O'Brien steps down at Acklands-Grainger in Canada

W.W. Grainger (Lake Forest, Ill.): Sean O'Brien, president, Acklands-Grainger Inc., Grainger's Canadian subsidiary, will resign from the company effective March 23. O'Brien joined Acklands-Grainger as V.P., sales, in Nov. 2007, taking on additional ...
March 9, 2012
W.W. Grainger (Lake Forest, Ill.):Sean O'Brien, president, Acklands-Grainger Inc., Grainger's Canadian subsidiary, will resign from the company effective March 23. O'Brien joined Acklands-Grainger as V.P., sales, in Nov. 2007, taking on additional responsibilities for e-business and marketing in early 2009. He was named president in Sept. 2009.

Mike Pulick, president, Grainger International, will serve as interim president of Acklands-Grainger. Mike has held leadership positions with Grainger for more than 12 years, including leading Grainger's U.S. business from 2008-2011. He assumed leadership of Grainger's international businesses on Jan. 1. Acklands-Grainger Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Grainger, is Canada's largest distributor of industrial, safety, and fastener products with 2011 sales of $993 million (C$982 million), 172 branches, six distribution centers, and 2,600 team members. Grainger had 2011 sales of $8.1 billion.

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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.