June 2, 2025 - We polled over 500 manufacturing and distribution business leaders to understand the trends, opportunities, and challenges this sector is experiencing today and what they are doing to stay ahead of the curve. Slowing growth in revenues and earnings, lasting and new supply chain pressures, rising costs and inflation, and new tariffs are top of mind for leaders. Our 2025 Manufacturing and Distribution Pulse Survey Report explores important insights into how leaders are mitigating these risks and headwinds.

Challenges Faced in Past Year

To get a feel for the day-to-day business agendas and actions of manufacturing and distribution companies over the past year, we asked what initiatives or challenges companies faced. The top five most common challenges respondents experienced in the past year are*:

1. Increase in employee costs – 40%
2. Opening of a new warehouse or manufacturing facility – 35%
3. Implementation of a new ERP system – 31%
4. Applied administrative/ service fees to products and services – 29%
5. Sale or contemplated the sale of a business division – 27%
6. Cyber incident or breach – 26%

*Respondents were able to make multiple selections.

Challenges Ahead

2024’s agenda items often morph into this year’s priorities and meld with new issues. From the list of multiple challenges leaders were presented in our 2025 survey, many are of relatively equal weight and equivalent sources of concern. These big challenges span high cost of capital, tech upskilling, ability to finance growth and keeping up with technology changes. Multiple plates will be spinning in C-suites and through all layers of operations in the year ahead and need to be managed to sustain revenue growth and profitability.

Tariff Impacts and Mitigation Plans

Real or threatened new tariffs and their disruptive effects — good, bad, or other — are affecting markets, clouding economic forecasts, and have the full attention of manufacturing and distribution company leaders. Seven in ten respondents say their companies will be directly or indirectly impacted if tariffs are increased. Half say tariffs will have negative impacts on business. It is early in the process of adapting to tariff changes, yet only 15% are presently exploring tax strategies to mitigate tariff exposure. We suspect this number will continue to rise over the next several months.

Inflation and Rising Costs

Our 2025 survey was fielded in February 2025 at the turn of administration. While economists projected flattening of rising costs and inflation reductions, as of Q2, those projections are in flux, and many are in a wait and see mode. The big takeaway from our respondents is that few executives are fully confident about what comes next regarding the effects of inflation and rising costs. Only 27% say they strongly agree that they anticipate customer spending increasing. Only 21% strongly agree that future interest rate declines have increased business spending habits.

Labor Shortages

If those factors together or alone are not enough to top agendas, the labor force has its own challenges and executive demands. One in five (21%) respondents have experienced labor shortages in the past 12 months. Of these, over half say their sales force (57%) and skilled labor including tech skilled workers (54%) are most impacted by the labor shortage. We further examine how ongoing labor shortages and other evolving challenges are affecting manufacturing and distribution companies in our full report.

Citrin Cooperman’s Manufacturing and Distribution Pulse Survey Report

Citrin Cooperman’s Manufacturing and Distribution Industry Practice strives to provide our clients with insights that will help them continue to grow and succeed in today’s quickly evolving environment. Our sixth annual Manufacturing and Distribution Pulse Survey Report aggregates insights from manufacturers and distributors in driving future growth, managing through instability, and improving their strategic business planning. Access our report to discover timely insights into the opportunities and challenges facing manufacturers and distributors today.

Access the 2025 Manufacturing and Distribution Pulse Survey Report