Who we serve · Industrial distribution & technical B2B
Your buyers ask AI for the part now. It names the manufacturer, not you.
An engineer or buyer used to come to your site to find a part. Now they ask Google or ChatGPT, and the answer names the brand that makes it, not the distributor who stocks 80,000 of them. You never get the visit. Your rep never gets the quote. We make the AI point to you instead.
Citations · 3 sources
- [1]northernhydraulics.com
- [2]parker.com
- [3]eaton.com
What we build: your products named in the AI answer, ahead of the brands you carry.
Where it hurts
You’re probably on one of two sides. Often both at once.
Almost every distributor who calls me is stuck in one of two places.
Side one
Not enough coming in
The phone’s quieter than it was. Fewer quotes, longer gaps between the good ones. You’ve slipped on Google for searches you used to own, and Amazon and the manufacturers are picking off business that used to be yours.
Side two
Can’t keep up with what you’ve got
The work comes in, then leaks back out. Quotes go out and never get chased. Your website is a parts dump nobody can search. And you can’t say which of your marketing actually turned into a sale.
Both trace back to the same change. Buyers find and pick parts through Google’s AI and ChatGPT now, and your catalog was built for a web that’s already gone. Fix how you show up there and both sides ease at once.
Why it happens
Why the AI names the manufacturer and skips past you.
You stock the part, ship it today, and know it better than anyone. The AI still points to the brand. Three reasons why.
01
Your pages read like everyone’s
Most product pages use the same description the manufacturer hands every distributor. To Google and ChatGPT, your catalog looks identical to ten competitors’ — so none of it stands out, and none of it gets picked.
02
The brand looks like the expert
When the manufacturer’s own site is the most complete source online, the AI credits them for the part — even though you stock it, configure it, and ship it today.
03
The AI can’t read your catalog
Quote-only prices and product data scattered across systems mean the AI can’t tell what you carry or what it costs. If it can’t read your catalog, it won’t recommend you.
Every one of these is fixable. It’s how your catalog is built, not how much you spend.
The number that mattered
+43.5%
Qualified leads per month, on the August baseline
Aug 2024 – Jan 2025 · client CRM
They rebuilt our product schema and rewrote our pillar pages so AI Overviews cite us instead of the manufacturer.
More receipts
Distributors we’ve moved the numbers for.More quotes, not just more traffic.
Industrial hydraulics distributor~8,500 SKUs
Anonymized · NDA8,500
SKUs replatformed in six months
Magento 1 → Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen
8,500 SKUs off Magento 1, onto a storefront AI engines can read.
The same hydraulics distributor’s commerce stack was at end-of-life. Magento 1, schema AI Overviews couldn’t read, and 600ms-plus INP that was killing add-to-cart on mobile category browsing. A six-month replatform moved all 8,500 SKUs onto a headless Next.js + Shopify Hydrogen storefront, with a complete schema graph live on the first deploy.
Website DevelopmentAI Search & GEO2024Fluid power manufacturer · OEM channel22k SKUs
Anonymized · NDA12 wk
Time to first AI Overview citation, post-launch
Greenfield build · zero pre-launch organic history
Cited in AI Overviews 12 weeks after launch. On a domain with zero history.
A fluid power manufacturer opening a direct commerce channel had no storefront, no organic history, and one hard rule: the Acumatica PIM stays the source of truth. Five months later a 22k-SKU Next.js + Saleor build was live. It shipped AIO-ready, and earned its first AI Overview citations within 12 weeks of launch.
Website DevelopmentAI Search & GEO2025Specialty fasteners distributor12k SKUs · 17 brands
Anonymized · NDA0.31 → 0.02
Cumulative Layout Shift on product pages, at launch
Shopify Plus B2B · 10-week migration
CLS 0.31 to 0.02 at launch, and 61 plugins down to 4.
A specialty fasteners distributor with 12k SKUs across 17 brands ran B2B commerce on WooCommerce and 61 plugins. Three of them handled net terms and tiered pricing, and broke on every update. A ten-week migration to Shopify Plus B2B swapped the plugin stack for native primitives and took product-page CLS from 0.31 to 0.02.
Website Development2024
What we fix
Two leaks drain a distributor. We close both.
Most owners are bleeding on both sides at once. Here’s each leak, and what closes it.
Leak 01
“The phone’s quieter and we’re getting fewer quotes.”
Buyers ask Google’s AI and ChatGPT for the part now, and the answer names the manufacturer or Amazon — not you. You lose the buyer before he ever reaches your site.
Leak 02
“Our website’s a parts dump nobody can search.”
Your catalog was built for a web that’s gone: slow pages, no straight answers, quote-only pricing the AI can’t read. The buyers who do reach you bounce.
We don’t sell six line items. We run one set of work, and each piece closes one of the two leaks.
Closes Leak 01 · get found, get chosen
The AI-readiness work under Leak 01 also does the heavy lifting for Leak 02 — once your pages are clean enough for AI to read, both leaks start to close.
We run these in the order three sections up: get AI-ready first, become the name buyers trust next, stay out front last. Each step has to pay off before the next. That’s the discipline, not a promise on a number.
No guarantee on a count of quotes. You get the work, run by one operator, and the truth about what’s moving and what isn’t.
The whole thing, run for you
Run the six with us — or hand the lot to one operator.
Full Growth Ownership puts AI search, catalog, editorial, dev, and outbound under one accountable operator. Two shapes:
- One operator owns your growth, priced flat by company size — from $20K/mo.
- Turn on the services you want, priced by how many — from $12K/mo.
Published prices · SOW in 48 hours · Leave on 90 days’ notice
The industrial engine
The Answer Engine.
When a buyer asks AI for a part, three things decide whether your name comes up. The Answer Engine works all three — built and run by one operator, not handed to five vendors.
Can the AI read you?
Clean, fast pages and product data a machine can actually parse. If the AI can’t read it, it can’t hand it back to a buyer.
Does it name you over the brand?
Become the source worth quoting, ahead of the manufacturer’s own site — the depth and answers the AI leans on when a buyer asks.
Do you catch the rest?
Not every buyer is searching yet. Go get the right ones directly, with outreach that actually lands.
Each stage feeds the next. We don’t chase Reach until Read and Trust have started to pay off — that’s the order, not a promise on a number.
No guarantee on a count of quotes. One operator runs the engine, and you see what’s moving and what isn’t.
Run it, or hand it over
Run the engine with us — or hand the whole thing to one operator.
Full Growth Ownership runs the entire Answer Engine under one accountable operator. Two shapes:
- One operator owns your growth, priced flat by company size — from $20K/mo.
- Turn on the parts you want, priced by how many — from $12K/mo.
Published prices · SOW in 48 hours · Leave on 90 days’ notice
Who we serve
Whether you stock it or make it.We get you found for it.
Two kinds of business, one problem: buyers and the AI need to find you by part, spec, or model, and name you instead of the brand or Amazon.
You stock it
Multi-brand distributors
You carry hundreds of brands and tens of thousands of SKUs, and you win on selection and knowing the catalog cold. We get the AI to name you — not the manufacturer or Amazon — when a buyer searches for a part you stock.
You make it
Manufacturers, one brand or many
You build the product. We make sure buyers and the AI find you by spec and model, and credit you for what you make instead of a competitor who builds something close.
Across the whole catalog
- Hydraulics & fluid power
- Pneumatics
- Pumps
- Valves & fittings
- Bearings & power transmission
- Motors & drives
- Automation & controls
- Sensors & instrumentation
- Electrical
- Fasteners & fixings
- Material handling
- Safety & PPE
- Abrasives & cutting tools
- Welding
- Machining & metalworking
- HVAC/R
- Plumbing
- Lubrication
- Test & measurement
- Janitorial & facility
- Packaging & shipping
- Fleet & vehicle parts
- Raw materials & metals
- Outdoor power equipment
- Agricultural & heavy equipment
- Construction equipment
From a single hydraulic fitting to a tractor — if it has a part number, a spec, or a model, we get you found for it.
What happens after you book
First 30 days. No black box.
Every founder we’ve worked with was burned by an opaque agency at some point. The timeline below is what you can expect from the moment you book the call.
Day 0
Start here
15-minute call · no deck
You paste 3–5 high-revenue category URLs. We walk through them live: schema completeness, AIO-readiness, citation gaps.
You’ll see
You leave with the single change that has the highest payback.
Day 1–2
Written diagnostic + SOW
One-page audit emailed within 24h. If we're a fit, an SOW follows in another 24h — scope, deliverables, fixed start date.
You’ll see
You decide. We don't chase.
Week 1
Access + baseline + first-shipped-change
Read access to GA4 / GSC / your CMS. Baseline crawl + citation snapshot. We ship one visible change so trajectory starts immediately.
You’ll see
First measurable lift on a target query.
Week 2–3
Schema rewrite + answer-hub structure
Product schema rebuilt across top 200 SKUs. Category pages restructured for AIO scannability. First answer hub published.
You’ll see
AIO citation tracker shows movement on top 50 commercial queries.
Week 4
First outcome review
Schema completeness, AIO citation rate, citation-share vs competitors. Three forward bets for next 60 days.
You’ll see
Lagging revenue indicators start to move months 4–6.
Questions distributors ask
Straight answers for technical distributors.
AI vs SEO, part-number search, manufacturer copy, channel friction, catalog scale, how we measure it.
01How is this different from regular SEO?
Regular SEO is about ranking on Google’s results page. This is about whether Google’s AI and ChatGPT name you when they answer a buyer’s question directly — like the cross-reference for a Parker fitting. We set up your product pages so you’re the company they name, not just the manufacturer.
02Can you help with part-number and cross-reference searches?
Yes, and those are your best buyers — they know exactly what they want. We make sure that when someone searches a part number, a spec, or a cross-reference, the answer points to the product you stock.
03Our product copy comes from the manufacturer and our prices are quote-only. Does that matter?
It’s most of the problem. The manufacturer copy on your pages is the same copy every other distributor uses, so nothing stands out. We rewrite it at scale with a real editor on every page, and add the product details and price or availability signals the AI needs to read your catalog — even when pricing stays quote-only.
04Will this cause friction with the manufacturers we carry?
No. We position you as the distributor who stocks, configures, and ships — the buyer’s source, not a rival to the brand. The goal is to get you named right alongside and ahead of the manufacturer for the products you carry.
05We have 50,000+ SKUs. How do you do this without junk pages?
We start with the products and categories that bring the most quotes and rewrite those first, with a real editor on each one. Thin, copy-paste pages are the problem we fix, not a shortcut we take.
06How fast do we see results, and how do you measure them?
The first changes go live within a couple of weeks. More quotes and AI mentions on your priority searches usually follow over the first quarter. We report quote requests, real deals, and where the AI names you — not rankings for their own sake.
See where you’re losing customers.
Two doors, depending on your business. Either way you leave with the numbers — the exact gap and the highest-payback fix — whether or not you hire us.