Lawson Products has acquired Partsmaster for $35.3 million, its first acquisition since 2017. The combined MRO distribution company is expected to have $400 million in annual revenue. "We're very excited about expanding our sales team and customer base further positioning Lawson as a leader in MRO vendor managed inventory services," said Lawson President and CEO Michael DeCata, who is also a director on both the NAW Board of Directors and the NAW Institute for Distribution Excellence.

Walmart will inaugurate its $98-per-year Walmart+ membership service, first announced earlier this year, on Sept. 15. Through the service, which also features a monthly purchase plan, shoppers will have access to fuel discounts, same-day delivery on 160,000 products and access to Walmart's Scan & Go technology, which allows members to skip the checkout line.

Trucking operators are resuming near-normal schedules in the Texas-Louisiana Gulf region following Hurricane Laura's landfall on Thursday, while some delivery disruptions continue for FedEx Freight and UPS. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott eased trucking regulations to help expedite needed supplies but some rail service remains out, according to reports.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to increased business-to-business marketplace development and sales, according to a report by Digital Commerce 360 B2B. Many marketplaces are allowing third parties to use their platforms to sell personal protective equipment, according to Forrester Research senior analyst Joe Cicman.

Companies can use empathy to create long-lasting trust and reach new audiences by building a community online, listening and engaging with audiences in a relevant way, writes business-to-business content marketing strategist Megan Thudium. With this approach, a company's marketing campaigns will seem "more human," which will fit the post-COVID-19 era and improve relationships with customers, Thudium writes.

While good revenue comes from deals that can be built upon over time, bad revenue boasts much slimmer margins and comes from areas outside of a company's area of expertise, writes David Brock. It can be tempting to chase bad revenue, but it's ultimately more profitable to spend time working on deals where the sales team knows how to help clients succeed and achieve their goals, Brock writes.

Leaders must convince employees and managers that change is both necessary and possible to marshal support for new growth strategies, according to Karen Walker. She writes that "[a]s a leader, your role is to help your organization understand that there is no such thing as a steady-state, that there is only growth or decline."

Employees who are not engaged with their work cost businesses hundreds of billions of dollars annually, but the problem can be avoided by helping workers feel empowered, says Romila Singh, an organizational behavior and strategic management researcher. That means imparting "a sense of ownership," purpose and belonging and a focus on tasks, leading to greater job satisfaction and better performance.

In his Chairman's Column, NAW 2020 Chairman of the Board Doug York of Ewing Irrigation & Landscape Supply talks about the importance, now more than ever as distributors operate their businesses during a global pandemic, to identify and partner with the right service providers to create greater efficiencies and help distributors protect their margins and improve their cash flow. Read his Chairman's Column.

Register now for NAW's Sept. 24 live webinar, "How Distributor Customers Will Use Technologies From Their Suppliers and Who Is Winning." Leading technology companies are offering customers new ways of ordering. Retailers and distributors are using AI-enabled business intelligence to understand customer needs better and are applying autonomous vehicles, including drones, for deliveries. Ian Heller and Jonathan Bein will delve into how important all of this is to distributor customers and whether distributors need to build technological capabilities to remain competitive.

Are you ready for the technology that is transforming distribution? With the influx of new competitors and new technologies, changes are happening at warp speed. In this NAW series of seven research reports and seven accompanying webinars in seven months, distribution expert Ian Heller will help you to gain the intelligence you need to formulate new strategies and ensure that your company thrives through this era of technology transformation. You've got seven months, so let's get started. Sponsors include Unilog, SAP and Conexiom.