WINONA, Minn. — In recent years, Fastenal celebrated two major milestones related to its FAST Solutions program, surpassing 100,000 active FMI Technology devices within customer sites and, later, 1,000 Onsite partnership programs.
In October, the company added a third significant milestone to the list: for the first time, reaching $1 billion in e-commerce revenue within a calendar year.
Fastenal’s e-commerce platform officially launched more than 20 years ago, but historically it represented a relatively small share of the overall business. This began to change about five years ago with a strategy positioning e-commerce as a critical component of the company’s high-tech, high-touch service model.
While many retailers and distributors were racing to move their offline business online in pursuit of a lower cost-to-serve, Fastenal took a very different approach – using its e-commerce platform to identify opportunities to migrate customer spend from a transactional (and, for the customer, higher-cost) online environment to a more strategic and efficient environment anchored by the company’s Onsite and FMI (Fastenal Managed Inventory) programs.
This focus on big-picture value creation has accelerated Fastenal’s e-commerce revenue growth. Five years ago, in 2017, the company’s e-commerce sales were $245 million, representing 5.5% of total company sales. After hitting the $1 billion milestone in October, Fastenal’s e-commerce sales represent 17.4% of total company year-to-date sales — and 19.9% of its October 2022 sales.
“It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come, especially over the past five years as we positioned eCommerce to strengthen our strategic partnerships,” said Kirk Talmontas, Fastenal’s vice president of e-commerce. “It’s a testament to the innovation and dedication of all the team members who have made this happen.”
“We don’t often think of e-commerce as our primary go-to-market strategy, but it’s become a vital part of our ‘digital footprint’ – the technology we provide to streamline and illuminate the supply chain,” added Dan Florness, president and CEO of Fastenal. “Thanks to the hard work of the entire Blue Team, we’re taking eCommerce in new directions in our industry and finding new ways to create value for our customers.”
