The impact goes beyond just price pressure. The article points out a more fundamental issue: when consumers or downstream buyers see low prices directly online, their perception of distributors shifts from "service provider" to "middleman adding markup." Once this perception forms, the customer trust, service network, and educational investments you've built become hard to sustain as premium offerings.
There are several response directions. First, make your differentiation visible—not through lower prices, but by showing customers clearly what you provide that bare-price online purchases cannot: delivery guarantees, local inventory, technical support, after-sales service. Second, deepen your binding with specific industries or customer segments, making your presence part of their process rather than something they can bypass anytime. Third, reassess the product categories you represent—if a category is already heavily commoditized, moving resources away early costs far less than withdrawing after the price collapse.