B2B Builders Club / Weekly Briefs

Weekly Briefs

A weekly brief on what's happening across B2B commerce — curated so you don't have to dig for it.

Weekly Brief 12 · Nov 2

Watsco's ecommerce hit 37% of sales — and Wesco is running AI on its own data lake

Watsco's ecommerce keeps outgrowing the company, while Wesco runs AI on its own data lake. Two distributors, two digital playbooks — and what they mean for your roadmap.

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Close-up of data-center server racks in blue lighting

Weekly Brief 11 · Oct 26

Pharma distribution runs on digital — but its three giants are still hard to see on the open web

Healthcare and pharma distribution runs on digital rails — but public product discovery, a concentrated channel, tariffs, and global sourcing are changing what comes next.

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Prescription tablets spilling from orange medication bottles

Weekly Brief 10 · Oct 19

Fastenal's digital footprint outpaced the company — and distributors are giving AI an owner

Fastenal's digital footprint grew faster than the company overall — while distributors give AI a home in the org chart and the order desk.

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Metal fasteners in a blue bin

Weekly Brief 09 · Oct 12

AI is moving into the channel’s core — but the data has to catch up

AI is moving into the channel’s core — but data readiness, scale, and emerging regulations still decide how far it can go.

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A glowing microchip on a circuit board

Weekly Brief 08 · Oct 5

Digital share scales with size — and a $10B merger just raised the bar

Fresh distribution data shows digital order share scaling with company size, while a pharma tariff clock and a $10 billion JanSan platform redraw the competitive picture.

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Cleaning spray bottles and supplies in a janitorial distribution setting

Weekly Brief 07 · Sep 28

Your next competitive moat isn't an AI agent — it's your data

AI agents are entering the buying process. The competitive moat is clean, machine-readable product, price, and availability data ready for retrieval.

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A smartphone displaying an AI assistant beside a laptop

Weekly Brief 06 · Sep 21

A 100% drug tariff lands right where the Big Three just bet big

A 100% pharmaceutical tariff is about to hit the healthcare distributors that dominate specialty drugs. Here is what it means for sourcing, landed cost, and the channel.

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Blue and white capsules moving through a pharmaceutical packaging line

Weekly Brief 05 · Sep 14

A new tariff wall just went up between the US and Canada

A new wall of US–Canada tariffs is reshaping cross-border sourcing across steel, appliances, ag equipment, and more. Here is what changed and what it means for the channel.

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Aerial view of a container port with stacked shipping containers

Weekly Brief 04 · Sep 7

Supply constraints, robot fleets, and a reshoring divide

A lighter week with manufacturing signals that matter: a bottleneck in AI supply, rising robot-fleet ambition, and a reshoring split reshaping demand, sourcing, and fulfillment.

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Close-up of components on an electronics circuit board

Weekly Brief 03 · Aug 31

The distribution divide is now data centers versus the rest

Distributors tied to data centers and electrification are pulling away, while housing and discretionary demand keep the rest of the market under pressure.

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A corridor of illuminated data-center server racks

Weekly Brief 02 · Aug 24

When growth stalls, digital becomes a share-of-wallet strategy

Demand is flat to down almost everywhere, while digital is the line still growing reliably. In a soft market, that makes a portal less of a convenience play and more of a share-of-wallet instrument.

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A scale house model on architectural blueprints with a yellow hard hat

Weekly Brief 01 · Aug 17

The trust gap behind B2B self-service

Buyers want self-service. Adoption says otherwise. Here's why — and what's happening in food service.

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A business leader and warehouse operator shaking hands in a distribution warehouse

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