Hillman Solutions Corp. achieved a new company milestone earlier this year after more than six decades in business: its first-ever investor day event.
The distributor of hardware, fasteners, work gear and other supplies became a publicly traded company in 2021 – 57 years after it was founded as fastener supplier Hillman Bolt & Screws – but officials only recently made the decision to hold a showcase for its shareholders. The mid-March event at its Cincinnati headquarters, the company said, sought to provide a look at its market position, its long-term outlook, and its “multi-channel expansion strategy.”
Hillman leaders, including President and CEO Jon Michael Adinolfi, have said that they hope to reach $2.5 billion in annual sales by 2030; the company posted over $1.5 billion last year to set a new record, but in order to reach its five-year goal, it will need to ramp up annual growth from last year’s 5.4% to between 8% and 12% every year.
To make that happen, executives said in recent weeks, Hillman will need to do more than just continue organic growth and win market share in its historic wheelhouse of hardware retail; it will need to make new acquisitions, and expand into more categories.
Hillman recently moved back into the M&A market after a quiet 2025 with two deals this spring, including one that points to its growing ambitions in a relatively new market.
The company in early April announced its acquisition of Campbell Chain & Fittings, a York, Pennsylvania, supplier of chain, fittings and lifting products, from Apex Tool Group. Hillman officials said in the announcement that Campbell, including its Pennsylvania factory and a South Carolina forging plant, would complement and expand its current chain operations, which it originally added through the 2024 purchase of rope, chain and hardwire supplier Koch Industries Inc.
But the company also noted that the deal would bolster its position in the maintenance, repair and operations market — and called MRO “a key focus area for its future growth.”
Company leaders went into more detail in its latest earnings call with analysts in late April.
“It complemented our Koch chain business [and] brings us manufacturing in both chain and fittings,” Adinolfi said of the Campbell deal. “The exciting part there is it really opens up a whole new set of customers for us. There’s a number of customers we don’t do any, or, if we do, it’s a very small amount, of business on the industrial side.”
He added that Hillman officials believe that “we can own the category, have manufacturing capability, bring some new products that could help us on our retail side of the business and really fuel growth in our industrial [channel].”
Hillman also acquired Delaney Hardware in April, a Georgia supplier of door hardware that officials said would complement its pro distribution operations — another priority for its growth. Wrapping up two deals within a month of the investor day event, it appears, also wasn’t a coincidence; Adinolfi told analysts that the event “definitely opened up the view and certainly opened up the pipeline for potential opportunities for acquisitions.”
He added that there’s a “high probability” that the company will make another deal this year.
“I can’t predict anything at this point, but we certainly have some good opportunities in the pipeline that we’re excited about.”
This column originally appeared in the May/June issue of Industrial Distribution magazine. Sign up here to subscribe to ID’s Today in Industrial Distribution daily newsletter.
