one’s return to the theatre for the following Saturday’s continuation. It was great way for parents to get the kids out of the house, and, for the theatre’s concessionaire’s, an opportunity to sell more popcorn and candy. Surely our Senior…

We all know the drill. The management teams all assemble roughly eight-to-ten weeks prior to the end of the business year to review current business results and trends and begin forming budgets and forecasts for the new year about to commence. As more companies can now collect reliable data, the process becomes far more sophisticated and meaningful than the former method of extending a forefinger into the air to determine prevailing wind direction. Forecasting season is behind us. GAWDA Media, in its First Quarter Issue, reported survey results from a reasonable sample of both Distributor and Supplier companies. Distributors forecast…