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Inside Channel Intelligence

Displacement Mapping

Which distributors carry brands you compete against, in your categories — with every competing part linked to the listing it was found on.

Scope
Up to 10 distributors
Layers
Harvest, resolution, evidence
Timeline
7–10 business days
Deliverable
Displacement report

The problem

What this is for

A distributor carries your line. They also carry three other brands in the same categories, and they publish all four. Your rep walks into the quarterly meeting knowing the first fact and not the second, so the conversation is about your products in isolation rather than about the shelf you are actually on. Meanwhile the competitor whose parts fill 85 of the 102 air springs that distributor lists has no reason to mention it either. This is not hidden information. It is published, indexed, and unread.

What you are buying

A full crawl and extraction across up to 10 distributors, with every product record resolved to its manufacturer and classified against your category taxonomy and your named competitor set. The output is competing parts per distributor, broken down by category and rival brand, with concentration analysis and a recommended play for each account. Every claim links to the distributor's live listing.

The process

How the mapping runs

Harvest, resolve, classify, concentrate, evidence. Nothing is claimed that is not traceable to a page, and nothing is counted twice — the resolution cache means a part resolved once is never resolved again.

  1. We harvest the published catalog

    Product name, part number, brand, price, category and URL, extracted record by record from the distributor's own pages. One request per second, public pages only, gated content left alone. The source URL travels with every record from this point on, which is what makes the later claims checkable.

    You getEvery published product record, with its source URL attached

    Harvest — six distributors

    Product records extracted
    31,480
    With a part number published
    27,910
    With a brand published
    22,140
    Price published
    18,020

  2. We resolve part numbers to manufacturers

    A published part number does not tell you who made the part; a brand field, where one exists at all, is often the distributor's own label. Resolution maps the number to a manufacturer, and every result is cached permanently — so the same part is only ever resolved once, on this engagement or any later one.

    You getManufacturer identity per part, cached against future runs

    Pipeline

    1. Part number
    2. Resolved to manufacturerOnce per part
    3. Cached permanentlyFree on every later run

  3. We classify against your categories and your rivals

    Your category taxonomy and your named competitor universe, not a generic one. A competing part is only a competing part relative to what you sell — which is why the first working session is about which categories you are actually contesting, and which rival brands you want counted.

    You getCompeting parts per distributor, per category, per rival brand

    Reference delivery

    Competing parts found
    823
    In named client categories
    418
    Distributors covered
    6
    Rival brands identified
    17

  4. We look at concentration, not just counts

    A hundred competing parts spread across nine brands is a fragmented category. A hundred with 85 from one rival is a relationship, and a different sales problem. Concentration is where the report stops being a list and starts telling a rep which conversation to have in which account.

    You getCategory-level concentration, ranked by account

    Rival share in contested categories

    • Air springsOne rival
    • U-bolts61%
    • Hangers44%
    • Bushings27%

  5. You get the report, the evidence and the plays

    Competitor brand breakdown, category analysis, an evidence link on every claim, and a recommended play per account. The evidence link is the part sales teams actually use: a distributor cannot argue with their own listing, and a rep who can open it on a laptop in the meeting is having a different conversation than one quoting a report.

    You getA displacement report your reps can use in the next meeting

    Pipeline

    1. Finding
    2. Source URL and verbatim quoteStored per value
    3. Opened in the meetingLive listing

Examples

What the report contains

Three views of the same crawl, because a channel director, a regional manager and a rep each need a different cut of it.

Per distributor

The brand mix on one account's shelf, category by category, with the parts counted and the listings linked.

  • Competing parts by rival brand
  • Your coverage in the same categories
  • Lines absent from their catalog

Per category

Where you are contested across the whole network, and where a single rival has quietly consolidated.

  • Concentration by rival brand
  • Category coverage across distributors
  • Uncontested categories, flagged

Per meeting

A brief a rep can read on the drive: what this distributor publishes, what they publish instead of you, and what to ask for.

  • Sales-call briefs
  • Evidence links per claim
  • Recommended play per account

Also inside Channel Intelligence

Channel Census

The pilot. It answers a question you cannot answer today, and de-risks everything after it.

How it works

Whitespace Mapping

The inverse of displacement, and usually the easier sales conversation.

How it works

Change Monitoring

The retainer. A census is a project; change detection is a standing reason to be in the account.

How it works

Distributor Qualification

Per domain, on demand. Diligence on the half of a distributor you can check yourself.

How it works

Next step

Start with the census.

Thirty minutes, no preparation needed. Tell us how many distributors you sell through and which categories you are contesting, and we'll tell you what a crawl of your channel would actually cover — including when the answer is not enough to be worth it.

Free · 30 minutes · no obligation