Fastenal opens 73 new branches in first nine months of 2012
Lots of interesting nuggets in the Fastenal’s 3Q 2012 press release. In addition to growing sales at a double-digit rate for the quarter, the company continued on its remarkable trajectory of branch openings and the installation of company-branded vending machines for MRO supplies within customer facilities. Sales for the Winona, Minn.-based MRO specialist sales increased 10.4% during its most recent quarter and 14.9% YTY.
But what really blows my mind is that Fastenal, has so far this year opened up 73 stores – giving it a total of 2,650 branches – and installing 9,560 new industrial vending machines during the first nine months of 2012. As a point of comparison, the five largest full-line electrical distributors – Sonepar, WESCO, Rexel, Graybar and CED – has a combined total of “only” 2,322 branches, according to Electrical Wholesaling estimates. In addition to its2012 branch openings, Fastenal opened up 94 branches during the first nine months of2011, giving it a running total of 167 new branches in the past two years. Details
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Jim Lucy Blog
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Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.