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The story
Wilmar Industries
The origin of Interline Brands first began with Wilmar Supply Company in 1978. Wilmar was a hardware store in Collingswood, New Jersey founded by William (Bill) Green and his father Martin Green. To expand its business beyond retail it began selling MRO products to area apartment complexes and then expanded geographically by distributing to multi-family housing businesses. Wilmar went public in 1996 and purchased 14 regional competing businesses before acquiring the Sexauer Group, an established distributor of plumbing products to institutions, in 1999. A leveraged buyout in May 2000 took the company private in preparation for the next stage of growth. Wilmar acquired Barnett, Inc. because the two businesses were very similar, but each targeted a different customer base. Wilmar's customers were people who did facility maintenance work, while Barnett sold to locksmiths, retail hardware, and contractors.
Wilmar Industries acquired Barnett in September 2000 and renamed the umbrella company Interline Brands in June 2001. Their guiding principle was to "change as little as possible about the way our customers currently do business with us".
Each of the businesses (including Sexauer) retained their identity from the customer's point of view, including salesmen, telephone numbers, products, etc. They realized the value of each company's brand, and preserved sales/marketing relationships built over the years. What did change was behind the scenes in accounting, distribution, and administration, realizing economies of scale. In 2000, Interline had a total of 76 distribution centers, which they were able to shrink to 56 in 2004. A 319,000 sq ft (29,600 m2) national distribution center in Nashville, Tennessee was opened in 2001, reducing the inventory required at the local distribution centers and improving delivery times. In late 2004 Interline went public as NYSE: IBI but was later delisted in September 2012 to become privatized.
Acquisitions and rebranding
To further expand the business of Interline the firm acquired several distributors of cleaning supplies. It first acquired American Sanitary or AmSan in May 2006 for $127.5 million along with AmSan's own line of products called Renown. Renown has base products such as toilet paper, paper towels, brooms, and cleaning agents. In the 1990s AmSan became a conglomerate by buying 44 independent janitor and sanitary distributors. Some of AmSan's acquisitions are AmSan Eve, AmSan Vonachen-Elton, AmSan Nogg Chemical & Paper, and AmSan West. In 2002 Michael Mulhern became CEO of AmSan. Mulhern moved the headquarters of AmSan from Raleigh, North Carolina to Chicago, Illinois. Under Mulhern AmSan underwent a series of reforms dedicated to increasing profitability. AmSan turned over 40% of its top 35 executives, downsized its office operations, and downsized under-performing distribution centers. By 2005 AmSan had revenues totaling $300 million. American Capital invested $25 million in the recapitalization of AmSan in 2005. AmSan West, which has operations in Sacramento and Los Angeles, was not acquired by Interline Brands. In 2008 AmSan established a sales and distribution territory in Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Nashville. In 2009 a showroom and walk-in store was established in Fort Myers, Florida.
Cleansource, a regional distributor of JanSan products, was acquired in October 2010 for $60.1 million. CleanSource was founded in 1956 in San Jose, California. It distributes janitorial, food service supplies, and MRO products. Customers of CleanSource consist of healthcare, education, and institutional facilities. In 2010 CleanSource generated around $115 million in sales.
A regional supplier of cleaning and packaging solutions called JanPak was acquired in 2012 for $82 million. JanPak was founded in 1945 in Bluefield, West Virginia by James Shott, H. I. Shott, Jr., James Tilson, L. M. Kerley Sr. and B. L. Early. It was first called Paper Supply Company until 2000 when the name changed to JanPak Inc. Mike Shott, James Shott's grandson, was serving as company chair of the board directors at the time of the name change to JanPak. The name changed to JanPak to unite its sister branches such as Charlotte Paper Company or Greenville Paper Company who each were known by a different name.
On March 16, 2015, Interline merged AmSan, CleanSource, JanPak, Trayco, and Sexauer into a new national brand called SupplyWorks. AF Lighting was also sold to Almo Corporation in March 2015 because lighting was a minimal part of the business of Interline Brands.
Purchase by The Home Depot and rebranding
The Home Depot acquired Interline Brands in July 2015 for $1.6 billion from P2 Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs' private equity arm, and the management of Interline Brands. The acquisition of Interline Brands allows The Home Depot access to expand its business to the multi-family sector, hospitality, and industrial area. Craig Menear, CEO of The Home Depot, says that the purchase gives The Home Depot more opportunity to expand in the maintenance, repair, and operations sector that was previously not successful. In January 2016 Michael Grebe retired leaving Kenneth Sweder as the new CEO. In 2017 Interline Brands was renamed to The Home Depot Pro including its brand names except for U.S. Lock. Wilmar Industries was renamed to The Home Depot Pro Multifamily. Barnett was renamed to The Home Depot Pro Specialty Trades. SupplyWorks was renamed to The Home Depot Pro Institutional.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Home Depot Pro, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7