I’m delighted to welcome Eric Smith back onboard the MDM team as we continue to deepen our research and industry analysis capabilities. At a time when wholesale distribution and supplier channels arguably are being disrupted more in the space of weeks than in the past generation, we are more committed than ever to strengthen our research, analysis and coverage of the industry.

The timing couldn’t be better to welcome back Eric’s industry knowledge and business analysis skills to our team. Our mission at MDM is to help distributors build stronger and more resilient companies through our research, market intelligence and trend analysis. Over the past 12 weeks, we have shifted quickly to adjust to challenging business conditions and refocus how we can best serve our 20,000+ community of distributors, suppliers and service providers. Like many of the leaders we’ve interviewed recently, we are investing in ways to strengthen our value and find opportunities to create value in ways we have not in the past.

We started a weekly industry conversation in the form of our MDM Live Zoom calls each Friday. These have drawn an average of 500+ participants each week who, like each of us, are looking for ideas and context for how best to lead our teams forward. We also increased the amount of COVID-19 coverage across all our delivery platforms — and are providing our coronavirus-related Premium content for free so that everyone can access important information about the ongoing impact on distribution.

More to Come

We will soon add deeper quarterly market analysis and forecasting to complement our annual market sector economic benchmarking reports, which will complement our longtime quarterly market conditions reports in partnership with Baird, based on the most extensive ongoing industry surveys and benchmarking. Eric’s extensive industry knowledge and M&A analysis will also help us as we prepare our annual Top Distributors report for release this summer, as well as ongoing M&A and industry financials reporting. [To submit your company for consideration, please fill out this survey.]

Over the next few months, you’ll also see more changes in how we deliver our research and content. We are trying to follow a lot of the best advice we are hearing to become more customer-focused and user-friendly in how you can consume our content in all its forms. We’ll be transitioning to a new website that will offer easier ways to consume our content in all forms, and increasingly more digital formats. We’re expanding our podcast programming in response to what we’ve heard as well.

Please join me in welcoming Eric back; he can be reached at eric@mdm.com. And please let us know how we can do a better job to help you make more informed decisions on the ways you can find the opportunities in this crisis — as in every crisis — to build a stronger business and deepen your customer relationships. All of us at MDM are very grateful for your continued support, and we are dedicated to change and adapt to improve our value to this incredible industry.