As reported by The New York Times this week, it did not take long for private equity firms to call the new HD CEO and wave some serious money (some analysts estimated $9 billion for a division doing about $12B in revenue in 2006) to take the HD Supply distraction off his hands. That is how the mainstream media and some analysts are painting it.

At one level, it wasn’t surprising based on the departure of the chief exec last month and the arrival on the board of an activist investor none too happy with the company’s wholesale foray into distribution.

For many independent distributors with some memory, it sounds eerily like another lesson in the properties of oil and water. There have been multiple failures of manufacturers trying to run profitable distribution …