I’m a history buff. The Sears Roebuck and Co. catalog from 1900 looks a little like a cartoon today, but it holds an important lesson for distribution in 2012. On the cover is a picture of a globe, a cornucopia horn with products spilling out, a banner proclaiming to be the “cheapest supply house on earth,” and two sentences with a very important message that goes like this:

THIS BOOK… tells just what your storekeeper at home pays for everything he buys and will prevent him from overcharging you on anything you buy from him.

I thought about that Sears catalog as I mulled over the impact of Amazon’s launch of AmazonSupply.com at the end of April. Read my analysis at www.mdm.com/whatstheimpact. We are in an unprecedented time of change in our economy, business models and consumer behavior. We’re emerging from the most disruptive change in our economy since the 1930s.

That Sears catalog was disruptive technology 112 years ago for the then-dominant decentralized merchandising model.

An alternate source of supply emerged that provided broad selection and price visibility. It was a highly effective combination of marketing and logistics in a catalog business model that captured market share and changed our national economy one town at a time. At one level, it is amazing how little, other than upgrades in communication platforms, that basic model has changed.

The Internet simply provided yet another level of visibility that’s evolved over the past 15 years or so to the current frontier of deeper engagement with customers, vendors and prospects. Think about mobile devices, CRM, business intelligence, analytics, social media and the current explosion of customized apps for business.

What’s this mean for your company? The question for any business is how to make this digital migration in a way that makes sense for the specific business needs. It’s about the emerging apps that can solve problems, improve service capabilities and allow you to adjust quickly to quickly changing market conditions. You’ll need skill sets that can navigate disruptive technology, evaluate the right apps to say yes to (and perhaps more importantly the ones to say no to).

This economy is opening opportunities to tap into these changes to get leaner, increase productivity, be more flexible and provide higher levels of customer service.