It seems like decades since we published this article on industrial distribution’s bullish outlook for the coming year. In reality, it was barely a year ago that the business outlook was fairly rosy, the world’s economies were for the most part humming along, and issues like trade wars and labor market constraints were the biggest issues keeping industrial distributors up at night.
Similar to 2018, the industrial distribution sector in 2019 was buoyed by overall healthy economic conditions, full project pipelines and a thriving construction market. And while rumblings about a possible downturn started to get a little louder as the year went on, for the most part B2B distributors were optimistic about the future.
