Buckeye Industrial Supply Celebrates 75th Anniversary

The company began as a scrap metals dealer in 1947.

Screen Shot 2022 08 09 At 12 50 15 Pm
Buckeye Industrial Supply Co.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Buckeye Industrial Supply Company, a Columbus-based industrial products distributor with a branch location in Cincinnati, is celebrating 75 years in business. 

“I am proud of reaching this milestone and look forward to recognizing the many people who have contributed to our good fortune,” said Rick Meizlish, president of BIS, which carries nearly 200 brands in more than a dozen product categories. “Being a third-generation family business for three-quarters of a century is possible because we have continually invested in team members, treated our customers like family, and created strong relationships with our suppliers.”  

To make sure everyone in the company has the knowledge, skills and attitude to serve customers to the best of his or her ability, BIS provides in-house and outside training to the greatest extent possible. That commitment to helping team members reach their potential has resulted is a culture of collaboration in which everyone is always dedicated to the goal of providing customers with an exceptional experience every time they deal with someone at BIS.  

By treating everyone as if he or she were a brother, sister, father, mother, uncle or aunt, the company has won a high degree of trust with its customers. That level of confidence has resulted in more sales over the long term with those customers, and with customers who do business with BIS based on the recommendations of loyal customers they know. 

In some instances, BIS has worked with customers for 25 or 30 years or more. The length and quality of those relationships are a testament to the company’s high level of service, including responsiveness to customers’ needs and value proposition. BIS provides measurable and demonstrable benefits to every customer by developing honest, personalized, cost-efficient solutions instead of taking a cookie-cutter approach that is common throughout the industry.

BIS’s belief that suppliers deserve to make a fair profit off the products BIS distributes for them has allowed the company to form exceptionally close ties with manufacturers. Those relationships often allow BIS to obtain favorable pricing that they pass along to customers. 

The company began as a scrap materials dealer and, after about five years of operation, evolved into an industrial products distributor serving customers throughout the Midwest. Over the years, BIS has acquired other industrial distributors, including Ray Industrial Products Inc. in Van Wert, Ohio, last year.


More in Operations