Something Big Just Shifted in Building Products. Channel is Being Rebuilt in Real Time
In the past 90 days, the building products channel has changed more than it has in the past 9 years.
QXO closed an $11B deal to acquire Beacon Roofing Supply, the second-largest roofing distributor in the U.S., and quickly moved to acquire GMS in a $5.8B all-cash bid.
Lowe’s launched a third-party digital marketplace for building products, tools, and home improvement brands, mirroring Amazon’s marketplace model for pros.
Zonda’s most recent Building Products Outlook reveals a notable shift in contractor behavior: when pros reduce spending on e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Home Depot’s B2B, that spend is increasingly redirected not to local dealers, but directly to manufacturers and national distributors.
And all this is unfolding against a backdrop of high interest rates, soft housing starts, tariff uncertainty, cautious inventory management, and tighter margins across the board. The rules of engagement for building product manufacturers are being rewritten... and fast.
What This Means for Manufacturers
If you're a building products manufacturer, you're at a strategic inflection point.
Stay the course, and you may find yourself increasingly commoditized, forced to fight for shelf space in someone else’s ecosystem, with less pricing power and no customer data.
Move too fast, and you risk disrupting valuable channel relationships before you’ve built the digital infrastructure to support direct engagement.
But do nothing, and the market will move without you.
The winners won’t just be better marketers. They’ll be better orchestrators of product, pricing, placement, data, and delivery.
Why Brand Strength Matters More Than Ever
As distributors consolidate and platforms grow, your brand becomes your moat.
In a QXO or Amazon world, product parity is assumed, but brand preference is what drives pull-through.
As pros seek reliability and speed, they’ll gravitate to names they know and trust, not just the one that shows up first in a search filter.
When manufacturers build a clear, differentiated brand, they gain leverage in negotiations, stay visible even as channels shift, and build direct affinity with contractors, specifiers, and even end consumers.
In a consolidated world, your brand is your independence. In a digital world, your brand is your searchability. In a crowded world, your brand is your demand.
Now is the moment to define what your brand stands for. And, make sure that promise shows up everywhere your products do.
What’s Next
In the next article in this series, we’ll unpack why manufacturers can’t afford to wait, and what actually happens when you delay, defer, or deny the shifts already in motion.
Sources & References
QXO’s Acquisition of Beacon Roofing Supply – QXO.com
QXO Eyes GMS Acquisition – HBS Dealer
Lowe’s Marketplace Launch Coverage – Retail Dive
Zonda Building Products Outlook Report, May 2025 – Builder Magazine
Amazon B2B and Pro Contractor Spend Trends – Modern Distribution Management
Brad Jacobs’ Vision for QXO – MarketWatch