Grainger expects ecommerce sales to account for 40%-50% of sales by 2015

My visit last week to the Epicor Users Group meeting in Las Vegas and an interview I did there for an upcoming article with Kevin Roach, Epicor's executive V.P. and general manager, ERP Americas, got me thinking about why more distributors aren't trying ...
May 15, 2012
2 min read
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My visit last week to the Epicor Users Group meeting in Las Vegas and an interview I did there for an upcoming article with Kevin Roach, Epicor's executive V.P. and general manager, ERP Americas, got me thinking about why more distributors aren't trying to differentiate themselves from competitors with online storefronts.

A recent posting on www.seekingalpha.com about Grainger's growth in recent years prompted me to do some research on the company's ecommerce operations, which last year provided $2.2 billion in sales (yes, that's "billion" with a "b").

In its 2012 Factbook, Grainger had this to say about its ecommerce operations:

“eCommerce is a powerful element of Grainger's multichannel strategy, growing at twice the rate of other U.S. channels. It is the most profitable arm of the business, creating a huge opportunity for sales and earnings growth. Grainger has been a pioneer in business-to-business eCommerce, launching the Grainger.com website in 1995. Today, more than 27 percent of the company's annual revenue is generated through electronic channels, representing $2.2 billion in sales in 2011. Based on Internet sales revenue, Grainger ranked 15th in the U.S. and Canada on the Top100 e-retailers of 2011.”

Now that's some serious sales.

About the Author

Jim Lucy Blog

Chief Editor

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.