April 2026: Black Swans, QXO, and Community Is the New CX

Work in Progress: April 2026

It turns out a group of swans is called a bevy.  I don’t think I have ever seen a black swan in real life. But if you are in distribution right now, it feels like you are standing in the middle of a bevy of black swans.

Amazon is one. AI is one. And if you are in building supply, Brad Jacobs at QXO might be the biggest one of all. The forces reshaping distribution are no longer on the horizon. They are here. And they are moving fast.

All that + more from April:

1. Amazon just made distribution easier for anyone to compete with you

2. Brad Jacobs built a $18B distribution empire in 11 months and every independent should be paying attention

3. Community is the real unlock in a world full of noise and eroding trust

4. Rethinking our own business to deliver the most value to our market

1.  Amazon just made distribution easier (and for anyone to compete with you)

This week Amazon announced its new Supply Chain Services program. Their own language is pretty clear.

It will “pick up inventory from manufacturing facilities around the world, ship it across borders, handle customs clearance and ground transportation, store inventory in bulk, manage replenishment across Amazon and other sales channels, and deliver directly to customers.” 

That is not a small announcement. That is Amazon saying: we are going to run the post-procurement supply chain.

Today, this is still mostly B2C. It is more obvious for commodity products, marketplace sellers, and consumer fulfillment. For B2B distribution, especially heavier, messier, relationship-driven, LTL-heavy categories, it has not fully arrived yet.

But it is coming.

And Amazon’s newer Supply Chain Services positioning is even more direct: “Built for Amazon first. Then for our sellers. Now for anyone, no matter where you sell.” 

That should make every distributor pause.  But then act on it would you already!

This is not some “it can’t happen to me” moment.  Let this be a warning please. Because Amazon is not just lowering costs. They are lowering the barrier to entry. Making it easier for someone to start a distribution business without owning the operational muscle that used to make distribution hard.

That is the real threat and it’s already in motion.

2.  Brad Jacobs built a $18B distribution empire in 11 months

If Amazon is a slow moving storm, QXO is a lightning strike. Especially if you are in building supply, what Brad Jacobs is doing is unholy.

I love Brad Jacobs. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, and his books are worth your time. And true to form as he has done across whatever industry he choses, he is taking no prisoners.

QXO announced a $17B acquisition of TopBuild. In their own press release, Jacobs said they have built QXO into a market leader through more than $13B of acquisitions in 11 months… closing on Beacon in 2025 and Kodiak earlier this month.

The scale is wild:

• $18B+ in annual revenue

• $2B+ in adjusted EBITDA

• 28,000 employees

• 1,150 locations

• 10,000+ vehicles

In 11 friggin months!!!

That is not just M&A. That is a machine.

After TopBuild, QXO will operate in a market of more than $300B and hold leadership positions across insulation, roofing, waterproofing, and lumber/building materials. 

If you are an independent distributor, you are now watching two different forces move toward you at the same time. Amazon is lowering the barrier to entry. QXO is raising the scale requirement.

That is a proper squeeze. And ignoring either one is not a strategy.

3. Community is the real unlock in a world full of noise and eroding trust

So if Amazon is lowering the barrier to entry, QXO is raising the scale requirement, and AI is changing what good even means, then what do you actually do?

I keep coming back to community.

I don’t mean community as in subreddits with 13 people or another “executive dinner” where everyone is pretending they’re not there to sell something.

I mean actual community.

Like minded people in rooms, talking honestly. Owners comparing notes. People saying the quiet part out loud about what is working, what is broken, what is hype, and what they are genuinely worried about. The more I look around at the state of business, the more convinced I am that community is the next unlock.

We are poorer because of the erosion of community in the western world. This is not how humans were meant to live. We just never fully recovered from COVID it seems. Our habits changed. Isolation became kind of cozy. 

And now layer AI on top of that. Every message is cleaner. Every video might be fake. Every vendor has the same deck. Every company is “AI-powered.” Everything is a little harder to trust. 

When the world gets confusing, people do not need more content. They need context.

Central gathering places. Social objects. Communities built around shared problems and shared values that will see us through.

This is the new era of trust, Community Based Marketing (CBM).

I am betting on this. And not just talking the talk.

 I’m speaking at ULTL next week and this event built brick by brick by @Curtis Garret is exactly the type of movement I am talking about.

Also @Florian Selch who has built a super impressive community at Masters of Supply Chain is doing something awesome in this spirit too (excited to be part of it)

4. Rethinking our own business to deliver the most value to our market

We looked hard at our business this month and had to get honest about what we found.

The combined freight and tech model works, but it works best in limited environments.

The bigger realization was that the tech we built to run our own operation is actually the killer product for customers.

We ran this model for eight months. It landed. But on repeat we heard prospects and customers say they mostly wanted the tech. Which is essentially an autonomous transportation department connected to ERPs (multi-location out of the box).

And once you see that… or hear it enough times, you can’t unsee/hear it. 

So we are splitting transportation services from technology. Two companies. Two brands. Two P&Ls. 

And if you have been following along, you might be thinking: didn't they just bring these two together eight months ago? Yes. They did.

At the time, it was the right call. Today, I don’t think it is anymore.

The pace of change right now is unlike anything I’ve experienced in my working life. The need to react to market and technical changes is… completely bonkers. But also exciting if you’re nimble and willing to lean all the way in.

You can’t cast a road map more than a quarter with confidence. Your marketing messaging needs to adapt constantly. And what was technically impossible a month ago now scales, and that technical breakthrough you were betting on is now regressing.

What was right eight months ago is not automatically right today. I had concerns this would come off as flaky. 

But after sitting with it, I see it as the opposite. It is what paying attention actually looks like. Especially right now.

This is called work in progress. And if I'm going to write honestly about what it takes to build something durable in a market moving this fast, it would feel pretty hollow to paper over the messy parts. 

So here it is. And more to come on this. 

My point to all of this:

If you are a distributor, you are not that different from me right now.

Amazon is making it easier to start a distribution business. QXO is making it harder to stay small. AI is changing what your customers are going to expect from your operation.

That is the bevy of black swans.

But here’s the thing about black swans… They are rare because most people never see them coming. 

You do. You have the context, the history, and the data. Now leverage it.

That is the advantage. 

Amazon is making it easier to start a distribution business. We’re here to make sure it is still hard to compete with yours.

Justin