Packers Supply Company launched in 1990. There was no email. There was no website. There were no internal systems. There were no processes. There was no warehouse. Just one guy on the road visiting packing plants and solving problems. There were good products and good people. There was sufficient stock in hand and there were good prices.
One may surmise that only the last four points above remain true today.
One would be right.
Don’t Break -> Tweak -> Overhaul
The original founder of Packers Supply established a strong mix of products and diversification of customers. I am grateful that he was looking to retire at the exact same time my wife and I were looking to become entrepreneurs through acquisition. That was nearly three years ago now, as we had our (re)launch in July, 2023.
Our first priority was to really learn the business and get to know our customers. Until the end of 2023, my objective was simple: Don’t break it. Figure out what is working well and where we have opportunities to implement changes in a focused manner – the proverbial “let’s use a scalpel, not an axe” approach, if you will.
At least, that is how we started out – but then things snowballed in a good way, and we are embracing change at a pace never seen before in this company. In 2023, my stress was related to messing something up and putting a 33 year old company out of business. In 2026, my stress has a different feel: It is now related to identifying how we can exponentially accelerate our growth pattern, and we are measuring in months and quarters, not years and decades.
This mindset requires acknowledging how much the world has changed since 1990: the internet and AI (duh), external investment in our industry and consolidation, advanced concepts of company and team management, and changes in manufacturing and supply chain economics.
An Era of Firsts
In the 34 months since Packers Supply transitioned ownership, our company has remained operational – but it hasn’t been business as usual. Here are some of the more significant developments implemented during that time:
Product Development: Added dozens of manufacturing partners and expanded into multiple new product lines (e.g. belts, sensors, bearings, and more). We built a product sourcing team and converted our product pipeline – it went from papers taped to a whiteboard to an Excel file to a true pipeline management system.
As we expanded our product lines, we made an intentional decision to invest more heavily in critical inventory to keep it in-stock for our customers and ship to them the same day whenever they need it.
Operating System: Decided upon our first operating framework for Packers Supply. We implemented the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) because of our size and my prior experience implementing it at my last company. This gives us a framework for strategic planning and operational excellence.
Core Values: We decided who we are and who we aspire to be. One thing that we have found our entire team has in common is that we have all worked in a crappy culture at some point or other, and to greatly oversimplify things…we have decided we will just do the opposite of that. We make it a point to discuss our core values in every weekly meeting.
CRM: For the first year and a half, our CRM consisted of a filing cabinet with papers + a simple to-do list in an MS Access database. We implemented an AI-heavy CRM just over a year ago and I still marvel at how much time it saves our sales team.
Website: Yeah, yeah, we know the internet has been around as long as Packers Supply. For some reason this company just never quite got around to making a website, but we sure do now. You should check it out: it is so “6-7” (had to do that for my daughter, sorry).
IT: Moved from on-prem server to everything in the cloud. We are now in the process of replacing QuickBooks with a true ERP that is purpose-built for our industry. And I would be remiss to not mention AI here, although at times I wonder if it falls under the IT category or ‘massive disruption to humanity’ category. Either way, I love it from a business perspective and we are leaning in heavily.
Employee Benefits: We implemented a 401(k) match right away, and then in late 2024 added a profit sharing program because it is the right thing to do (oh look, that happens to be one of our core values!). As of this year, we now offer health insurance and several other ancillary benefits for the first time, and we engaged a PEO to better handle our HR matters.
Trade Shows: We are working to get our name and brand out there, and hosted a booth at our first ever trade show. The IPPE in Atlanta was a rousing success, and is the first of many to come. We also have some really sweet chip clips, so hit me up with a message on LinkedIn and I’ll happily ship some for you to show off on your fridge at home.
Office Relocation: In late 2024, we relocated the office and warehouse from Louisville, NE over to Waverly, NE. This improved the location for our team members, provided a better office environment and added several thousand square feet more warehouse space. Based on the number of shelves we installed a couple weeks ago, it looks like we will need it.
Team Expansion: When we started, we had two full-time team members and three part-time. Today we have eleven and four, respectively. We have our first dedicated people for product sourcing, marketing, fulfillment, and more. We continue to identify bottlenecks and hire more people or tweak processes to widen those bottlenecks (and then rinse & repeat).
Investing in the Future
Our team is energetic, focused, and friendly. We will continue to invest in systems, people and inventory so when machinery goes down at a plant, our customers aren’t waiting around – they’re fixing what’s broken. Packers Supply knows that good products, good prices, and good stocking levels are table stakes in the industrial wholesale distribution space. Relationships with our customers are where we shine, and we will do what it takes to make things right for them.
As a company, we are heavily reinvesting in ourselves to continue on this path of operational and service delivery excellence. While we will continue to modernize our operations, we will also continue to double down on customer service. We wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t have read this far, if we didn’t have such an amazing group of customers.
To those of you reading this who are a customer, thank you for putting your trust in us.