distribution
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DSI knows the sale isn’t finished.
A satellite distributor grew into the machinery behind telecom dealers. Its next target is the awkward space between winning an order and getting paid.
DCKAP makes the systems agree.
A distributor can have a beautiful website and still sell stock it does not have. DCKAP built its business around the unglamorous job of keeping the back office and the buy button in agreement.
Amla Commerce makes room for the complicated order
A team jersey. A dealer price. A thousand storefronts. Behind ordinary purchases, Amla Commerce builds software for the rules that make selling complicated.
Associated Materials and the missing window
A house can wait on one window. Associated Materials is spending on factories, software and a three-business reset to make that wait less likely.
Oncor and the $47.5 billion power problem
Texas can order another data center in an afternoon. Building the grid to serve it takes years. Oncor lives in the gap.
Franklin Electric goes below the surface.
A motor is only the beginning. Franklin Electric built a $2.13 billion business around the pumps, controls, and people that keep water and fuel moving.
Acumatica APAC: Let everyone in.
An ERP system gets more useful when the people doing the work can actually use it. Acumatica’s Asia-Pacific operation brings that idea to growing businesses - with a pricing model that changes the conversation.
Infravision’s flying fix for the power grid starts on the ground
A drone gets the attention. A puller, a rope and a practiced crew do the rest. Infravision’s bet is that changing this small piece of grid construction can make a much larger machine move faster.
Bender Warehouse Co.: The $3.1 Million Warehouse Built to Keep Candy Cool
A Reno logistics business made room for candy, washing machines and other people’s complications. Its story explains why a warehouse earns its keep by doing much more than holding boxes.
Zilliant and the price that got away
A price list is a promise. Ten million manual discounts can make it fiction. Zilliant sells the machinery that keeps B2B pricing attached to reality.
Why Brandcreative has a warehouse
A creative agency with 30,000 square feet of warehouse space has a different idea of a successful campaign. At Brandcreative, the work can run from the first product sketch to the package on the doorstep.
Tecman sells a better day in the warehouse
The Wolverhampton Microsoft partner turns stock, orders and factory data into one working system. Its most revealing offer puts a £45,000 price on a tightly defined slice of that ambition.
Metrie Built a 100-Year Business by Cutting the Paint Job in Half
The family-owned millwork company survived a century by turning trim from an afterthought into a system. Its most useful lesson for builders is simple: sell fewer decisions, fewer job-site steps and fewer reasons for a callback.
The 123-Year-Old Private Equity Firm That Starts Planning the Exit on Day One
HKW reviews more than 1,000 opportunities a year, then applies a four-team system to the few it buys. The unusual part is not the funnel - it is that the exit team gets involved as soon as the deal closes.
The Quiet Holding Company Behind America's Walls, Ceilings and Firewalls
A private, people-first investment firm in suburban Kansas City has spent two decades assembling a coast-to-coast family of specialty construction companies - and betting that patient ownership beats the quick flip.
The Fund That Never Sells: How Tide Rock Turned 21 Boring Businesses Into a $1 Billion Machine
Most private equity firms rent companies for five years and flip them. Tide Rock buys them with cash, keeps them forever, and mails owners a check every quarter. It is a quieter idea - and it has compounded into more than a billion dollars of buying power.
The VC Who Bet Against Unicorns - and Started Posting
Erica Wenger raised $4.3 million from 130 backers to fund 'elephants, not unicorns.' The unusual part isn't the thesis - it's that she built a following first.
The $4.4 Billion Grocery Chain That Still Makes Its Own Ice Cream
Brookshire Grocery Company has run stores across the Ark-La-Tex for nearly a century - baking its own bread, bottling its own milk, and betting that owning the whole supply chain beats renting it.
Harvest Hill Beverage Company
Harvest Hill assembled a billion-dollar beverage business from brands many Americans first met in a lunchbox. Now, under a new owner, the company must prove that nostalgia can travel across aisles, formats and generations.
Central Garden & Pet
It started as one man's distribution route in 1980. Four decades later, Central Garden & Pet quietly stocks the grass seed, dog chews and bird feed on shelves across America - roughly $3.1 billion worth a year.
Baskit
We simplify supply chain challenges with tools that help brands grow and scale in Indonesia.
20Cube Logistics
20Cube Logistics is a Singapore-based, software-enabled international supply chain orchestrator that moves freight from purchase order to proof of delivery. Founded in 2011 by ex-Agility Logistics executives, it pairs freight forwarding, warehousing, distribution and customs brokerage with MyHubPlus, a proprietary digital platform giving customers real-time shipment visibility, exception management and reporting across 12 countries and 85+ locations.
Alephee
Alephee is an Argentine cloud platform that helps automotive aftermarket brands, wholesalers and distributors sell parts online across Latin America. It standardizes fragmented product catalogs, adds vehicle-fitment data, keeps prices and inventory in sync, and connects the entire distribution chain to marketplaces like Mercado Libre and Amazon so an offline reseller network can be replicated online.
Ambria (YC W24)
Ambria is a San Francisco startup building AI agents for the industrial world - production-ready agents that automate back-office operations across manufacturing and distribution. Founded by UIUC classmates Praneeth Guduguntla and Arman Rafati, the company went through Y Combinator's Winter 2024 batch, where it first launched as Glimmer, an AI search engine for massive PDFs, before turning its document-reasoning expertise toward the paperwork-heavy back offices of industrial companies.
Bizmark
Bizmark is a Y Combinator (S26) startup building an operating system for companies that make, move, or sell physical goods. It connects to the systems, inboxes, spreadsheets, documents, and know-how already inside a business and turns that context into automated quoting, dynamic scheduling, and inventory forecasting - shipping a working product in weeks rather than years.
Sanifu
Sanifu (formerly Patika, YC S22) is a Nairobi-based company whose AI reads sales orders arriving by email, WhatsApp, PDF and even handwritten notes, then enters them straight into a manufacturer's ERP system. It cuts order-processing time from 5-10 minutes to under 30 seconds and targets the roughly 180,000 manufacturers and distributors across Africa still keying orders in by hand.
Suplias
Suplias is a Lagos-based B2B fintech that helps FMCG distributors and small retailers in Africa buy inventory on credit. Founded in 2019 and part of Y Combinator's Summer 2021 batch, it started as a marketplace connecting mom-and-pop shops with manufacturers, then leaned into its Obtainly app, which lets retailers and distributors pay suppliers, build a credit history, and access short-term inventory and LPO financing with no collateral and repayment over roughly 30 days.
GudangAda
GudangAda is an Indonesian B2B e-commerce marketplace founded in 2019 that connects manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retail stores across the country's fragmented fast-moving-consumer-goods supply chain. Alongside its marketplace it offers logistics, merchant tools and financing so small retailers can source, order, pay and receive goods in one app. After scaling to roughly half a million SMEs and about $6 billion in transaction value on more than $135 million of venture funding, the company retrenched from its capital-intensive FMCG model and pivoted toward beauty and personal-care retail under its Kaka Beauty brand.
Kellwood Company
Kellwood Company is an American apparel design, sourcing, manufacturing and marketing firm founded in 1961. It builds and operates women's, juniors' and girls' fashion brands - including Democracy, Jolt, Briggs New York, Rewind, My Michelle and Wit & Wisdom - and provides private-label and full-package product development, sourcing, quality assurance and distribution services for major retailers such as Nordstrom, Macy's, Kohl's, Dillard's, Target and Costco.
Randa Apparel & Accessories
Randa Apparel & Accessories is a privately held, family-run fashion company and the world's largest men's accessories business. Tracing its roots to a 1910 Lower East Side neckwear shop, Randa designs, sources, manufactures and distributes belts, wallets, headwear, gloves, umbrellas, slippers, tailored clothing and sportswear across a portfolio of 30-plus owned and licensed brands - including Levi's, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Columbia, Dickies, Haggar and Totes Isotoner. Operating in roughly 11 countries with about 2,000 employees, the company topped $1 billion in sales and quietly supplies the accessories sold in more than 10,000 stores under names most shoppers recognize but rarely connect to Randa.