S & S Aquires Alpha Broder! (PICK3R’s Thoughts)

Before today I was more disappointed than excited tbh.

I've been with many of the industry suppliers before they got acquired and it's always been bumpy.  New reps, new process, new order management system.  All of that will set a lot of businesses back in productivity and the bottom line.

Getting acquired is many businesses' dreams! AMB3R almost got acquired twice during covid but didn’t work out.  Becoming stronger as a bigger organization is awesome for those two in the deal. Not necessarily for all their clients & vendors. But I digress.

I saw the writing on the wall when Alpha bought primeline. Being a full package provider weeds out a lot of small fish aka their clients.  It didnt worry me since my model is about creative design and retail development, but social media was blowing up about what that means for us distributors.

As of today, it hasn't had the merger of the two which is good.  Their announcement that they will be splitting off their decoration & promo side of things is good news for all distributors.  I didn't think their decoration wasn't great.  Well at least for how I need production to run.

I do lean more to one of these suppliers than the other, but now I am concerned with my pricing structure.  Less competitors, more control over price regulation taking out a lot of competitive advantage. 

Which blank brands are going to leave and new ones sprout up which is a good thing.   Inventory is always a beast, so will either company be able to improve their inventory management which helps avoid using multiple suppliers to fill one order.

My reps at Alpha are awesome and hope they stay on.  We've built a great relationship over the many years.

All & I even though I dont like it, it's capitalism at its finest.  I hope it benefits everyone in our industry at the end of the day.  Give distributors more of a reason to be the puppet masters of the supply chain and not put too much faith in 1 vendor.  Diversifying offerings takes more work but improves your product mix with the distributor down the street.