Your best counter guy is retiring. His knowledge doesn't have to.
Blocks · your product expertchecking stock & pricing
The knowledge that built your business is
walking out the door.
Independent supply houses win on one thing the nationals and Amazon can't copy: people who know the product. The counter veteran who can cross a discontinued fitting from memory. The inside sales rep who catches a code issue before it costs the contractor a failed inspection.
That advantage is aging out. Across plumbing, HVAC and PVF distribution, 101,000 employees, 27% of the industry's workforce, are expected to retire within ten years (ASA labor study). As one industry veteran put it: that knowledge lives entirely in their head, and when they retire, it walks out the door with them.
Meanwhile, the questions are getting harder, not easier. The A2L transition alone rewrote the catalog with thousands of new SKUs, new matchups and new install rules, and put equipment costs up 40%+ since 2019. Every regulatory cycle punishes whoever's product knowledge updates slowest.
And your contractors won't wait. 83% already buy from three or more suppliers, and 70% shift spend the moment a supplier underperforms (HARDI Voice of the Contractor). Every unanswered phone, every "let me check and call you back," every green kid at the counter is share-of-wallet leaking to the competitor down the street, or to Ferguson.
The expertise cliff
Veterans are retiring faster than you can hire, and new hires take years, not months, to stop saying "let me ask someone."
Slow quotes lose quietly
Complex quotes take hours you don't have. When a quote takes more than a day, the contractor has often already bought from whoever answered first.
The giants are arming up
Watsco built its own AI product expert for its contractors. Ferguson keeps buying your neighbors. The tool gap is compounding.
One expert. From first question to entered order,
and the next sale after that.
Blocks isn't a chatbot bolted onto your website. It's a working teammate that knows your catalog the way your best people do, and does the work, not just the talking.
Every rep answers like your best expert
Ask it anything about the catalog: cross-references, substitutions, spec and code questions, A2L matchups, venting rules, lead-free compliance. Answered instantly from your own catalog and price file.
- Your newest hire answers like a 30-year veteran on week one
- Your veterans stop being the bottleneck for every hard question
- Every answer cites the spec sheet, price file, or install manual behind it
Quotes built, orders entered. Automatically.
Send it an RFQ, a materials list, an emailed PDF, a voicemail, or just the conversation itself.
- Matches the items, including alternates for what's not in stock
- Applies the right customer pricing and returns a clean quote while the contractor is still on the phone
- Writes the order into your ERP with a rep approving in one click, ending the 12-minute rekey
Reps walk in already briefed
Before every customer visit or call, Blocks hands the rep a one-page brief on the account. Ten seconds of reading replaces an hour of digging through the ERP.
- What this contractor buys, and what they've stopped buying
- Open quotes and where they stalled, backorders to get ahead of, price changes to mention
- The two products they should be buying from you but aren't
It tells you who to call before they drift
Your contractors already split their wallet across three or more suppliers. The growth is sitting in the share you don't have, and Blocks watches the data and raises its hand.
- The HVAC account that stopped ordering line sets in March
- The plumbing customer who's never bought a water heater from you
- A call list with the reason attached, not a dashboard someone has to remember to check
Built for the supply house,
not adapted to it.
Order-automation tools
They turn clean POs into ERP entries. Useful, but the order already had to exist.
Blocks works before the order: the question, the substitution, the quote that creates the order.
Communication platforms
They make sure you never miss a message. But they can't tell the contractor whether the 3-ton condenser matches his coil.
Blocks answers, quotes, and orders in the same thread.
Generic AI chatbots
They know the internet. They don't know what's on your shelf or what this contractor pays.
Blocks knows your stock, your costs, your customer pricing, your veterans' rules of thumb. And it shows its sources, because at a PVF counter a wrong answer isn't a typo, it's a failed inspection.
- Runs on your catalog, price file, and docs. Your data stays yours, and so does the advantage it creates.
- Human-in-the-loop by default: reps approve quotes and orders until you decide otherwise.
- Live in weeks, not an IT project. Built to work with Epicor Eclipse, Prophet 21, and the ERP you already run.
- Every answer cites its source, whether that's a spec sheet, price file, or install manual, so your team can stake a job on it.
The math your CFO
will do anyway
27%
of the PHCP workforce retires within 10 years
The expertise you capture now is the margin you keep later.
ASA labor study
8 hrs to mins
complex quote turnaround, before and after AI assistance
Speed isn't the pitch. It's what the expertise makes possible.
Distribution Strategy Group
12 min
per order, manually rekeying each emailed PO
The industry benchmark for work that produces nothing.
Conexiom / APQC benchmark
70%
of contractors shift spend when a supplier underperforms
First-call answers are retention, not just service.
HARDI Voice of the Contractor
Your people, amplified.
Not replaced.
Distributors tell us the same thing HARDI's data shows: the counter relationship is why contractors stay. We agree, and that's exactly why it can't depend on one person's memory or one branch's staffing.
Blocks makes the veteran the teacher instead of the bottleneck: his cross-references, his job-site war stories, his "never pair those two" rules get captured while he's still around to laugh about them. Every rep, at every branch, on every shift then answers like him. New hires ramp in weeks because they've got the old-timer in their ear. And your best people finally get off the routine questions and back to the work that actually grows accounts.
Our counter and sales people offer something that AI can never replace: strong relationships built on product knowledge.
We built Blocks so that knowledge outlives any one career.
How it works
Three steps.
No data project on your side.
Start internal-only and turn on more when you trust it.
Week 1
Connect
We plug into your ERP (Eclipse, P21, and others), your price file, and your product docs. No rip-and-replace, no data project on your side.
Weeks 2-3
Teach
Blocks ingests your catalog and learns your rules, including sit-down sessions that capture what your veterans know that was never written down.
Week 4
Go live, gradually
Start internal-only, with reps asking and Blocks answering. Turn on quoting when you trust it. Turn on customer-facing and order entry when you're ready. You control every step.
Week 1
Connect
We plug into your ERP (Eclipse, P21, and others), your price file, and your product docs. No rip-and-replace, no data project on your side.
Weeks 2-3
Teach
Blocks ingests your catalog and learns your rules, including sit-down sessions that capture what your veterans know that was never written down.
Week 4
Go live, gradually
Start internal-only, with reps asking and Blocks answering. Turn on quoting when you trust it. Turn on customer-facing and order entry when you're ready. You control every step.