AD’s eCommerce Solutions team welcomed more than 350 attendees across eight divisions and two countries to its fourth eCommerce Summit, at the Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida.

AD, the member-owned construction and industrial products wholesale buying and marketing group, launched the eCommerce Solutions program in 2016 to support members as they create their digital presence and launch an eCommerce storefront. Today, AD’s eCommerce Solutions has 14 dedicated associates focused on enhancing product content, consulting with AD members, and recruiting supplier partners to the program, and offers a suite of more than 15 industry-leading service providers.

The eCommerce Summit is one of two program-driven summits AD hosts annually along with the Finance, HR & IT Summit. The summits highlight a major value of membership in the AD community, networking, continuously rated among the most meaningful benefits. The event maximizes the impact of best practice sharing and allows attendees to return to their businesses with actionable insights.

AD Vice President of eCommerce Solutions Caroline Ernst shared some of the highlights of the 2020 summit.

“After piloting network groups and one-on-one booth sessions with service providers at the 2019 summit, we decided to make them a permanent feature of the eCommerce Summit and this year added designated network facilitators and a larger selection of service providers available for meetings,” she said. “Based on member feedback, we welcomed three best-in-class keynote speakers and offered three different tracks of topic-focused sessions to accommodate all attendees regardless of their role or their level of eCommerce maturity.” 

On the last day of the summit, Ernst proudly shared a new milestone for AD’s eCommerce Solutions program: more than 5 million enhanced and normalized product content SKUs are now available to the AD membership.

Jack Templin, AD president of Industrial & Safety Business Unit and chief programs officer, shared how this milestone will directly impact AD’s members who are looking to sell online.

“Delivering enhanced and normalized product SKUs to our members allows them to surpass other B2B eCommerce sites by giving their customers all the product information they need to make a purchase,” he said. “For AD members, access to this database of strong eContent in a member-driven taxonomy lets them focus on other key areas of their business. And with over 110 AD members now live with AD eContent, the continuous growth of our updated content database is a top priority for our team.”

In addition to this record-breaking achievement, AD also celebrated its members who demonstrate continuous leadership and commitment to the advancement of the eCommerce program as well as innovation in the adoption of their digital branch during the awards ceremony. The following are the awardees:

• 2020 AD Industrial & Safety – U.S. eCommerce Leadership: Dillon Supply
• 2020 AD Bearings & Power Transmission eCommerce Leadership: Eastern Industrial Automation
• 2020 AD Electrical eCommerce Leadership: McNaughton-McKay Electric Company
• 2020 AD PHCP eCommerce Leadership: Pace Supply Corp.
• 2020 AD eCommerce Innovator of the Year: Ideal Supply Inc.