Brazos Private Equity Partners of Dallas agreed in late November to acquire ORS Nasco, Inc.

Based in Muskogee, Okla., ORS Nasco is a master distributor of branded and private-label products to customers in the industrial supplies industry.

Brazos specializes in leveraged acquisitions and recapitalizations of established middle-market companies.

Members of Nasco's management team, including president and CEO Bill Scheller, were equity participants in the transaction and own a stake in Nasco, which had been the U.S.-based wholesale distribution business of Unidare plc, in Dublin, Ireland.

"It's a great thing for us. We're going from being a foreign-owned, publicly held company to a domestically owned, privately held company," said Larry Davis, vice president of marketing, ORS Nasco.

Davis said that discussions between Nasco and Brazos started early in 2005 and reached the serious stage around mid-year. He describes Brazos as "very interested in helping us grow and achieve the strategic plan that we've put together as an organization."

ORS Nasco was formed in 2003 through the merger of Oklahoma Rig & Supply and Nasco, Inc.

"ORS Nasco is well-known and highly regarded in its business for delivering products and services that address the growing needs of the independent distributor," said Randall Fojtasek, a Brazos Partner.

Davis is optimistic about Brazos enabling Nasco to upgrade its e-commerce and much of its technology.

"These guys [Brazos] are going to invest in us," he said. "Brazos wants to help us grow, and our cash flow will be used to help us grow. We've had a strategic plan laid out for several years, and Brazos believes in that plan and will help us accelerate the execution of it."

For Nasco customers, Davis added, the sale "will be business as usual. Nothing is going to change as far as our ability to service them. If anything, it will be a positive in that we'll be bringing customers more products and will be doing it better than we have historically."

The number of Nasco employees and locations will be unchanged, Davis said.

Nasco represents more than 600 suppliers, and stocks more than 140,000 products. It sells only through the 180,000 independent distributors it serves in the United States.