1985 - 2009

Everything's New, Everything's The Same

Since 1989 Graybar has emerged as a very different company in some ways but has remained essentially unchanged in others. In a period when the distribution of electrical and comm/data products has become increasingly competitive, Graybar has made large investments in technology to take costs out of the distribution chain and keep pace with the needs of its customers and suppliers. “Technology is the big change,” Robert Nowak, Phoenix district vice president, asserts. “It puts information at our fingertips that we never had before and allows us to serve our customers faster and better.”

In addition Graybar has repositioned itself by moving away from being solely a supplier to providing logistics and other value-added services — from being a “pick, pack and ship” company to becoming one of America’s largest providers of managed distribution and supplychain services. “We do more logistics management today than ever because our customers don’t carry much inventory,” New York District Vice President Chris Olsen says. “Twenty or 30 years ago a contractor would have his own warehouse and trucks, and industrial companies carried a lot more inventory. They’d call on Monday and you could deliver by Friday because they had backup inventory. Now many companies have gone to just-in-time delivery and depend on distributors to stock the product and manage inventories for them. They don’t even ask for next-day delivery. It’s simply part of the business.”