A rant against wholesalers touched on a pertinent issue.
The term "bull session" has a bad connotation in that the quality of the information exchanged in such encounters tends to be suspect. Be that as it may, a recent bull session with an old friend gave rise to a central issue of your business. We'll get to it in awhile. First, though, let's do a little assessment of the bull.
The friend is a contractor from a small town in the east who specializes in hydronic heating. I ran into him quite by accident, in a town both of us were visiting for different reasons. It had been about a year since we last spoke, and the conversation turned to this magazine, which our company had taken over around the time of our last encounter. I told of all the problems that had befallen wholesalers in the 17 years I was absent from Supply House Times, and commiserated with their plight.