Future of Distribution

“So how much cash is trapped in the supply chain and can the business keep serving customers if one assumption fails?” - Tricia Heidemann, Chief Operating Officer at Detox Nation

Private equity investors evaluate supply chains as valuation, cash, and downside protection stories. The first question in every due diligence is how much cash is trapped in the supply chain and whether the business can keep serving customers if one assumption fails. Tricia argues that clean, repeatable value stories are what PE buyers always look for: verified margin expansion, credible cash conversion, scalable infrastructure, and low dependency on any single supplier, person, or workaround.

Tricia has spent more than 20 years building and leading global supply chains across consumer products, wellness, and PE-backed businesses, including serving as Chief Supply Chain Officer at Radiance Holdings, a private equity backed beauty and wellness portfolio. Across her career, she has worked across retail, B2B, and direct-to-consumer models, running omnichannel inventory off a single available-to-promise number, building S&OP processes from scratch, and advising on how to scale while managing risk, cost, and complexity.

Tricia sits down with Ellen Cox to walk through how PE investors scan supply chains during due diligence and what operational standards they expect before and after acquisition. She explains how she runs retail, B2B, and DTC from one inventory ledger with a single available-to-promise number and a transparent allocation policy, why the fastest value after an acquisition comes from shared data and governance rather than forced standardization, and how she builds S&OP from scratch at companies ranging from startups to over a billion in revenue. Tricia also shares her approach to AI-assisted decisioning across the inventory network, why she believes sustainability has become a genuine value creation story under PE ownership, and the hidden inventory costs that only surface when investors start looking.

Topics

• How PE investors scan supply chains during due diligence

• Post-acquisition supply chain integration across multiple brands

• Running omnichannel inventory off one available-to-promise pool

• Pre-agreed allocation hierarchy for competing channel demand

• Building S&OP from scratch with imperfect data

• Hidden inventory costs that surface during investor review

• Sustainability as value creation under PE ownership

• AI-assisted decisioning across the inventory network

Resources

• The Leader Who Had No Title by Robin Sharma

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"Starting to think like a technology adopter and how you're going to deploy that, whether that's internal or external, I think is really critical." - Emily Gupton, Chief Operations and Technology Officer at SKG Texas, Inc.

Most distributors treat technology as something you buy off the shelf. Emily argues that the real shift happens when a distributor starts thinking like a technology company, assessing what to build versus what to buy, recruiting willing skeptics to test new tools, and measuring ROI before rolling anything out company-wide. As Chief Operations and Technology Officer at SKG Texas, she put that thinking into practice by co-founding FOLIO, a software platform built from inside the dealership to solve a problem no existing product addressed: getting customers from first conversation to go/no-go decision without burning weeks of manual effort.

Founded more than 30 years ago, SKG Texas is a 100% woman-owned commercial furniture and workplace solutions dealership serving Central and South Texas, working with more than 250 manufacturers across corporate, healthcare, education, government, and technology sectors. Emily joined from a career that started in radiology and neuroscience, pivoted into project management by accident, and evolved into technology leadership after she started digging into SQL databases and deploying new systems at a previous company.

In This Episode

Emily sits down with Ellen Cox and Lisa Bounds to explain what pushed a 30-plus-year-old furniture dealership to co-found a software company. She walks through how FOLIO went from brainstorming sessions six months before Covid to a platform used by dealers across the country, why the first version had to be sunset because they tried to build too much, and how the current tool helps dealers show clients good-better-best options and reach a go/no-go decision faster. Emily also shares the pricing tool that cut three full business days of manual data entry to three hours, her champion-and-skeptic framework for technology adoption, why she believes AI can do a lot but is not a cure-all, and what Austin Women in Technology is doing to create space for women across every corner of the tech landscape.

Topics

• Co-founding FOLIO to modernize the dealer-customer experience

• Turning three-day pricing workflows into three-hour tasks

• Recruiting skeptics as technology champions to drive adoption

• Digitizing relationship-driven businesses without losing human connection

• Navigating the build versus buy technology decision

• Why AI is not a cure-all for distribution operations

• The real supply chain complexity behind commercial furniture

• Advancing women in technology leadership through community

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“When you focus too much on sales and you forget about your bottom line, we don't remember that profitability growth can be more impactful than top line growth.” - Pete Chrobak, Chief Financial Officer at Duncan-Parnell Inc.

Most distribution CFOs face a tension most never say out loud: sales growth feels like progress, but it can mask declining profitability. Pete argues that chasing top-line growth without watching the bottom line is the mistake that holds companies back. As CFO of three related businesses, he tackles this problem by blurring the line between finance and operations, getting into the weeds on inventory turns, warehouse workflows, and technology automation so that growth actually translates to margin.

Founded in 1946 and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Duncan-Parnell is one of the nation's largest Trimble distributors, providing surveying, geospatial, construction technology, drone, and software solutions throughout the Southeast. The company has grown threefold in five years through a combination of strategic acquisitions and organic expansion, all while remaining proudly family-owned. Pete joined to run finance and quickly took on operations and technology, building a cross-functional team that now supports Duncan-Parnell, BuildingPoint SouthEast, and Ag Technologies without duplicating effort.

In This Episode

Pete sits down with Lisa Bounds to make the case that profitability growth matters more than sales growth. He walks through how he runs finance across three companies, why he sends HR into acquisitions before executive leadership, the biggest mistakes distributors make when integrating new businesses, and what he learned from a cloud ERP migration that became a chance to reset every process from scratch. Pete also shares his people-plus-AI framework for rolling out new technology, his argument for staying family-owned, and why he hires finance talent for curiosity over credentials.

Topics

• Why profitability growth matters more than sales growth

• Running finance across three companies without duplication

• Culture-first acquisition strategy for family-owned distributors

• Sending HR into acquisitions before executive leadership

• Treating cloud ERP migration as a full process reset

• Scaling back office intentionally during threefold growth

• Rolling out AI with a people-plus-AI approach

• Hiring finance talent for curiosity over credentials

• The case for staying family-owned when others are selling

  
  

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