Shakeup, and advice, in the MRO channel
When Home Depot bought HD Supply, executives in Atlanta explained the $8 billion deal as a huge opportunity in a highly fragmented $55 billion MRO marketplace – that’s Maintenance, Repair and Operations.
That sentiment coming out of Atlanta echoed what independent hardware dealers have been hearing from their wholesale distributors for years. Initiatives and brands such as “The Supply Place” at Ace Hardware Corp.; or Do it Best Corp’s INCOM program – short for Industrial Commercial — act as spring boards to the massive and often tangential business beyond the homeowner or building contractor.
MRO conjures big ticket transactions such as buckets and mops for hospitals, cleaners and trash cans for apartment buildings and hotels, and tubs of paint for multi-family housing. There’s more to it, of course. And there’s even more – in excess of $500 billion -- to the broader categories of commercial or industrial sales that include factories and public works.
Home Depot and Lowe’s have made their views on the potential for MRO growth here and here. Meanwhile, a survey of HBSDealer readers found a plurality say their MRO business has been unchanged in recent months. Those who describe MRO as growing (36%) outnumber those who described MRO as declining (6%).
One of those independents who see strength in industrial and commercial sales is Roger Kontor, owner of Too Fast Supply, with four locations in Nebraska. Specializing in commercial contractor and industrial customer, Too Fast Supply is one of the 220 pure INCOM members of Do it Best Corp. Another 325 Do it Best dealers combine traditional retail with InCom programs.
“Our big advantage is knowing our customer, taking care of our customers and building a relationship with them,” said Kontor. One of the trends that he sees is the growth of eCommerce in the space, and demand for increased speed of delivery.
Those ideas are in alignment with those at INCOM headquarters in Fort Wayne, where Jared Hufford is director of Do it Best’s INCOM Distributor Supply.
InCom he said, has been a strong area of growth for the co-op since its roll out in the 1990s, both for retailers who can bolt on a new category, or pure play industrial commercial providers.
Despite the HD Supply-Home Depot deal, there’s a lot of opportunity and no single entity – including Fastenal, Grainger (including its Zoro eCommerce division) and HD Supply – have the market anywhere near cornered. For Do it Best, it’s a business that regularly sees double-digit growth year over year, he said.
Pandemic response spending produced a surge in 2020, and not just through N95 masks and other PPE. InCom dealers worked with businesses to help them stay open, he said.
“All of a sudden people were making plexiglass shields, for instance,” Hufford said “Marking up the floor with tape every six feet in places, or cleaning counters down every ten minutes. Businesses said, ‘Hey I need to stay open, and here’s what the local government says we need to do. Can you help me?’ Whatever it was, we saw our members step in and provide solutions.”
The competitive landscape is changing beyond mergers of large competitors. “The biggest competitor that everyone faces equally right now is eCommerce related,” Hufford said. “It’s your Amazon. Business, it’s your Zoro.com. They may not know their customer’s business, but – boy – it’s easy to hop on one of those sites and buy that product you need.”
That disruption hasn’t deterred successful independents, he said. Unlike a retail model, which generally pulls customers in, the successful InCom member reaches out into the customers’ locations, driving solutions to them.
“If you’re waiting for your customer to come to you, you’re missing it,” he said. “The goal is to be in front of your customer, bringing them solutions and new products. That’s where our members are successful.”