Graybar Electric, St. Louis, will add one of its neighbors to its nationwide network of branches with an agreement to acquire Cape Electrical Supply, based in Cape Girardeau, Mo. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Cape has been owned by private equity firm Svoboda Capital Partners, Chicago, since 2007, and the move to sell to an electrical distributor of the size and reputation of Graybar made for an ideal transition, said Kyle Thoma, president and CEO of Cape Electrical Supply, in an interview with Electrical Marketing.
“There were a lot of good reasons this is a good fit,” Thoma said. “We fill a lot of white space for them, in-between their existing markets. They love the Cape Electric brand, we’re a well-run organization, a profitable organization, and they’re going to leave us as such, as a subsidiary of Graybar. For us, it’s going to give us the best of both worlds. We’re going from a small independent to part of one of the largest electrical distributors in the North American market. We’ll have access to lot of synergies across the board in logistics, inventory and investments for growth that smaller independents sometimes struggle with. Even the marketing functions of the business. We’re a decent sized independent, but we never had a marketing department before. Now we have access to a top marketing department.”
“That’s a value-add to the customer that Graybar could build on,” Thoma said.
“We are excited to welcome the Cape Electric team to Graybar and look forward to achieving profitable growth together,” said Kathleen Mazzarella, Graybar’s chairman, president and CEO, in a release. “This marks the second acquisition for Graybar in as many years, and we will continue to seek out similar opportunities to expand our reach and diversify our business in the future.”
