Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

Mark Messina is the CEO of Addverb USA, a company that solves complex fulfillment challenges through robotics and automation solutions. Vertical integration is a business strategy where the business ...

Vertical integration lets companies control more supply chain steps by in-house operations. Types include backward (acquiring production inputs) and forward (controlling distribution). This strategy ...

Severe supply chain disruptions have become a common occurrence over the past few years, as pandemic-related delays have wrought havoc on fulfillment. Almost concurrently, as manufacturers scaled-down ...

Investopedia contributors come from a range of backgrounds, and over 25 years there have been thousands of expert writers and editors who have contributed. David Kindness is a Certified Public ...

When startups launch, growth goals often center on customer acquisition. The logic is that once you’ve made your product or service indispensable to people’s lives, you’ll have breathing room to ...

Vertical integration is the degree to which a firm owns its upstream suppliers and its downstream buyers with the goal of increasing the company's power in the marketplace. There are three varieties ...

Once upon a time, there were three big truck engine makers in the U.S.: Caterpillar, Cummins, and Detroit. A couple of truck makers, like Mack and Volvo, offered their own engines. You ordered a truck ...

When a company makes or distributes a product, it’s often doing so as part of a larger supply chain. In a supply chain, a lot of different steps come together to create products, from raw materials to ...

Vertical integration is the merging together of two businesses that are at different stages of production—for example, a food manufacturer and a chain of supermarkets. Merging in this way with ...