W. W. Grainger

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W.W. Grainger, Inc.

Type	Public (NYSE: GWW)
Founded	1927
Headquarters	Lake Forest, Illinois
Key people	Richard Keyser, CEO
Industry	Industrial Supply Distribution
Revenue	▲ US$6.42 billion (2007)^[1]
Website	www.grainger.com

W.W. Grainger, Inc. is a Fortune 500 industrial supply company founded in 1927 in Chicago, Illinois. Grainger provides their clients with the products they need to keep their facilities running. Grainger's catalog includes such offerings as motors, lighting, material handling, fasteners, plumbing, tools, and safety supplies. Revenue is generally comprised of business to business sales rather than consumer sales.

The company is currently in the midst of a massive expansion, which includes the remodeling of existing locations as well as the company's entry into the Chinese market. Grainger is also expanding their product offering, in 2007 their catalog featured 139,000 products, and customers could purchase over 300,000 products on Grainger.com. This is partly in response to increasing competition.

W.W. Grainger, Inc. supplies facilities maintenance and other related products in North America and Asia. The company operates in three segments, Branch-based Distribution, Acklands - Grainger Inc. (Canada) and Lab Safety Supply.

The Branch-based Distribution businesses include Grainger's Industrial Supply division; Grainger's Export division; Grainger's Global Sourcing division; Grainger S.A. de C.V. (Mexico); Grainger Caribe, Inc. (Puerto Rico); and Grainger China, LLC China Distribution. Grainger distributes various supplies, such as material handling, safety and security, cleaning and maintenance, pumps and plumbing, electrical, lighting, ventilation, tools, metal working, fluid power, heating and air-conditioning products, motors, and power transmissions.

Grainger recently came under public scrutiny for their the unethical practice of over-changing government customers who had pre-existing fixed price contracts. ^[2] In a whistleblower lawsuit, former district sales manager Brian Holbrook alleged the industrial-supply distributor repeatedly over-billed the U.S. government on its supply contracts.

Acklands - Grainger Inc. is Canada's leading broad-line distributor of industrial, fleet and safety products. Lab Safety Supply markets safety and other industrial products to customers under several brands throughout North America.

Grainger serves customers through a network of approximately 620 branches, 15 distribution centers, numerous catalogs and direct mail pieces and several Web sites. W.W. Grainger, Inc. was incorporated in 1927 and is based in Lake Forest, Illinois.