Wilmar Industries was founded in 1978 as a corner hardware store in Camden, New Jersey. In order to grow its business, Wilmar began selling its products to apartment buildings in the area, and eventually transformed itself into an MRO distributor focused exclusively on the multi-family housing market.

Wilmar expanded quickly over the next 15 years, and after going public in 1996, built a national distribution network by acquiring 14 regional competitors over a three-year period. In 1999, Wilmar decided to move beyond the multi-family housing market into the larger, institutional facilities maintenance market. This goal was achieved through the December 1999 acquisition of Sexauer Group. Sexauer, a widely recognized distributor in the facilities maintenance market, sold its products throughout the U.S., Canada and Latin America. Sexauer also owned the Trayco brand, which sold primarily in the Southeastern United States.

In May 2000, an investor group led by Wilmar management acquired Wilmar Industries and took the company private in order to continue Wilmar’s acquisition strategy as a private company. Shortly thereafter, Wilmar approached Barnett, Inc. and began discussing a merger.

Wilmar and Barnett were natural merger partners. Each company was generating close to $300 million in annual sales. Each company had national distribution coverage with a total of 76 distribution centers.

Although Wilmar and Barnett sold the same basic product lines, they focused on different end markets.

• Wilmar and Sexauer concentrated on facilities maintenance customers, while Barnett marketed to plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors, locksmiths and retail hardware stores.
• Wilmar had a strong field sales organization while Barnett’s expertise was in direct mail and outbound telesales.

In addition, Barnett had recently opened a national distribution center in Nashville, Tennessee, which would allow the company to reduce delivery times to its branches by as much as seven days.

The discussions progressed rapidly, and the merger was completed in September 2000. In addition to the Wilmar, Sexauer and Trayco brands, our portfolio now included Barnett, Hardware Express, Maintenance USA, U.S. Lock, Leran and Barnett of the Caribbean.

Our management teams quickly began developing a plan for integrating the two companies. All our managers shared a belief that our customers like doing business with the brands they are accustomed to. Therefore, the first decision made was “change as little as possible about the way our customers currently do business with us.” This meant keeping the same sales force, the same phone numbers, the same “look and feel” wherever possible.

On the other hand, our managers also believed that we could operate the combined companies much more efficiently on a common platform, which would enable us to share the same inventory and work out of the same distribution centers. During the integration, we would “seek to standardize back-office and administrative procedures whenever possible and centralize our fulfillment operations.”

These two guiding principles helped the development of the integration strategy.

During this planning process, the team also decided that a name change was appropriate, given that over half the company employees would eventually be performing functions for more than one brand. Thus, the name Interline Brands was chosen as a way to describe our multiple brands, serving multiple markets, but united on a common fulfillment platform.