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In the fall of 2017, Berkshire Hathaway acquired MROP distributor Production Tool Supply and created a new wholesale division, Berkshire eSupply. In this exclusive interview, ID editor Mike Hockett chats with Berkshire eSupply President John Beaudoin about the division’s emergence and how it plans to aid independent distributors.
Attention independent MROP products distributors: There is a new source for your supply chain, inventory and e-commerce needs in the form of a new master distributor.
Through the acquisition of Production Tool Supply’s (PTS) wholesale division — No. 34 on Industrial Distribution’s 2017 Big 50 List — multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway has formed a new entity called Berkshire eSupply, which aims to empower independent distributors. The acquisition actually took place in the summer of 2017, but the firm hasn’t gone public with the news until now.
With more than 1,000 suppliers, the company has more than 1 million industrial/MROP products available online, dispersed from three strategically located distribution centers (DCs) — Detroit, Los Angeles and Houston. In the spirit of 4.0 logistics, future state-of-the-art automated fulfillment centers are designed and underway. The new Berkshire eSupply has various ready-made tools connecting all aspects of the supply chain, aiming to deliver the perfect blend of technology, talent, data and products. By digitizing and optimizing the supply chain, Berkshire eSupply’s goal at-heart is to remove costly redundancies for distributors — enabling them to sell more and to be more profitable.
Besides its vast inventory and logistics capabilities, Berkshire eSupply’s services such as private label e-commerce platforms, private label vending solutions and marketing support options have the company set to be a formidable partner for independent distributors looking to provide their customer base a level of service that can surpass the national distributors (such as those on