Rankings & Research

Four of the Biggest Distributors, Q1 and the Pandemic

June 3, 2020

Even with shortages and the up and down challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has been to many businesses, these four large distributors, Grainger, MSC Industrial Supply, Watsco and Systemax have fared well in the first quarter.

By Mark Brohan

“We are seeing a healthy flow of new customers,” says W.W. Grainger chairman and CEO D.G. Macpherson. “Like other companies around the globe,” W.W. Grainger Inc. is dealing with supply shortages of pandemic-related supplies like N95 mask," he says.

The month of March was a wild ride for the multibillion-dollar distributor of industrial supplies, as sales rose “nicely” and then “dropped off significantly,” MSC CEO Erik Gershwind said. Fiscal second-quarter ecommerce sales were down 3.1% from a year earlier.

Read more