Whether you are a wholesaler, supplier, rep, master distributor or service provider, being an American Supply Association member in itself is great.

You are one of 650-plus companies supporting our industry’s only national trade association in all that it is doing to help its members thrive in their businesses now and well into the future.

I have been a part of ASA for multiple decades, first working for a member wholesaler and now as the owner of a Northwest Indiana wholesaler. While what ASA is doing for our industry from a government affairs/advocacy perspective is worth its weight in gold alone, myself and my company have benefitted even more these past few years from the many critical offerings ASA has available right at your fingertips.

At the top of the current list of new offerings is the yeoman’s work the ASA Embracing the Future Strategic Council has done in putting together — and releasing to the industry as of July 1 — a product data standard aimed to help wholesalers and their suppliers in the more seamless exchange of product data.

Already, more than 35 leading suppliers and wholesalers are committed to this effort, marking a pivotal shift from development to adoption.

As ASA’s Nils Swenson, who quarterbacks the PDS project on the ASA staff side, explains, companies have invested heavily in product data systems, but the lack of a common framework continues to create inefficiencies, errors and costly delays. Nils adds the product data standard provides a solution — a uniform format that ensures accurate, consistent product information flows seamlessly between partners. The benefits are compelling: greater efficiency, improved accuracy and stronger digital readiness.

But these gains, as Nils stresses, will only be realized if adoption is widespread. If you are a wholesaler, ask your suppliers to provide PDS-compliant product data. If you are a supplier, begin sharing product information in the new standard format with your wholesaler partners. You can review the template and data dictionary at www.asa.net/Industry-Standards/Product-Data.

Equally hard at work helping our industry hire, educate, train and retain employees is ASA’s Workforce Development Strategic Council, which includes the ASA University and PROJECT TALENT career recruitment platforms.

ASA-U, long-considered the gold standard when it comes to industry education and training for employees, is well down the road with the uplifting of many of its training courses — a reinvention designed to meet the evolving needs of the modern learner, support member companies’ workforce development, and boost visibility and impact of ASA’s talent management tools. ASA-U is delivering content that today’s learners find relevant, flexible and engaging. Bite-sized lessons give ultimate flexibility for learners, even on the go, and facilitate training within the flow of work.

A good number of courses have already been uplifted and more are releasing late summer/early fall.

On the workforce development front, PROJECT TALENT continues to be a critical resource for ASA member companies in their talent recruitment journeys.

The SupplyIndustryCareers.com website, the centerpiece of the PROJECT TALENT platform, continues to attract widespread attention. Page views are up 52% vs. the same period on 2024 and active users have skyrocketed 96% since last year.

Social media posts that turn that industry recruitment critical website around to face jobseekers have a reach of 2.7 million sets of eyeballs, up 194% vs. the same period last year. Comparing the same period last year, there have been 38,000 clicks in social media posts to SupplyIndustryCareers.com, that’s up 155%. And 77 ASA-member companies have activated the “Now Hiring” flag in their member profile, which populates open jobs they have on the United States map on SupplyIndustryCareers.com.

Enhancements to that map include allowing members to note whether they offer internships and to add in their social media accounts. All of this information can be added via the Recruiter Toolbox at asa.net.

While what ASA is doing for our industry from a government affairs/advocacy perspective is worth its weight in gold alone, myself and my company have benefitted even more these past few years from the many critical offerings ASA has available right at your fingertips.

Another valuable component of PROJECT TALENT is the evaluation of ASA-member websites in determining if they are attractive to and contain critical information job-seekers desire. Thus far, 52 ASA members have received personalized reviews of their website for recruitment and 44 members who didn’t have recruitment information listed have received information on how to best add that recruitment information to their site.

I could continue listing all the ways ASA is hard at work helping its members strengthen their companies (Let’s not forget all the benchmarking/data reports and the live education/best practices/networking events throughout the year), but I’d likely need to ask for a few more pages in this issue.

Bottom line: if you are an ASA member, are you taking full advantage of all your membership has to offer? If not, reach out to ASA’s Mike Miazga (mmiazga@asa.net) who would be more than happy to direct you to the appropriate ASA department(s) and get you up to speed on these important offerings.

If you are not an ASA member, what are you waiting for? In an industry full of change and constant disruption from so many sources, I cannot stress enough the importance of having an industry trade association such as ASA in your corner.

As former ASA President Rick Fantham of Hajoca said, take the plunge. Your company and your employees will thank you for it.