Interline Brands Merges 5 Brands To Launch SupplyWorks

As the unification of five leading Interline brands, SupplyWorks will include more than 140,000 products – spanning everything from MRO, plumbing and cleaning supplies, to HVAC and electrical.

Jacksonville, FL-based MRO distributor Interline Brands, No. 17 on Industrial Distribution's 2014 Big 50 List, made a major announcement Monday with the launch of a new national brand, SupplyWorks.

SupplyWorks is the merger of five of Interline's leading brands â€“ AmSan, CleanSource, JanPak, Trayco, and Sexauer â€“ under one national brand. The SupplyWorks brand will include over 140,000 products – spanning everything from plumbing and cleaning supplies to HVAC, electrical, and other MRO products – to help customers enhance the performance, safety, health and sustainability of facilities across the United States. With over 3,000 supply partners, SupplyWorks features a portfolio of branded products from Georgia-Pacific, 3M, Diversey Care, Kimberly-Clark, Kohler, Schlage and Spartan, among others, as well as Interline's own exclusive brands.

Interline said the brand will include more than 900 facility and maintenance experts and customer support professionals to serve its customer base.

"The launch of SupplyWorks represents a historic day for our company, and marks one of the last major steps in our efforts to create a leading national and integrated institutional business," said Michael J. Grebe, Interline Brands Chairman and CEO. "Over the last decade, Interline has acquired, created and developed some of the industry's very best facilities maintenance brands, capabilities, technologies, teams and products. Today we're uniting five of these top brands under one national banner, and solidifying our leadership position in the institutional facilities maintenance market. More importantly, we have realized our goal of having one team, one process, and one national platform with a full and differentiated suite of products and the best distribution capabilities in the industry. All of this comes together to provide our customers with a compelling value proposition that we believe is unique in the industry."

The company said enabling customers to deal with one brand makes the process seamless and makes for a better relationship between Interline and those it serves. The consolidation will make it easier for the company's suppliers.

Kenneth D. Sweder, President and Chief Operating Officer, commented, "The launch of SupplyWorks punctuates the growth strategy we've been pursuing to build a leading share position in the highly fragmented institutional facilities maintenance end market. Today, we bring together our significant scale, robust capabilities and solutions-focused sales force for the benefit of our customers – all through a single national brand. While we will continue to provide our customers with the same solutions and personalized service they have come to expect from the predecessor brands, we now can offer them the full breadth of our products and programs under the new SupplyWorks brand, delivered by the same trusted and dedicated team of professionals."

Mr. Sweder continued, "Whether it's a customized inventory management program, our SupplyWorks In-Site facility solution or our new mobile websites, our team has the expertise and insights to bring tailored product and supply chain solutions to our customers." 

Grebe told the Jacksonville Business Journal that the company has no plans to put the SupplyWorks name on products, so that it doesn't compete with the supplies it sells and the private label products it develops. Instead, the new brand will be put on marketing materials and the website.

Interline Brands reported its 2014 fourth quarter and full year financials on Feb. 25, which included a Q4 year-over-year sales increase of 6.6 percent and net loss of $9.6 million. For the full year, Interline had a 4.9 percent sales increase and net loss of $47 million.

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