When Bob Mitchell founded Omni Services in Worcester, Mass., in 1976, he knew it would become a big operation someday—but he didn't know how big, and he says he never thought acquisition would be a key part of his growth strategy. Today, Omni Services is a major hose and accessories distributor in the Northeast, and the 70-year-old CEO is more focused on growth than ever as his company continues to expand geographically, penetrate new markets and build on a recently developed industrial hose program that serves customers nationwide.

Organic growth combined with two acquisitions in the late '90s helped increase Omni's coverage in New England and opened markets in neighboring New York state. The company has since doubled sales—to $20 million—grown from six locations to 10, and found itself entering a new phase of development: As a mid-sized specialty distributor, Omni faces the challenge of managing more people in more places, balancing the technological requirements of a large company with the knowledge required of a specialist, and keeping its eye on further expansion.

Mitchell and his management team say they're up to those challenges. With a long history of investing in people and systems and a wealth of industry knowledge already under its roof, Omni is well on its way to hitting its target sales goal of more than $25 million in the next five years, they say.

For Mitchell, people and technology are the keys to getting there.

“I started Omni 31 years ago as a people company. It may sound like a cliché these days, but I realized back then that our people were our greatest asset,” he says. “Really, the only way that you can compete in this world is by having technology and people skills. That gives you a cut above your competitors.”

Omni Services president Chuck Connors has been with the company since the beginning and he shares Mitchell's passion about the importance of people and systems to the company's success. Connors still spends the bulk of his time on the road working with Omni's outside salespeople, all of whom are equipped with the latest technology tools to help them do their jobs more efficiently. Their Treo phones, for example, serve as a one-stop shop for e-mail, customer and supplier information, and even inventory management.

Vice president of operations and technology Todd Keeney developed the company's custom Vendor Managed Inventory program—known as Omni Mobile—which allows salespeople to scan bar-coded items, enter them directly into Omni's system and generate an order on the spot, all from their phones. Keeney has been Omni's IT expert for more than a decade and often accompanies sales reps on calls to let customers know that Omni can meet their technological requirements for ordering, invoicing and managing inventory. As Connors explains, mid-sized companies like Omni are often questioned about their ability to compete with the industry's mega-distributors on the technology front.

“Todd neutralizes the threat from the big boxes by saying, 'Look, we can do this too. We have the IT capabilities,'” says Connors, using a sports analogy to emphasize his point: “As a specialty distributor, you've got to play .500 in the channel. You've got to play it even on things like VMI and those types of offerings. Then, as a specialist, you come in and blow them away with your [product] knowledge.

“We've woken up to the fact that if you want to land an account, there's additional selling to be done. And the additional selling involves the procurement group and their IT systems. Where you can remove redundant costs and gain efficiencies—that can sometimes be the game-breaker.”

Omni Services has been out in front of the technology curve since its inception, due largely to Mitchell's drive to enhance productivity and his sheer interest in the subject. The company has been fully computerized since 1978 and salespeople have been equipped with cell phones and laptops since the late '80s.

Vice president of business development Scott Sloan, who joined Omni Services two years ago, echoes Connors comments, noting that Mitchell's early focus on technology has put Omni in a good position today.

“Bob Mitchell focused on productivity early on. He invested in it and made it happen,” Sloan says. “To apply that at a specialist level is key and always will be key. Having the technology and productivity-enhancing tools in place takes you to that next level.”

From there, Omni's sales reps can go in and focus on their knowledge—which the company also invests in heavily, spending about $80,000 a year on training and development. That includes everything from product to sales skills to general industry training. Earlier this spring, for example, the company sent five employees to the University of Industrial Distribution, an industry training program for distributors and manufacturers sponsored by 21 trade associations and hosted by Purdue University.

“The combination of technology, the drive toward productivity coupled with the talent and training we have—that's what makes Omni successful,” says Sloan.

Omni's reputation as a specialist is a key part of its success as well.

The company was founded as a hose and connector specialist at a time when hose wasn't considered a specialty. Most companies selling hose and accessories were mainily focused on fluid power or rubber products. But Mitchell took a gamble on hose that has taken his company in a different direction. Today, Omni bills itself as a fluid conveyance specialist, handling anything customers need to get fluid from point A to point B.

When Omni Services was founded in the mid-'70s, the city of Worcester was an industrial stronghold. But as the city began to lose that business, Mitchell saw a niche serving the region's plastic injection molding industry, which is still strong today. Nearly 80 percent of Omni's business is in hose and fittings, with the rest comprised of complementary products—many of them specialty items geared toward injection molders.

Company vice president Karen Brandvold (who is Mitchell's daughter) spearheads Omni Environmental Solutions, which sells products that help injection molders save energy, reduce costs and improve productivity. Brandvold points to Omni's newest such offering, a thermal control solution for plastic extruders and molders, which she says can help customers save up to 30 percent on energy costs—a key attraction for New England-based manufacturers looking to stay competitive in a global marketplace.

Omni has piggybacked on the success of Omni Environmental with two new product offerings: Formed tube assemblies and instrumentation products. Omni Tubing Corp. was created this year as a separate company focusing on custom-formed tubing products used to transfer fluids on industrial machinery and equipment. Hardwall tubing, as it's known, is often used as a complement or alternative to hose, and it was the missing link in Omni's fluid conveyance arsenal.

“Now we've got that full golf bag,” Connors points out. “We were always missing that one club.”

But the tubing business is different from the hose business, Connors and Brandvold agree, noting that it's more capital-intensive, involving full-fledged manufacturing processes as opposed to the lighter fabrication work associated with hose.

Connors and Brandvold say Omni's foray into instrumentation products represents another big opportunity. These specialized compression fittings are used on steel and stainless steel tubing at many of the so-called “new-age OEMs” Omni is targeting in the Northeast.

As Mitchell explains, a new-age OEM is “'one that's going to stay around for the next couple of generations.” These are Original Equipment Manufacturers that make specialty products for the security and medical industries, among others. They've replaced many of the traditional “smokestack” OEMs that have fled south or offshore in the last 30 years. Connors adds that many of these new-age OEMs are involved in various types of diagnostic work, which calls for higher end products and services.

To tap into this new market, Omni recently took on SSP Fittings' line of instrumentation products, which measure and monitor the fluid controls used on manufactruing equipment. Omni already represented some of SSP Fittings' other products, so deepening that relationship made sense to both companies, says SSP's Dave Brooks, regional manager for the Northeast.

“This brings them into whole new markets, new customers and new ways of working,” says Brooks, who's worked with Omni for the last six years.

“They have done exceptionally well out of the gate [with the instrumentation line]—better than we'd projected,” Brooks adds. “[One thing] that I think makes a successful distributor is the ability to adapt and change, and that's what Omni Services has done.”

Omni is penetrating new and existing markets in another way, too: By diving full-force into a hose assembly standards program developed by NAHAD-The Assn. for Hose & Accessories Distribution.

Known as the NAHAD Hose Assembly Guidelines, the program is a set of recommendations governing the way distributors receive, inventory, track, ship and fabricate hose assemblies, which are custom-made hoses used to transfer fluid on equipment or machinery. The program got a boost of adrenaline recently with the creation of training and certification programs for NAHAD members and a marketing plan designed to help them get the word out to customers.

The guidelines were developed in response to concerns about industry safety. With no industry-wide standards for fabricating hose assemblies, poorly constructed products posed a danger to end users and the general public and opened the door to lawsuits against manufacturers, distributors and their customers.

Connors cites numerous cases of shoddy work that permeated the industry years ago, pointing to a case involving Food and Drug Administration-approved hose, in particular.

Connors was on a sales call and noticed that the potential customer had constructed his own assembly to transfer cooking oil. Upon close examination, Connors realized the customer had failed to use food-grade products in building the assembly and also failed to meet the pressure requirements of the job. In a nutshell, the product posed a danger to the employees using the equipment. NAHAD's voluntary program aims to help distributors and their customers avoid those problems, and it plays right into the hands of specialty distributors such as Omni Services.

“Today, suppliers and customers are keenly aware of the distributors who are doing it right,” Connors says of building hose assemblies. “Customers want this. They want to keep their customers out of litigation and they want to keep themselves out of litigation.”

Every Omni Services employee who directly handles the company's products—from fabricators to warehouse employees—has been through NAHAD's training and testing program and the company is using the NAHAD Listed logo to promote the service to customers. The NAHAD Listed logo certifies that the product meets the requirements of the NAHAD guidelines; it's similar to the UL symbol used on electrical products.

Sloan points out that the NAHAD Listed program also provides a built-in quality system that lends customers peace of mind and helps address the “nuisance” factor often associated with hose products.

“This industry is deceptively complex,” Sloan says, noting that a $200 hose can shut down a construction job site, stall a manufacturer's assembly line or cause an airplane to sit on the runway because a hose failed on a fueling truck. “It may be just a $200 hose, but it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in downtime.”

Omni has watched customers go “through the roof” because such a seemingly insignificant item plays such a large role in their productivity, Connors adds. And Omni views those reactions as opportunities to enlighten customers on the importance of working with a fluid conveyance specialist.

“People buy from competent people,” Connors says. “And the NAHAD guidelines are making us even more competent.”

The guidelines are playing a big part in Omni's efforts to develop an industrial hose program as well. Long known as a hydraulic and pneumatic specialist, Omni started an industrial hose program in 2007 out of its Syracuse, N.Y., facility. Focused on the aviation and fire protection industries, the program supports customers nationwide and has surpassed sales expectations in the first two years, according to Connors. (See sidebar above.)

Brandvold, who's been with Omni for 17 years, says the company is entering an exciting time in its evolution. In the last 10 years, for example, Omni has gone from managing 30 employees in two states to managing 62 employees in four states, opening a host of challenges on the human resources front, for one thing. Managing health care costs and formalizing the company's hiring and training processes are just a few of the challenges she and the other managers face.

“We're getting bigger, so we're starting to see the stress on the systems we have in place,” Brandvold says. “We were $10 million [in sales] and now we're $20 million. Consequently, we have to strengthen our systems.”

She says it helps that Omni has always tried to anticipate growth. Early on, Mitchell took on the role of long-term visionary, investigating new technologies and always trying to stay on the cutting edge of industry trends and forecasts. In addition, Omni Services has had a formal IT department for 15 years, regularly meets with its external board of directors, has a two-member marketing department and uses a dedicated sales coordinator to oversee the inside and outside sales efforts—all of which are uncommon to distributors of Omni's size.

Brandvold points to the addition of Scott Sloan as further bolstering Omni's ability to manage growth. Sloan (Mitchell's son-in-law and Brandvold's brother-in-law) was an executive with the Nestle company for many years and most recently managed a more than $100 million bottled water division in the United Kingdom. Brandvold says he brings a sense of discipline and structure that Omni needs going forward. Sloan is involved with Omni's strategic planning initiatives and spends much of his time on business analysis, particularly in regards to the company's customer base.

“It's great that Scott has come into the business because he's so focused on strategic planning,” Brandvold says. “He brings a lot of the framework that we were missing.”

But change remains constant at Omni, as Connors is quick to point out.

“We know that to get to where we want to be, our company is going to need to continue evolving,” he says. “Our own ability to adapt is a key to our future success.”

So is geographic expansion. Earlier this year, Omni was working on yet another acquisition opportunity in the Northeast. The company already operates two distribution hubs that are centrally located to support southern and western growth—one in Auburn, Mass., just outside of Worcester, that serves all of the New England branches, and one in Syracuse that supports the three New York branches. The hub concept is a small-scale version of what the industry's larger competitors do—and further proof of Omni's desire to balance big-company capabilities with small-company expertise.

“Customers want a company that can deliver the best of both worlds—the best of what the big and small companies can offer,” says Sloan. “That's what we do. That's where we live.”

And as Connors adds, “I've always said we're a six-footer that can play with the seven-footers.”