Marla Endicott / Precision Tool & Fastener Supply

Staff -- Industrial Distribution, 6/1/2007

How have the housing declines impacted your business? Our housing starts are down, but we're diversified, so it's affected us a little, but not very much. We don't go after mainly residential. We are more commercial and industrial.

When I started … I was with a fastener company and we did a lot of residential but then moved into more commercial. So that's where my background has been. I've always been on job sites, or [had] our people on job sites, or [called] on the commercial accounts, not necessarily residential.

I've seen this pattern come and go, and come and go. I didn't want to do the “all your eggs in one basket thing” here as some [residentially focused] companies do.

What's it like being a woman in distribution these days? I've been doing this since 1974 and have been going to STAFDA [Specialty Tool & Fasteners Distributors Assn.] conventions since the early 1980s. There haven't been a lot of women there. When you go to the trade shows today, it's getting better. But a lot of guys, for example, still think you're a wife or a girlfriend, especially when you're walking the trade show floor.

It's like we're invisible sometimes. And that can be good, up to a point, because you can walk into a booth and nobody will bother you. You can see what you want to see and then leave. But if you really need help and want to talk to someone—and you don't know anyone in that booth—then it's like you're invisible.

But it's getting easier. We're members of Sphere 1 and there are, I think, four or five women-owned and operated businesses in Sphere 1 now.

We've been doing it long enough and know enough people in the business now. I just [joined] the STAFDA board of directors. I'm pretty excited about that because it's a great organization. I'm only the second woman [to sit on a STAFDA board].

What issues pique your interest these days? What concerns or worries do you have for the rest of the year?We're OK in general with what's going on. The Home Depot/HD Supply thing is interesting and it will be fun to see how that all works out. …

With the price of steel, there's nothing you can do about that. There are just some things that happen that you can't do anything about.

The price of gas bothers me because we have six trucks on the road. And health care is a huge issue for us because we want our people to be able to afford health care. We work hard to find good health care, but it's hard because it's so expensive.

Has being active in trade associations helped you and your company? It's great for us. We get to meet with our vendors and get to network with the people who are also [members]. They are also incredibly supportive. You really feel that you're connected in the industry.

Precision has been a STAFDA member since the company started in 1988. We can't say enough about them. They have so many programs that are advantageous for small companies like us. … But it's like anything else. You're going to get out of it what you put in. So when we go to STAFDA, we've always gone to as many seminars as we can.

The connectivity of being a member is that we can get so much more information about new products and new vendors than we'd get if we weren't members. And that's invaluable.

Marla Endicott is founder and president of Precision Tool & Fastener Supply, Tucson, Ariz. Endicott recently joined the board of directors for the Specialty Tools and Fasteners Distributors Assn.

This interview is reprinted from the March issue of INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION's monthly e-newsletter, Distributor Management & Operations.