Looking back over 2009 I would have to say that it was a tough year to navigate. The economic trends in the high-service distribution industry are driven by consumer behaviour and therefore tend to mirror those in the wider economy.
Looking at our own 77-year history, the company has weathered some pretty extreme market storms like in 1953 when Sony launched an all-transistor radio that didn't need spare parts, prompting us to transform our business to serve general industry instead of just repair shops.
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What could have killed us made us infinitely stronger and now more than ever, we need to bring that spirit into our present circumstances.
From the start of 2009 it appeared that engineers were starting to more tightly manage and reduce their inventories, challenging distribution to improve the elasticity of the supply chain to meet the smallest and largest customer orders.
Customers were simultaneously demanding new product ranges, like energy efficient products but wanted them at low prices.
We carried out an industry survey which revealed that for 58% of facilities and maintenance engineers, reducing energy costs was the main incentive for adopting energy efficient solutions, followed closely by the need to lower carbon emissions.
It's highly likely that demand for energy efficient products will continue to grow due to incentive schemes like the €200bn recovery plan announced by the European Commission.
As an overall outlook for 2010, we will see new commerce channels including on-line and mobile, continue to steal a march on paper-based catalogues globally.
The range and sophistication of products and service levels customers demand will grow in complexity and vary significantly from country to country.
A heritage of resilience and tackling seemingly insurmountable challenges by adapting to changing customer demands has served us well in 2009 and dare I say it, will start to bring those "green shoots" of recovery more sharply into focus.
Ian Mason, group chief executive at Electrocomponents, owner of RS Components