Broadline versus specialty

Definition

Whether a house carries a wide range for every customer or one category properly for a few.

Why It Matters

It is the strategic fork in this trade and the census encodes it, with general line houses in one code and everything else in another. Broadline competes on breadth against national distributors with better buying power, which is a hard place for a small independent to stand. Specialty competes on carrying what nobody else stocks properly and on knowing it, which is where an owner-operated house usually earns its margin. Work out which one you are buying before believing a growth plan built on the other.