Grainger Offering 9 Times as Many Fasteners

John Wolz

The new 4,007-page WW Grainger catalog will have 260 pages on fasteners. The 2005 catalog had just 60 pages on fasteners.
In what Purchasing magazine described as “the biggest product expansion in its 78-year history,” Grainger is spending $5 million to $10 million to jump from 3,500 fastener SKUs to 30,000.
Grainger’s catalog lists a total of more than a half million supplies and 2.5 million repair parts primarily to MRO customers.
Last summer potential fastener suppliers reported going through a “difficult” approval process (see FIN, August 24, 2005).
Competing With Distributors
Grainger’s fastener expansion was initially viewed as moving into more direct competition with Fastenal. However Grainger could affect local distributors too.
“Customers and other purchasing professionals who want to leverage the unplanned MRO buy have told us that we need to add more fasteners to our offering,” Grainger vice president of product management Michael Pulick told reporter Susan Avery of Purchasing magazine.
Grainger found that 88% of its customers make unplanned purchases of fasteners and turned to local distributors or fastener specialist sources.
“By expanding our fastener line, we are giving our customers a broad array of products so that they can truly consolidate their purchases which saves them time and money, and, ultimately makes them more productive.”
A Texas customer who approached Grainger to expand fastener offerings explained that when there is a fastener “that we can’t readily identify and don’t have time to research, Grainger will get it for us. We don’t have to stock it on our shelf. They’ve even opened their store on a Sunday for us.”
In addition to finding sources, Grainger has added fastener training for employees and a central technical support group.
Grainger will feature fasteners at its booth in the National Plant Engineering Show in Chicago this month.
In 1927 Bill Grainger founded the company in Chicago to supply electric motors. The first branch was opened in Philadelphia in 1933 and by 1936 there were 15 branches.
Today there are 570 North American branches, including 400 in the U.S.
Grainger became a publicly held corporation in 1967. Grainger reported sales of $5.5 billion in 2005.
Richard Keyser is CEO of Lake Forest, IL-based Grainger. \ �2006 FastenerNews.com