CloudForge - The AI sales co-pilot for Distributors & Manufacturers
Insights & Updates
Insights, updates, and stories from the CloudForge team
August 20, 2026
PFG Grew Both Segments Last Quarter. One of Them Paid For Itself.
Performance Food Group closed its fiscal year with operating expenses up 9.1% and growth in both major segments. The difference is cost to serve: Specialty's expenses outran gross profit by four points, while Convenience's spread carried adjusted EBITDA up 10.4%.
August 18, 2026
Distributor Optimism Is Running High. July's Data Shows Where It Comes From.
The 2Q26 NAW-Baird survey found distributor optimism climbing on the data center boom. Days later, July's industrial production came in at 0.2% and housing starts fell 12.4%. The composition of that 0.2% tells you which half of the economy the optimism belongs to.
August 7, 2026
Both Sides of the Channel are Complaining About the Same Thing
Manufacturers told this quarter's Baird-MDM survey they want distributors to communicate more and plan more strategically. Distributors asked their suppliers for the same things. When both parties file the identical grievance, the grievance has stopped describing either of them — it is describing the space between them.
August 5, 2026
Three Giants Are Building the Same Thing. Should You Copy Them?
Home Depot, Watsco, and Wesco each reorganized around technology inside a single week. Much of what they're building — one customer record, one catalog, self-service reordering — is a tax on scale a five-branch distributor never had to pay. And 55% of enterprise supply chain officers still say they're unclear on the return.
August 3, 2026
The Inflation Tailwind Is Fading. Execution Is the Lever Left.
U.S. wholesale distribution hit $8.44 trillion in 2025, up 4.8%, mostly on price. That lift has narrowed to oil & gas and data-center-fed electrical. What pricing covered for the whole time was execution — and as the lift recedes, the gap between a sharp sales process and a mediocre one resurfaces.
July 31, 2026
The CloudForge Quotes that Aged Well
CloudForge started in metals, and most of the operators on ForgeCast run steel service centers. The forces they described travel: tight supply rewards speed, consolidation opens windows, relationships resist automation, and outcomes beat software. Here are the lines that have held up.
July 30, 2026
UPS Says It Wants Your Freight. It's Worth Reading the Fine Print.
UPS finished its eighteen-month glide-down from Amazon and is now leaning into higher-value B2B: small and midsized business, healthcare, industrial, and automotive freight. That's a lot of what industrial distributors ship. Before assuming the shift works in your favor, it's worth understanding what UPS is actually optimizing for.
July 29, 2026
Three Big Distributors Grew Last Quarter. Look at How.
SiteOne, Watsco, and Stanley Black & Decker all reported growth in Q2. Open the numbers up and the components tell a different story: two grew mainly on price and acquisitions while unit volumes were flat or falling, and the third's margin jump came largely from a one-time tariff refund.
July 23, 2026
The AI Divide in Distribution Is About Decisions, Not Budgets
Distribution Strategy Group verified just 26 North American distributors with AI in production after evaluating more than 300. The more useful number is underneath: 93% of distributors call AI a strategic priority, only 16% have it running. The gap is decisions, not budgets.
July 20, 2026
Five Straight Upward Revisions, and Why Industry Averages can be Misleading
MDM just raised its 2026 wholesale distribution forecast for the fifth straight month, driven again by oil & gas and data center-fed electrical. Two verticals a broad-line regional distributor mostly doesn't serve. The rising line on the chart may be measuring someone else's market.
July 16, 2026
Fastenal Is Spending 3.5% of Sales to Take Your Accounts
Fastenal posted another record quarter with sales up 15.2%. Its incoming CEO said the outperformance is 'driven by share gains and not by the market backdrop.' The company is committing roughly $320M — about 3.5% of sales — to automation and IT every year. That share is coming from someone.
July 14, 2026
The Roll-Up Wave Is Also a Customer Exodus in Waiting
In a single two-week stretch this July, four industrial distributors announced acquisitions. Read as a group, the deals tell an independent distributor to get big or get gone. There is a second reading available, and it starts with a simple question: what actually happens inside an acquired company in the twelve months after the press release goes out?
July 9, 2026
What is the real story behind Southern Glazer's 1% workforce cut?
When North America's largest beverage alcohol distributor announced in July that it was cutting about 1% of its U.S. workforce, the easy read was retrenchment. Read the announcement more carefully and the move looks less like a company shrinking its sales effort and more like a company concluding that field reps are the wrong tool for a growing share of its customers.
July 7, 2026
CloudForge AI Joins NASA as Operational Supplier
As seen in Metal Center News (July 2026): North American Steel Alliance has welcomed CloudForge AI to the group as its newest Operational Supplier. NASA is the only buying cooperative designed for North American service centers.
June 12, 2026
A Shortage Is Also a Reshuffling: How Small & Mid-Size Players Can Weaponize Data and Speed
When supply tightens, share moves toward the top — the largest firms held 88.9% of market during disruption vs 81.2% in calmer times. But the structural advantage isn't the whole story. Smaller distributors who know their book cold and move faster can capture stranded buyers the big players ignore.
May 22, 2026
Filling the Gap: CloudForge Shifts Its Focus From ERP to an AI-Driven Sales Tool to Better Serve the Metals Supply Chain
As seen in Metal Center News (May 2026): When Ben Marans launched CloudForge, the idea was to introduce a new and improved ERP system to the metals service center industry. What he created was an AI sales platform designed specifically for the metals industry.
May 11, 2026
Decoding Q1 Earnings: Metal Service Centers
Four major public service centers posted record or near-record Q1 2026 results while the broader MSCI industry index declined 5.1% YoY. The demand driving those results is concentrated in qualification-heavy, long-cycle sectors most regional distributors don't serve.
April 28, 2026
Opinion: Thirteen Quarters of Reliance's Success are Being Misread
Reliance has outperformed the MSCI shipment benchmark for thirteen consecutive quarters. The usual explanations don't hold up — and what's actually happening is a quiet, ongoing consolidation of share.
April 15, 2026
What Do Steel Execs Really Think About the USMCA?
We asked the people actually moving metal. Here's what they think about the USMCA review, North American integration, and what the negotiations need to deliver.
March 7, 2026
ForgeCast Episode: Andrew Geisler, CEO of Mainline Metals
Andrew Geisler, CEO of Mainline Metals, joins the ForgeCast this week! After navigating four decades of market volatility, Drew provides the raw reality of leadership and how those trials transformed him into a champion for people-first culture.
April 6, 2026
The Sales Hire You Don't Have to Make
That reframe is not unique to him. It is, increasingly, how a lot of sales leaders in this industry are thinking about the problem.
March 26, 2026
Mainline Metals Partners with CloudForge AI to Accelerate Sales Growth Across Its National Footprint
One of America's leading steel distributors deploys AI-powered sales intelligence to deepen customer relationships and unlock new manufacturing demand.